Hi, It was fortunate that you told me what a Lammy was as up until then as a proud kiwi I was thinking it had something to do with sheep! Congrats. Cheers, Greg.
Yeah, it's not one of the better-named awards, that's for sure. (And now I'm picturing it as an adorable (and delicious!) little lamb). ETA: A couple years ago I had a book under consideration at Penguin and I had a really vivid mental image of a bunch of actual penguins waddling around an office, handing the manuscript to each other, bobbing their heads, etc. And then when they bought the book, all the penguins in my head gave each other high fives with their flippers! I may be a little prone to animal-related hallucinations...
Congratulations anyway! Honestly, most of these awards (unless it's one of the huge ones) only seem to be followed by authors. I doubt more than, like, 0.05% of LGBT readers have even heard of a Lammy award. Maybe my perception is wrong?
It's getting reasonably good coverage in the media - well, mostly the gay media, although I caught a mention of my name this morning on the CBC website as one of the Canadian authors nominated) - that was pretty exciting, because I wasn't expecting to see it, I was just browsing. But my biggest market is usually straight-ish women, and I doubt many of them are paying attention to these awards, so... who knows? Obviously the book-buying public aren't going crazy for it!
As a reader I have NEVER bought a book based on learning it won an award, and I do buy a lot of books. I guess the average reader has a busy life and doesn't have time to know or care about these awards. So unless the award helps you turn up in a search engine more frequently with key words relating to your kind of books, I can't see how it will benefit other than bragging rights. The only time I've ever checked an award site is when a favorite author makes a big deal about being nominated or winning something. Even then it's a quick peek to confirm "Oh yeah, somebody agrees with me". Anyway, congrats on the Lammy! PS: Unfortunately, I am boringly 'Straight' and not 'Straight-ish', so if you write m/f stories then point me at them.
I've bought books based on awards they've won, but possibly I'm an exception that way! (And I write m/f as Cate Cameron... catecameronauthor.com) ETA: And I'll try not to exercise "bragging rights", but I was just reading another post by someone equating slow writing with quality writing (along the lines of "it's easier to write fast when you're just churning out formulaic genre stuff, but it's a lot slower to write real quality fiction,") so - not bragging rights, but at least a little vindication!
I haven't bought one just because it's won an award, but if I'm browsing and one says "Winner of X award" then I'm more likely to give it a go. Of course, the blurb still needs to sound compelling, and it helps if it's an award I've heard of. But I'd think that's the way to play this - add this to its blurb on Amazon et al.
Can't say I ever read a book because it won awards. I hardly even know whether the book has awards or not, didn't there were enough to go around even. I doubt it'd sway my decision making but if it sounds good, it's my genre, and everyone says to give it a shot... why not, I guess.
@BayView I hope you didn't take my "Bragging rights" comment the wrong way. It was an offhand way to say "You should pat yourself on the back because somebody appreciates your work" and plug it for all its worth. Why shouldn't you do that? This includes adding it in book description and your Author's bio. It can help assure your potential reader that they aren't buying toilet paper (couldn't think of a better description and in a rush) My point was, if the awards doesn't help you show up in a search engine for relevant key search words then you shouldn't expect a jump in sales. I'm always looking for new authors writing to my taste and I keep seeing the same old titles over and over again. Quite frustrating. Where I would think it might be helpful as far as these more niche awards is catching the interest of other similar writers who will have their own following. As writers, awards have meaning to them (maybe that's why you buy books with awards?). And another author's stamp of approval is a bigger deal for a reader. If one of my favorite Authors makes a genuine plug at a novel by another author in the same genre, first I will see it because I check their social media occasionally, and then I will consider it. I've tried new authors this way often. Anyway, didn't edit and stop to ponder what I just wrote above. If it annoys some more then oh well, just ignore me. Gotta go to work! ETA: I'm really late!!! But I was thinking just now if it wasn't genre specific too. Let's not forget Crusie got an award. In the world of Sci Fi, I would assume awards might be a bigger deal. Anyway, I've no idea what I'm talking about.
Update - to add to my "no promo" challenge for this series, I also apparently decided to add an "erratic release dates" challenge, 'cause... I guess I really want it to fail? Anyway, I released the third book (the one in my avatar) last weekend. Not a whole lot of response... Well, some sales, which is nice. But the Amazon rank has never made it out of five-digits, which isn't good. Interestingly, it made the Top-50 best-seller list at All-Romance eBooks (a niche retailer, but the biggest niche retailer for the biggest genre...). A reader contacted me after reading it and I asked her how she'd even been aware that it existed, and she said it had shown up on the New Releases list at ARe. So sometimes even when authors don't do any promo, retailers will step in and help us out! Current plan is to get the fourth book written at some point (when I need to write/edit something for publishers, it always seems to be the self-published stuff that I push aside to make time). And then I think I'll do some promo for the series as a whole and see what happens. What form that promo will take, of course, remains to be seen. Possibly interpretive dance?
Nice. Or focus on the Romance haters out there. Or homophobes. I bet they'd like a nice m/m angst-fest!
Update on this, kinda... I've released the fourth (and final) book in the series, still with no promo other than a post on my own Facebook page... except... I switched all four books over to Kindle Unlimited and made the first one free for a few days. Definite upswing in the sales rankings. Part of that will be from people reading pages on the KU function rather than buying books - hard to be sure how the rankings are determined. But still, it pulled all four books back into activity - in the mid 5-digits rankings. Amazon makes it hard to resist their monopoly. At the same time, in another experiment in non-promotion... I've been re-releasing some of my previously published books that I've gotten back from publishers. e-versions only, and enrolled in KU. I haven't even mentioned them on my social media, so there's been absolutely no promo... and they've come out with better rankings than most of my other books right out of the gate! I honestly don't know how people even realize these books exist.... So maybe it's time I abandon the "experiment" tag and just confess that I am not going to be doing much promo. If opportunities arrive, I'll take them. But I'll focus on writing. It's what I want to be doing anyway, so... I win!
