The sequel to The Coldest Winter Ever is Out ...for a while

[Troy]

A Deeper Love Inside: The Porsche Santiaga Story
By Sister Souljah
 

I discovered this book from the Jan/Feb 2013 bestsellers list I just published. 

 

Just a few years ago prior to the publication of, Midnight, Souljah's 2nd novel, a few years after the Coldest Winter Ever, there was much more anticipation, more buzz.  In 2013 there was zero buzz at least from my perspective.  This is problematic. 

 

It is a problem because I actively look for books by Black writers that I think will appeal to or at least interest readers.  When a writer of Souljah's notoriety publishes the sequel to a wildly popular book (1,436,559 copies in print) I want to be able to be the first to let people know.

 

Now her latest book A Deeper Love Inside: The Porsche Santiaga Story has been out for over a month and I had no clue. 

 

Sure a few years ago there was more discussion about books here on AALBC.com.  I also know many of those people went to social media.  But I'm on Twitter and Facebook every day and did not see anything about this book.

I also realize publishers spend less on promotion and advertising and that is also part of the problem. (to be plain Simon and Schuster is not an advertiser).

I also know we have very few platforms remaining who would review this title.  Clutch magazine mentions the book.  Digging a little deeper I came across an excellent article about the book in Publishers Weekly. 

 

Then the crux on my problem dawned on me.  I spend to much time on social media looking for information about books.  Sure I push a lot of information about books out there, including this one, but AALBC.com is a much more effective platform for disseminating information about books.

 

I will adjust my behavior accordingly ;-)

 

[Troy]

I know I'm busy, but I was really curious how I just now learned about the publication of this book 6 weeks after it came out. If anyone posted it on my social media I did not see it.

So I decided to run a Google search on the term: "A Deeper Love Inside book review"  (without the quotes) to see what reviews I could find on this book  [i also ran the same search on duckduckgo.com a search engine I've been touting lately, but in this case I preferred Google results]

Most of the top results were the big websites.  Their pages were pages where the main purpose of the pages was to sell the book.  There was a large image of the book cover, followed by places where the book could be purchased and the marketing copy provided by the publisher. 

The user reviews were all user generated by amateurs and were all over the place in terms of assessing the book from the terrible "I can say that I was very disappointed in this book" and "I am done with anything SS writes. Don't waste your money.",  to the great; "I loved this book and was so glad I got to read it." and  "I would give this book 10 stars if I could."

After reading a few of these I still had no idea what to think.  I'll just abbreviate the site as the same old, same old or "SOSO" for short.

#1 Goodreads SOSO
 

#2 & #3 Amazon 337 user generated reviews: still SOSO
More confusing, inconsistent, amature reviews are not better -- even if you average them out (shit in shit out)

#4 Barnes&Noble 
No user generated reviews. They provide an editorial review that read like marketing copy.  They also pubish the kirkus review with is a description of the book. Better than a SOSO site but still not a source of a the tyoe of review I'm looking for.  Sourcing Kirkus is better than user generated review.  Overall B&N site really is a better than Amazons, but Amazon is running circles around B&N technologically.

#5 Bookspans Blackexpressions
Oddly the URL Google provided was broken.  Maybe Google indexed a page behind a paywall.  At any rate it was a useless result.

#6 Itunes: SOSO

#7 Literary Marie: The first decent critical assessment of this novel written by someone who apparently writes a lot of reviews.  I was previously unaware of this website.  For some classes a queries Google is like it's old self and will still turn up small independent websites 

#8 Blackliterature Magazine.net
Includes a synopsis but no review.  That said it is a nice site overall though Michelle Cuttino" is her column featured through AAMBC (www.aambookclub.com).   Have to add it to my list of Black book sites

#9 -- Googlebooks SOSO 
I noticed however that the reviews looked familiar -- Google is pulling the Goodreads book reviews! Google is so slick.  They are brilliant at monetizing freely provided or copied content and information.

#10 Urbanreviews
A rave review 5 "books" out of 5 "A Deeper Love Inside: The Porsche Santiaga Story is a thought provoking coming-of-age story that was definitely worth the wait." --Radiah Hubbert.  Hurbert also9 who wrote the review also has an interview with Souljah:
#11 - Kirkus Reviews
A not committal, luke warm 226 word review.  The same review used in the B&N website.  After reading the review I feel no differently about investing the time an energy in reading the book

#12 - The angel experience
A review of the book delivered through a video.  Which I've shared below

 

The next results #13 to #27 were more SOSO pages including additional results from amazon no actual book reviews. 

Normally I, as well as the vast majority of web surfers would have given up at this point.  But I was desperate.  Next we have:

#28 -  The Prissy Book Snob
This was also a decent critical review of the book -- should have been returned higher in this search

#29 Chrystal's Corner BOOK REVIEWS
This was also a decent critical review of the book -- should have been returned higher in this search

#30 N'digo A Magapaper for the Urbane
This was also a decent critical review of the book -- should have been returned higher in this search.  In fact I would argue this was the should have been one ot the top search results. 

The take away from all of this is when running a Google search you should probably just start at the bottom of the third page of result to find something decent.

[Guest Literary Marie]

Thank you. Did you know Sister Souljah released the third book in the Midnight series? It didn't receive much publicity either. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts about it. 

[Troy]

Yes I was aware of the 3rd book from Sista Soulja (I have not finished migrating her content to the new site).  This book did not get any promotion or buzz either.  

This, I'm sure is a lack of advertising on both the publishers and authors side.  Plus there are just simply few platforms that would be including to cover this book several of the indie platform and Black Expressions Book Club have shut down.

Are you, by any chance, the "Literary Marie," of the site that I linked to above?