This is fantastic feedback everyone, thank you!
The idea behind the horizontal scrolling mechanism (’shelves’ as we call them) is to give users a number of curated segments to quickly scroll through (’the vertical scroll’), once they find a shelf they like, they can browse more books by scrolling to the horizontally.
@Jamison Stone I like your suggestion of incorporating these segments as options on the search page.
@A.C. Weston great point about the depth of the search functionality. Will definitely add some text that makes users aware that this feature searches LOTS elements: titles, names, descriptions, genres, etc...
Keep the great feedback coming!
I love how you’re continuously working on this stuff, and everything is getting so much better!
The Discover page seems fine for people who are new and just want to browse a wide range of things. I far prefer to use the search function to narrow down what I’m looking for - I can look by Status + Genre, which is fantastic. In thinking of what I would want to suggest, I decided to be smart and check to see if it already exists, and...
GUYS. Maybe everyone knew this and I didn’t, but YOU CAN SEARCH BY ANY WORD IN THE SYNOPSIS!! Which means you can tag your stuff - feminist, LGBTQ+, humor, etc etc etc, AND PEOPLE CAN SEARCH BY THAT STUFF!!! I’m so excited!
And it works to search by a term and then narrow it down by status and genre, so I could search for, say, "humor" and then narrow it down to Currently Funding + Science Fiction, and see the humorous scifi books that I can pre-order!!!
Of course, it’s not very functional if nobody knows you can search that way. Readers need to know they can search by general terms AND authors need to tag their books in order for it to be useful, but the functionality is there!!!
I recommend, then, some sort of note or guide for when authors create their projects so they know they can include a tags section to make their projects easier to find; and also a note underneath the search function letting people know they can search by general categories besides just the status and genre ones (ex: young adult, humor, werewolves). (Yes, I know YA is a genre, but search for that term and you’ll see lots of YA categorized as fiction, scifi, fantasy, etc that doesn’t come up when you choose just the YA genre.)
I know, I know, this stuff might be obvious to some of you. But I didn’t realize the functionality was already there, and I sure haven’t tried adding any sort of tags beyond whatever words are already in my synopsis naturally.
My guess is that you registered as a non-native English speaker when you set up your campaign? That would add 250 books to your publication goal, the reason being the additional cost of editing out the language quirks of someone not fully conversant with the language. But what I’ve seen of your correspondence and writing suggests that this is not going to be an issue. You could probably email Inkshares to change this.
The other way you could have gotten the extra 250 books on your goals is to have requested a $5000 advance. There, too, you could email Inkshares to change it.
The most tried and true way of getting big numbers is to reach out to every individual in your circle directly. After that, it can be a big help to get an influential friend/family member or two to do some reaching out on your behalf.
There are dozens of other avenues to consider, but their success rate really depends on the individual. Some people are great at pitching to strangers in a coffee shop/comic book store. Other people are able to turn their twitter followers into buyers. Not many people are able to get press coverage, but those who have typically get some mileage from it. You know your skill sets and abilities best, so this is the time to test their limits.
Definitely check out the older posts on the goodreads forum, as there is a TON of advice on there from successfully funded authors.
