Feedback from an author about my book

Available on Amazon.com

RA: Hi Julia, I'm reading "Until Death Do Us Part". What a wonderful, bold collection! You should seek out more reviews for your book. It deserves more visibility.

Julia Dutta: Thank you! Be the first to review, especially if you can put it up on Amazon itself. It counts there. You know, I do my job; it is for others to review/talk about it etc. But even a note from you, fulfills the purpose of writing. The book has touched one heart. I believe it has many. My job is over.

RA: Amazon's been discouraging reviews by fellow authors, which is why you should seek out other book reviewers. They've taken down quite a few of these even for me.

Julia Dutta: I know that they have been refusing to allow those who downloaded the book in the Kindle Free Download Offer to comment. The book will find its destiny, as they always do. Somehow, I feel very strange about promoting my own work. Finally, I am advertising professional - have you seen people in that profession scream and shout about their campaigns? I am grateful for your suggestions. I do take them very seriously and tweet about them.

RA: Even mainstream authors are required to promote their own books now, and you and I are self-published. I promote my book by offering it to book bloggers who blog in my genre. Have you ever seen me tout my book on any groups? I hate in-your-face marketing, as well.

One thing I would recommend for your book is the hiring of a professional editor next time before you send your work to a publisher. The book is very well written, though.

Also, the readership for your book will be necessarily limited because the shades of lesbianism will make people uncomfortable. I see you have not listed a category for your book. Want to try gay and lesbian literature/romance to see if you can find more readers/reviewers?

Julia Dutta: Thank you so much for your engagement with my book. The book has been published by Xynobooks LLC, USA. I have not self published. Regarding the editing, I agree with you totally; next time I will send in the text for professional editing before I send it to a publication. What I have found in this one is, like all good Editors, the publisher/Editor interferes very little with the manuscript and they do not add much to the text. So on my next one, I have been careful, done a lot of work myself. I can suggest to my publisher to add, Lesbian, gay, CSA etc. As you can see the Publishers have targeted Women as a category, to market to. "Stories of women from India" they said. Some of the stories are as old as 1985! Others are as new as 2011.

I am part of LinkedIn writers group and everyone there seems to have Self-Published and they do market their books very well. My publisher has said that the comment on Amazon is BEST and also talking about it on Twitter, as the book is naturally targeted to reach the hungry for India stories, NRI possessing Kindle, iPad, Tablet etc. In India, it is yet a far cry, the Kindle I mean.

RA: Btw, The formatting could have been better. The text being centered in my Kindle, is very hard to read. I format books, so I know this can be done better. People often will not read a book if the formatting is bad.

Julia Dutta: Do you mind if I told my publishers about the formatting? Perhaps they need feedback too to improve on their software too! Thanks a ton for talking to me.

Cheers!