Dear friends
I come to you as the bearer of good news. Very good news!
Blurbs and reviews for The Catcher’s Trap are trickling in, and I can’t be more thankful and proud. I share with you three blurbs that put a smile on my face:
"Ricardo Henriquez’s impressive use of description and storytelling weaves a most captivating introduction of macabre and beauty in his new series. Readers should clear their schedules the day they open The Catcher’s Trap. As soon as they finish chapter one... there is no stopping until the final page has been reached." Alicia Smock, Chicago Books Examiner
“With his debut novel, “The Catchers Trap,” Ricardo Henriquez sucks the reader into a vortex of suspense, sarcasm and stunning detail that is both captivating and thrilling. The novel is engaging to both horror and non-horror fans, with a read that is more than meets the eye.” Christine Bucci-Caprilozzi, Senior Editor for Horror News Network
“The Catcher’s Trap is a riveting story that kept me up reading far too late more than once. Equal parts terrifying and heroic, Andres’ descent into a nightmare existence and back is going stay with me for a long time. I hope Mr. Henriquez has a sequel in the works, because I need to know what happens next, and there’s so much more about the Catcher’s world to explore.” Dave Barret, Author of It’s All Fun and Games, and Nerdist contest winner.
As an author I want nothing more than people to enjoy my work. The fact that those who have read The Catcher’s Trap like it, encourages me to continue writing and sharing the stories I carry inside of me.
In other great news, Nerdist and Inkshares announced yesterday at Comic-Con that our anthology Too Many Controllers was picked to be part of the Nerdist collection. What does this mean? It means that Nerdist will put their marketing power behind our project to make sure it is a successful one. This is a great honor that I share with other 14 talented writers.
Finally, just a reminder that in about a month, on August 27th, I’ll be at the Connecticut Horror Fest, at The Matrix Conference Center in Danbury. If you are in the area, come and say hello. I’ll have free advance readers copies of The Catcher’s Trap and other chachkies to share.
Have a Fantastic Week.
Ricardo
Hello, friends!
A quick one to thank the 105 individual readers, including the three syndicates and those of you who have ordered multiple copies, who have helped the campaign go as far as it’s gone. You guys are awesome, this is more of anything than I’ve ever sold in my creative life, and I appreciate each and every one of you.
My strategy, such as it is, was to see if the project would gain traction organically. It’s been a fun experiment and a definite learning experience, but unless I sell 114 preorders in the next ten days, Devil’s Call is not going to make it to Quill.
I’m doing what I can this last week and a half, but my real hope is that after reading this you, dear reader, will go on Twitter or Facebook or whatever the kids are using these days and tell a friend or three how excited you are about this project.
It takes 30 seconds to say, "Hey, there’s a really great genre-bending novel fundraising on Inkshares, it was written by an independent author, she’s halfway to her goal but has ten days left to reach it, it’s only $10 to preorder a copy and support diversity in literature," plus then you get the satisfaction of one day telling your friends how you backed the hell out of a project that didn’t look like it was going to make it and now look at it, all grown up and selling its own copies.
-J.
The way things are now, I agree with Christopher.
Funding authors tend to be the most active, and therefore the most visible. So funding books naturally tend to draw the most attention and get the most exposure - which is a good thing and totally makes sense. The understandably sympathetic reluctance to leave criticism on funding books sort of bleeds over onto drafts. Also, authors here are really considerate, and don’t want to unintentionally discourage another author. So it can be challenging for an active Drafter to draw attention, and organically get criticism from people browsing, or even those that follow your book.
Plus, critiquing takes time. Not only does a draft need to garner someone’s interest, but that person also has to be invested enough to take the time to provide constructive criticism. Most important, there’s no real incentive to critique. That’s why DraftShares was such a great idea.
I bring up incentive because I was recently introduced to the site Scribophile (this is not intended to be an ad, just a resource I wanted to share). They have a system where you earn points for giving solicited critiques that you can use to post your own work for feedback, and earn things like having your book featured. It appears to be a robust community where people are pretty honest. I suggest checking it out if you’re looking for an option to get your work thoroughly reviewed. I’m definitely going to give it try
Sometime in the future, I think it would be of value for Inkshares to have some sort of similar, formal system of solicitation and incentive for critiques. I wouldn’t think they have the resources to try something like that right now. But as the site grows, it’s something I would personally love to eventually see. I think that knowing there was an incentive to give and receive feedback would draw more authors, who would then potentially move on to the funding phase with a much stronger draft – hopefully increasing the chance of funding success.
I would love to know what everyone else thinks.