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The Best Books of 2020

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In 2020, we needed good stories more than ever: To escape, even for a little while. To subvert and question the status quo. And to remind us of the joys of being human. The books listed below fall into one, some, or all of the above categories. We had our contributors select the stories that meant the most to them this year and polled you the reader to compile a subjective yet comprehensive list of some of the year’s best. Here are the books, organized by genre, that broke through the cacophony to mean something to our Den of Geek contributors—and to you—this year…

Quick note before we begin: Like many other areas of the media industry and economy, the independent bookstore industry was hit hard by the lockdown caused by the pandemic, as more people than ever flocked to Amazon to get their reading fix. If you are inspired to purchase any of the titles we gush about below, consider using Bookshop.org or other sites that support independent bookstores (especially Black-owned ones) to do so. They need your help more than ever!

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Best Horror Books of 2020

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic was the buzziest release of the summer – and with good reason. Her lush prose, descriptive settings and disturbing plot combine for one of the most compelling – and likely uncomfortable – reads you’ll experience this year. (If you love mushrooms, I’m really sorry in advance.)

Set in 1950s Mexico, the novel follows the story of the vibrant debutante Noemi, who must journey to a remote mountain village to check up on an ailing cousin, whose mysterious husband keeps insisting she’s mad. If you’ve ever read any Gothic literature before, you know many of the beats that come next: The isolated manor, the creepy servants, the dark dreams, the gaslighting, and the constant sense of rising dread. There’s even a cruel housekeeper that could give Mrs. Danvers more than a run for her money.

Moreno-Garcia uses nearly every conceivable Gothic trope to her advantage, telling a familiar tale whose often predictable elements still somehow manage to feel fresh and new. This is largely due to the deft way that the author weaves the political and the fantastical together, reckoning with larger issues such as racism, British colonization and Mexico’s fraught history with eugenics. A good story, well told, with more going on beneath the surface than one might expect.

– Lacy Baugher

Devolution by Max Brooks

World War Z author Max Brooks takes on Bigfoot in this excellent eco horror which comes with added resonance during a pandemic. Like in his zombie bestseller, Brooks approaches the story as if it were real—it’s the novel equivalent of a found footage tale with the events that befall the residents of isolated eco community Greenloop documented in the diary of our protagonist Kate. Greenloop is a remote idyll of smart homes powered by sunlight and waste and controlled by phones and tablets where deliveries arrive via drone, but when the eruption of active volcano Mt Rainier cuts them off from the rest of the country the groups survival skills are tested. The trouble is, most members of this wealthy community don’t have any. And that’s before the family of sasquatches turn up…

This is a violent, vibrant horror with carefully drawn characters and an escalating sense of dread. Though there is humour here Brooks manages to make the Bigfoot group scary rather than faintly ridiculous, while the mirroring of the devolving eco society and the rise in power and confidence of their feral counterparts is handled skillfully. Intercut with interviews and real life stories of broken boundaries between man and wildlife it’s a cautionary tale that tells us never to underestimate nature, be wary of an over reliance on technology and that humans have animal instincts too.

– Rosie Fletcher

Survivor Song by Paul Tremblay

Tremblay completed his infection horror Survivor Song long before the pandemic hit but the novel is unsettlingly prescient. An outbreak of a deadly and fast acting strain of rabies has swept the country. Citizens are told to isolate at home while hospital staff are vastly overstretched and are put at risk due to a shortage of proper PPE. But when Doctor Ramola hears that her very pregnant best friend Natalie has been bitten by an infected human she’ll do anything in her power to help deliver the baby safely.

This is an incredibly poignant road trip novel, of sorts, which takes place over just a few hours. It’s a love letter to friendship, an anti-fairytale and a careful character study drenched in Tremblay’s characteristic ‘sad horror’. One ‘interlude’ section, which features characters from Tremblay’s earlier work A Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, is so utterly devastating you’ll want a biscuit and an episode of Schitt’s Creek just to get over it. If Tremblay’s A Headful of Ghosts was his take on the possession subgenre, Survivor Song would fall loosely into the zombie category, though it’s likely to be the most gorgeous and literary zombie novel you’ll read all year.

– Rosie Fletcher

Southern Book Clubs Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

Despite the slightly twee title, Hendrix’ latest is an evocative and often very frightening tale of a small town terrorized by a violent outsider. Based in the same world as his coming of age masterpiece My Best Friends’ Exorcism this tale is set in the 90s and focuses on the mothers of the small Southern town of Charlston: bored housewives whose work is often denigrated and overlooked.

At the centre is Patricia, who spends her time looking after a senile mother-in-law, almost grown kids and an ungrateful husband. She, along with neighbourhood friends, forms a book group who discuss true crime stories which provide handy knowledge and insight when Patricia begins to suspect handsome stranger James Harris is up to no good. Charleston is where Hendrix grew up so he paints the town vividly and with affection while acknowledging the oppressiveness felt by the women there, and the systematic racism experienced by the black community, whose children are disappearing and who are not being taken seriously.

Across his work from Horrorstor, My Best Friend’s Exorcism to We Sold Our Souls, Hendrix has proven excellent at writing women and girls. It’s no different here, where the Southern mums of Charleston are heroic and fearsome and their friendship is all powerful – if anyone can take on a vampire it’s them.

– Rosie Fletcher

Thirteen Storeys by Jonathan Sims

This extraordinary debut by Sims is a both a multi-genre anthology and an overarching haunted house story. Centred around the mysterious Banyan Court, a housing complex consisting of a thirteen storey luxury high rise and the poorly built and utterly decrepit affordable housing unit hidden behind it, the book introduces us to various residents or people connected to Banyan Court, each of whom receives a mysterious invite to a dinner party on the top floor hosted by the strange and reclusive billionaire who owns the complex. At the end of this party, we are told, the billionaire will plummet 13 storeys to his death, and none of the guests will have any recollection of what happened.

This is a very smart first book, showcasing Sims’ talent in a range of different horror styles and bringing multiple voices without ever feeling overcrowded. There’s the eerie tale of a little girl and her imaginary friend, who might not be as imaginary as you think, the loyal door man and his violent alter ego competing for supremacy and the art dealer who becomes obsessed with a strange painting. Characters interweave in pleasing ways building to a grotesque but satisfying denouement which ties all the stories together. Sims is an exciting new voice in horror who is definitely one to watch.

– Rosie Fletcher

If It Bleeds by Stephen King – READERS’ CHOICE

The people have spoken!

Stephen King is not only one of the greatest writers of his generation but also one of the most prolific, and nigh a year goes by in which at least one of his stories—either new or adapted—isn’t in the cultural conversation. This year, it was If It Bleeds, a well-rounded horror collection of four previously unpublished stories, including one that features King universe character The Outsider‘s Holly Gibney (in the story that gives the book its name). The novellas revisit many of King’s most popular themes, from supernatural cell phones to the cost of creativity, and manage to feel both modern and nostalgic at the same time. If It Bleeds hit bookshelves in April and, in the midst of the real-life horror that was the pandemic, the continued killings of Black Americans by police officers, and the American presidential election cycle, King gave us something gloriously fictional to be afraid of. Whether you’re a longtime King fan or have never read anything by the horror master, If It Bleeds is well worth your time.

– Kayti Burt

Best Science Fiction Books of 2020

Riot Baby – Tochi Onyebuchi

One of 2020’s most incisive works packed more power into a novella than a book thrice its size; and while its particular story has a dystopian feel, it is actually keenly of the moment: not just the current protests against incarceration and police brutality, but the vicious and violent cycles that imprison, murder, or otherwise cut short Black lives. In an NPR interview at the start of the year when Riot Baby was published, Onyebuchi discussed how well-meaning white people talk about broken systems, when instead Riot Baby concerns “a system working just as designed.” That is, a system that cannot be overturned except possibly by superpowered means—and even then, not always easily.

Ella has a Thing, an otherworldliness to her that allows her to glimpse the fates, positive and negative, of those around her; to astrally project across the country and into others’ minds; to control unimaginable forces. But she can’t break her brother Kev (the “riot baby” of the title, born during the 1992 Los Angeles riots) out of Rikers Island. She can’t stop him from getting arrested in the first place, struggling as an adolescent not to transmute her rage into her powers and hurt those she loves, even as her baby brother is targeted for the color of his skin.

That tension and futility drive this slim account of not just their lives, but of the Black experience, projecting back to the roots of their family tree and forward to the authoritarian near-future in which Kev struggles to build the foundation of the rest of his life. Riot Baby is brutal, but it still nurtures hope—and it’s a necessary read for well-meaning white people like me.

– Natalie Zutter

Star Wars: Shadow Fall – Alexander Freed

This might seem like an odd pick, as it’s the second in a tie-in trilogy, and not particularly accessible if you haven’t read the previous book. But I’m true to myself. This was certainly one of my favorite books of 2020, with the caveat that sometimes favorite means “heavy enough that it, artfully, made me extremely miserable.”

It’s not what you might expect from the generic title. I’m often fascinated by genre writers who try to tackle writing about aimlessness in genre, whether that be slacker heroes or the existential ennui faced by Alphabet Squadron between spaceship gun fights. It’s such a plot-heavy genre that writing about questlessness sounds very hard. And Shadow Fall has done that magic trick. To quote my own tweet, this book is about people who act on mistaken assumptions and concoct entire non-existent relationships in their heads and hurt themselves in fugue states. All of the relationships are intense, but splintered and sideways all the time. Each character is their own carefully defined brand of amoral and brittle. I’ve rarely seen awkwardness portrayed so well in a book without the story itself coming off as edgy and misanthropic.

It’s also a good adventure story, with set-piece battles, a mysterious cult, and a genuinely surprising take on how the Force works from a series that isn’t at all about Jedi. Start with the first book, Alphabet Squadron, don’t mind that title either, and make sure you have some calming tea ready.

– Megan Crouse

Sex Criminals Vol. 6: Six Criminals by Matt Fraction + Chip Zdarsky

Really, this is celebrating the end of Image Comics’ raunchy-yet-surprisingly-heartfelt series about Suze and Jon, who find out they share the same gift: Their orgasms stop time. So, of course, they start robbing banks—only to discover that it’s not just them with this gift, winding up on the lam from the Sex Police. But rather than treat this audacious premise like a fleeting dirty joke, Fraction and Zdarsky built out a deceptively simple metaphor into a thought-provoking exploration of lust-versus-love, money and class, the chasm between finding someone who “gets” you in the bedroom but not outside of it. With cheek and heart, they boiled all this down to Suze’s refrain of “This fucking guy” that makes me tear up every time I read it.

And it wasn’t all just bodily fluids and dangly bits—Sex Criminals also consistently delighted in pushing its own envelope in all things meta. Drawing in post-it notes to obscure the Queen lyrics they couldn’t get the rights to for a scene they’d already drawn; a sequence in which huge dialogue bubbles physically knock extras out of the way; even turning Fraction’s anxiety attack about writing a key scene between two female characters into its own mini-comic—this team often turned their probing gaze on themselves.

In the Sex Criminals universe, robbing banks was small potatoes, foreplay even—the final volume ascends beyond the initial crime, transforming into a treatise on grief and time and retreating into memory. As the final issue posits, take any significant moment between two people and you have to expand the frame, to look at every single other person who brought these two together, whether for a one-night stand or “to have and to hold.”

In fittingly 2020 fashion, the series concludes bittersweetly, but the final moments come back full circle to where the series started: wanting to prolong that particular pocket of time and space in which it’s just you and your person, the rest of the world be damned.

Yet Sex Criminals’ greatest legacy is that it’s not the last comic to delve into the intersections of sexuality and science fiction. Vault Comics’ Money Shot, from Sarah Beattie and Tim Seeley, is a clear successor with its story of underfunded scientists having sex with alien species in order to subsidize their interstellar teleportation research. As another series about copulating to undermine capitalism, Money Shot carries on the horny torch that Fraction and Zdarsky lit way back in 2013.

– Natalie Zutter

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

Queer western speculative fiction. Need we say more? Sarah Gailey, author of Magic for Liars, is back with an all-too-brief tale of Librarians, the only truly free women in this version of the American west, and Esther, a stowaway escaping her small town and plenty of secrets. Nothing is as it seems, including those running the book wagon – one’s a trans guy with they/them pronouns who must masquerade as a woman for his own safety whenever authorities or other prying eyes are near.

While the noir of Magic for Liars made that world feel inevitably dark, Upright has a more hopeful outlook and a wide-open setting that feels full of possibilities, even as the Librarians make their way delivering books in the kind of dystopian setting you might find in The Handmaid’s Tale or The Grace Year. In a year so full of doom, the Librarians are capable and even swashbuckling in their adventures, teaching our newcomer narrator and maybe even making her swoon with their swagger.

– Delia Harrington

The Resisters by Gish Jen

In AutoAmerica, a not-so-distant future where everything is connected to artificial intelligence and the have-nots are meant to be good consumers and nothing more, a young Black-Asian woman with a gift for pitching baseball becomes the eye of the storm when her country decides to bring back the national pastime and compete in the Olympics.

Come for the underground baseball league, stay for the sly pop culture references. The world is built out so fully that the inevitable movie or limited series version of The Resisters might even be better than the book – blasphemy, I know, but so many concepts and kinds of tech are dropped in that a showrunner and crew would have a field day bringing to life.

It’s rare these days for a man to narrate spec fiction, and he certainly has the least interesting story here, but perhaps he has the best vantage point to admire his talented wife and daughter, the former a lawyer who repeatedly takes on Aunt Nettie, a defiant nickname for the government-backed AI who runs their lives, and the latter, a young woman who was raised in a defiant household, whom he hopes won’t fall for the allure of Aunt Nettie’s promises.

– Delia Harrington

Best Fantasy Books of 2020

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

In a year where we are all struggling with how we feel about Harry Potter and its complicated legacy, Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education has arrived to offer us an entirely different and thoroughly exciting magical boarding school tale. The first in a trilogy dubbed “The Scholomance” after the magical school at which it takes place, the story is sort of like Harry Potter’s dark twin, featuring a difficult female heroine, a unique magical system, and a very dark take on the world of teen magicians. (Plus, it features the sort of effortless, matter-of-fact diversity that more authors – both YA and adult – should emulate.)

Galadriel “El” Higgins is a powerful, potential dark sorceress in her junior year at the Scholomance. Here, students must fight for their lives from the moment of their admission against the horrifying monsters known as malificaria that roam the school halls trying to eat them on their way to class and graduation is simply a test of who can escape a roomful of the largest and deadly creatures in the school. El is powerful enough that she could probably wipe out all of them on her own, but she refuses to embrace her natural affinity for dark, potentially world-destroying spells – no matter how many of her fellow students think she already has. Novik’s prose is as propulsive and fun to read as ever (consider this an additional, belated plug for her icy fantasy Spinning Silver) and A Deadly Education manages to put a fresh spin on what otherwise might feel like a staid, overdone setting. From its prickly heroine to the very real stakes that surround her classmates – most literally won’t live through final exercises – there’s so much here that feels unexpected and new. The sequel cannot come fast enough.

– Lacy Baugher

The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

It’s rare that a story truly feels like magic, but such is the case with Alix E. Harrow’s lush and enchanting The Once and Future Witches. Part period piece, part celebration of sisterhood, and part feminist manifesto, the story is a love letter to women of all kinds, everywhere.

Set in an alternate version of America in the late nineteenth century when witching of all kinds is banned, this is a story about three sisters finding their voices and staking a claim to their own futures. It is also about accidentally summoning a magical tower and returning witchcraft to the world, healing the rifts between sisters and exposing the cracks between people who claim to want justice, but who actively work to oppress others. And it is about the power of community – the great things that can happen when women honestly see one another, support one another, acknowledge the challenges inherent in saying yes to help, and work together to make the world a better place. Isolation is dangerous, both for ourselves and the world we inhabit, and this is a novel that will make you want to call your personal coven and thank them for being there when you needed them.

Once upon a time, there were three sisters and they starred in a remarkable book, full of fairytales and folklore and old stories made new. In 2020, perhaps more so than ever, the idea of once and future resonates more strongly than it ever has before, the people we were and are, and what we might become – but only if we hold on to each other along the way.

– Lacy Baugher

The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

Multi-perspective fantasy novels are all the rage right now, but Andrea Stewart’s The Bone Shard Daughter is truly something special. Not only does it deftly weave what initially seems like five separate stories together into something powerful and thrilling, the novel contains precisely the sort of compelling characters and rich worldbuilding that make this genre so much fun to read in the first place.

The first installment in the “Drowning Empire” trilogy, The Bone Shard Daughter is set in a sixteenth-century kingdom comprised of migrating islands that float through something called the Endless Sea. A story of empire and identity as much as it is a story of magic, the book at first follows Lin, the heir to the throne of Phoenix Empire, or, she will be as soon as she has proven she can properly use bone shard magic.

It’s this central magical system that makes this book so compelling – it involves commands being etched on pieces of human bones harvested from the general public in annual trepanning ceremonies, which are then used to power “constructs,” chimaera-like beings cobbled together out of various animal parts. If that wasn’t creepy enough, these shards literally drain the life energy from their doners to keep the constructs alive, a sort of human battery system that is horrifying to witness. (Especially when it appears that many of the more complex constructs have something like sentience of their own.)

Creepy and thoughtful, The Bone Shard Daughter grabs your attention from its opening lines, dumping you in a complex tale with lots of moving pieces that only gets messier as it goes on, and expects readers to keep up. For those who can manage it, it’s more than worth the journey. (And did I mention there’s a magical aquatic cat?)

– Lacy Baugher

The City We Became – N.K. Jemisin

Jemisin is a master of fantasy world-building, and she turns that eye to the real world in an unsubtle, masterful New York City under attack by lovecraftian horrors. Funny, weird plot twists abound. This book starts with someone screaming on top of a roof, beautiful mystical singing from his point of view, and a neighbor yelling at him to shut up. There’s a musical beat through the whole thing, and all the ways that music can be added to or enhanced by the city noises all around it.

Along with living in the city herself, Jemisin meticulously researched its history and quirks. She’s great at digging into detail, but also knows when to go broad, adding pop culture and references that seem obvious in hindsight but not too goofy to maintain the tone of the story. It’s fast-paced, especially toward the end.

This is distinctly a novel for today, talking about racial tension from a variety of perspectives, and addressing the kind of harassment that comes with those conversations. It’s a snapshot for what’s been talked about on Twitter, what’s being talked about in art galleries and publishing houses. And it’s a snapshot of the city — kind and cruel, raucous and serene. It probably helps that part of this book made me feel some rare home state pride.

– Megan Crouse

The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood

The Unspoken Name by K.A. Larkwood sets itself apart in two major ways: its setting and its characters. Priestess Csorwe is fated to be sacrificed to the eldritch god her people worship. But when she’s rescued from that fate with a wizard with ambitions of taking over a kingdom, she becomes a servant to a different master entirely — and has the chance to become far more than a sword-wielding minion. (There’s some cool sword-wielding too.)

Surrounding her are people motivated by power, ambition, the unknown, the experience of living always in the shadow of the unknown and their sense of what is known becoming askew because of it. It’s about emotional abuse and people who want things and people they shouldn’t and can’t have. At the core is Csorwe, refreshingly straightforward but wonderfully complex in her own way.

This story plays out in a world the author describes as an “eerie hyperspace labyrinth” that also does great things with some more familiar, but under-explored fantasy elements like flying ships and orcs. Full of strange magic and fascinating creatures, it’s truly inventive. The world may have orcs and elves, but it never feels derivative of the fantasy greats. In more ways than one, this is a book that exemplifies what secondary-world fantasy can be in 2020.

– Megan Crouse

Wicked as You Wish by Rin Chupeco

It’s a rare thing when I encounter a novel that feels as though it’s written exactly for me. The first time this happened to me was when I (belatedly) read American Gods. Wicked as You Wish is the second book I’ve ever picked up where I immediately felt as though I were the target audience, and the story was just for me.

The story opens with the budding friendship between Tala Makiling Warnock, a girl who can nullify magic, and Alexei Tsarevich, heir to the throne of Avalon, in hiding after a terrible spell froze his kingdom. The Makilings are allies and protectors of the throne of Avalon, and Tala’s family is dedicated to keeping Alex safe—at least until his sixteenth birthday, when the Firebird will arrive and help him come into his powers. But the Snow Queen of Beira, Avalon’s enemy, is eager to finish the war she started, and Alex is keeping secrets of his own.

Rin Chupeco’s world draws on mythological and literary traditions including Wonderland, Oz, and Tala’s Filipino magical heritage, blending them into world building that’s contemporary and relevant (there’s a scene with ICE—at the behest of the Snow Queen facing off against Tala’s immigrant family). And while the book is marketed as YA and would certainly appeal to that audience with it’s predominantly teenaged cast, Chupeco’s sophisticated third-person omniscient narration gives readers insight into the motivations of the adults, who come through as strong leading characters as well. It’s an incredibly smart fantasy novel, and if it requires a little work to keep up with the worldbuilding and twists the story takes, it is absolutely worth the effort. The next book in the series cannot come out soon enough.

– Alana Joli Abbott

Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee

Yoon Ha Lee is better known for writing stories in space than fantasy, but based on his blending of space and mythology in his middle grade novel, The Dragon Pearl, I’d been looking to his first fantasy novel. I was not disappointed. Phoenix Extravagant follows Jebi, a non-binary painter trying to succeed in an occupied nation; when trying to assimilate gets them thrown out of their house by their sister, and fails to get them a well-paying job they’d applied for, Jebi’s at a loss. Jebi has no desire to work at the Ministry of Armor, aiding the war effort that continues to oppress their people by painting the magical commands for automata. But the Minister leaves Jebi no choice: join, or their sister—who, unknown to Jebi, is a revolutionary—will pay the price.

Jebi’s gift for painting allows them to communicate with a dragon automata, who was painted with pacifist instructions, and the two make plans to escape the conflict all together. Lee’s story tackles themes comparable to Peter Tieryas’s “United States of Japan” trilogy and Arkady Martine’s A Memory Called Empire, especially in the way both of those series look at ideas of assimilation and the justice—or injustice—of dues one pays to their government. Lee gives no clear moral answers in the tale—Jebi’s sister seems to prioritize revolution over family, Jebi’s lover has killed people Jebi cares about, and the antagonist may have valid reasons for his evil plots—and that’s part of what makes the story so compelling to navigate. The novel is planned as a standalone, but I’d love to read more set in this world.

– Alana Joli Abbott

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

Reading Black Sun was like opening a new door in my mind. This is an epic fantasy series opener, and a lot of the tropes are familiar, but they’re all presented with different structure and framework–enough so that the novel feels like something entirely new. The story centers on Serapio’s journey to the homeland of his mother, where a bloody destiny awaits him; the efforts of Sun Priestess Naranpa to revolutionize her priesthood and make them more relevant as true servants uplifting the people of her city; and Xiala a ship captain whose supernatural origins make her both feared and targeted, but whose earthy attitude grounds the story. While Naranpa and Serapio are set up by the cosmology to be enemies, Roanhorse depicts them both so sympathetically that readers will hope for both of them to survive–and thrive–despite whatever fate has in store for them.

Roanhorse draws on indigenous American and Polynesian cultural and physical geography, which makes the world feel rich and new in a genre that has traditionally drawn on classical or feudal Europe for its influences. Using language that tends toward poetic, she plays with time, so that the narrative moves backward and forward around the events rather than in a linear fashion, which means the reveals of the narrative come not as the story progresses, but as readers progress through the story. Don’t be surprised to see this one on all the award lists in 2021.

– Alana Joli Abbott

Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

A girl makes a deal with the devil to live forever, and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. It’s the kind of premise a book could coast on, but V.E. Schwab has never been a coaster. From the very beginning of her career, the 33-year-old fantasy author has elevated engaging plot with unforgettable prose, resulting in stories that stick with their readers long after the book has been closed.

With The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, the story is a particularly ambitious one: spanning 300 years, from 18th century France to modern New York City, we follow Addie as she learns how to live an existence in which she cannot hold a job, cannot rent an apartment, cannot have relationships. “We tell these immortality tales of men where all of a sudden they’re immortal and it’s just like, go get rich, go have fun, go have 100 mistresses and just sleep your way through eternity,” Schwab told Den of Geek earlier this year. “But women would never have that option.”

But this is not just Addie’s story. It also belongs to Henry, the only person Addie meets in three centuries who can remember her. Henry is a millennial living in New York, living with mental illness. In a story whose only other two main characters are an immortal woman and a devil, Henry is our human.

Ultimately, like so many of Schwab’s books, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is not quite what you expected: romantic and Romantic, modern yet classic, Addie was one of the unforgettable books of 2020.

Best Young Adult Books of 2020

Ruthless Gods by Emily Duncan

Emily Duncan’s “Something Dark and Holy” trilogy is everything YA fiction is not supposed to be: Dark, frightening, unsettling, and very, very bloody. Its second installment, Ruthless Gods, is a complex tale of war, betrayal, and heartbreak – a story that is not particularly hopeful, gory in a way this genre is rarely allowed to be, and populated by heroes who are often anything but.

The novel follows three lead characters: Nadya, a young mystic who talks to gods but can no longer hear them; Serefin, a king whose country has long been at war with Nadya’s and whose life and consciousness are no longer entirely his own; and Malachiasz, a deeply disturbed boy who either wants to destroy the gods, become one himself, or something in between. Over the course of the story, their lives become intertwined on what feels like a cosmic level, as politics, religion and the very survival of humanity collide.

Duncan’s prose is rich and lush, full of gorgeous descriptions of eldritch nightmares and frightening visions, with a fair amount of body horror thrown on top. For YA fans, this is a series that is unlike most anything else you’ve encountered this year.

– Lacy Baugher

The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow

There aren’t a lot of books I read this year that captured the feel of 2020 as well as The Sound of Stars. There’s no pandemic in this book, but the alien invasion that results in humans being locked inside their apartment buildings, unable to socialize, their normal lives taken from them because the world outside just isn’t the same? I’m sure Dow never intended that to be a metaphor, but it worked for me!

The title takes its name from a fictional album performed by fictional band The Starry Eyed, whose media presence before the alien invasion provides a framework for the book. The story centers on Ellie, a black girl determined to help her human community escape through the illegal borrowing of books, and M0Rr1S (Morris), an Ilori labmade, responsible for vaccinating humanity to prepare Earth for Ilora habitation. Morris, unlike other Ilori, is emotional, and loves music; immediately Ellie intrigues him with her bravery and willingness to risk everything for the sake of stories. When he enlists her to steal hidden music for him, their uneasy friendship begins, and as the stakes get higher, Ellie and Morris travel across the country on a mission to save humanity.

The story is fantastical and earnest and hopeful, and it was especially wonderful to experience in the audio production, which featured two excellent voice actors telling the story of stories and music and love.

– Alana Joli Abbott

Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas

“I know the exact moment of inspiration for [Cemtery Boys],” Aiden Thomas told Den of Geek about his YA debut. “[A Tumblr writing prompt asked], ‘What would you do if you summoned a ghost and you couldn’t get rid of it?’ And you see people commenting and stuff and they’re like, ‘Oh, this super spooky, scary thing.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, but what if he was cute?'”

Cemetery Boys is not only breaking new ground when it comes to explorations of trans identity and Latinx culture, it’s also a delightful read. The story of Yadriel, a trans teen boy determined to prove himself a brujo to his traditional Latinx family, Cemetery Boys has the best inciting incident: Trying to get answers about his cousin’s mysterious death, Yadriel attempts to summon the ghost of his cousin. Instead, he summons the (cute) ghost of school “bad boy” Julian. Julian has some questions of his own he’s looking to answer and, when he refuses to leave, Yadriel’s mission gets a little more complicated… especially once Yadriel realizes he might not want Julian to go.

Romantic and hilarious, sweet and suspenseful, Cemetery Boys has so much to fall in love with: from its diverse cast of characters to its vibrant and complex world. Thomas wrote the novel, in part, so that young, marginalized readers would have a story not only to escape into but also “where they see themselves as being incredibly powerful, supported, but very importantly, being loved.” Cemetery Boys is a gift to us all, and a reminder of what is possible when the still far-too-inaccessible publishing industry lets more people in.

“No, it wasn’t the end. It was a better beginning.”

Best Non-Genre Books of 2020

The Darling Killers by Sarah McCarry

Over the summer, mere weeks into lockdown and in the phase of the pandemic where it felt like you couldn’t trust anyone or anything outside of your precarious bubble, author Sarah McCarry began serializing her latest novel The Darling Killers via a weekly Substack newsletter. The sparklingly clever title tells you plenty, but in short, it’s a female-perspective Talented Mr. Ripley by way of Los Angeles’ glittery world of young adult authors whose mastery over words has earned them obsessive fandoms and access to the endless party life.

In the style of the best thrillers, this lush novel provided the perfect escapism as antiheroine Sofia Bencivenga arrives in LA and immediately falls in with a trio of talented, haunted writers: ethereal Alison, bitchy Judith, and charismatic Jaxson. Sofia goes from shadowing their weekly writing dates to conning her way into emerging-writer status, but when Alison dies under suspicious circumstances at one of Jaxson’s fabulous parties, Sofia has to pause in her pursuit of vicariously living through Alison’s life to consider its dangerous flipside.

It would have been enough for the book to skewer the particular cult of YA author celebrity, to mock how every supporting character nurses their own dreams of writing—or at least acting out—The Great American Novel. But McCarry also gets to the heart of yearning to create worlds and characters, the ache of writing-as-processing, the thrill of trying on other stories and lives—she grabs that heart out of your chest and shows it back to you, thumping obscenely but recognizably. Back when the rest of 2020 stretched out ahead of us, especially uncertain, waking up to each installment every Tuesday morning was one of the few things keeping me looking forward to the next week.

– Natalie Zutter

Beach Read by Emily Henry

Beach Read is perhaps the worst misnomer of any book title on this list, and the cover doesn’t help. The lead characters only go to the beach near their adjoining properties once, maybe twice! Emily Henry’s gem lies somewhere between romance and literary fiction, mirroring her characters’ work. In Beach Read, next door neighbors find themselves uncomfortably close – they can see in one another’s windows, when they’re both on the deck they can easily chat at normal volume – and of course their first interaction is fraught.

It doesn’t take long to find out they’re both writers �� she, romance; he, literary fiction – and amid an argument about whose work is easier, a challenge to swap genres unfolds. Throughout the heat of the summer they teach one another about their respective genres and open up about their lives. It’s darker than the average romance – he’s writing about a cult where pretty much everyone died; she’s cleaning out her dead father’s home – but if you’re looking for something with adult sex/romance and adult relationships and emotional pitfalls in equal measure, Beach Read has you covered.

– Delia Harrington

Yes, No, Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed

In a year when politics was inescapable and inescapably miserable, Yes, No, Maybe So provided political escapism that soothed my soul in the form of a romcom about a state senate race. While the setup might sound contrived – two teens, a Jewish boy and a Muslim girl volunteer to knock on doors together and fall in love – the book itself featured well-drawn characters. Trading off narration by character and corresponding author, we learn about their home lives, friends, hopes and fears, why they’re invested in this race, and how they really feel about one another.

Taking place mostly during Ramadan, the book has some fun easter eggs for veteran canvassers and field staff while doing a decent job explaining some of the inner workings of a state-level campaign for newcomers. Anyone interested in getting more politically active will find numerous examples in the book of how to do so, and it certainly helps that as Jamie and Maya face their respective fears, they make getting involved seem easier to the reader, too. The book is incredibly earnest, tender and sweet, both about politics and their romance, especially under Jamie’s narration, but Maya and their circumstances bring in a dose of realism to help balance things out so it’s not too saccharine.

– Delia Harrington

What were your favorite books of the year? Let us know in the comments below.

The post The Best Books of 2020 appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3aMii43

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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confessionsofalionholic · 8 years ago

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The RMA Fiasco & Staff / Userbase: My Two Cents

First, let's get a few things straight.

Disclaimer: This is based on what I remember based on Jackster's and these blog posts, LD threads, screenshots and other stuff. I'm not Jackster or the staff so I can't have a 100% clear view of both perspectives and I haven't covered everything 100%, but I tried to be objective. All my arguments are based on the assumption that Jackster's screenshots, quotes, post claims and facts from their blog are all true ( and I have no reason at the time to doubt them as of now. ) They could be withholding or warping information, but I highly doubt it. My opinion can be subject to change as information changes. Also, I hope my arguments make sense as I'm kinda distracted writing this. If anyone actually cares about this I'd love to debate open-mindedly and courteously and clarify things.

***************************************

Here is the RMA intro excerpt from the news post when it was introduced to the game:

"This awesome 1 GB oasis item is something entirely new! As you pick a slot, a random marking will fill it up with a random opacity. It's of course to be expected the marking will be a common or a custom one, HOWEVER, there is an extremely rare chance to get a Raffle marking, Event marking or Applicator marking, and even rarer chance that a Rosette marking will pop up!

Notes: *Future markings will automatically be affected by this item in proper rarity types *Mane Markings are included *Markings can duplicate, as it's completely random *Mottled Rosette or any future mutation related markings are excluded"

Posted on 2016-06-24 13:53:44 | ( No edits to news post visible )

We can nitpick and throw words and definitions and technicalities around all we want but there's no refuting this evidence. Jackster and Locust chose to invest the money in LD for an item that doesn't guarantee special marks and the news intro and item description, seen every time the item is used ( though the description alone explains well enough ) clearly state what it does and definitely don't claim or imply there is an equal chance for a special or event marking to appear.

Furthermore, here is another definition of random from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

"adj. Mathematics & Statistics

Of or relating to a type of circumstance or event that is described by a probability distribution"

Based on THIS definition, the item truly is random. As Abbey / Kitty confirmed, there are different percentages for the rarity tiers but still, this would be the "probability distribution." Anyways, it's already obvious there isn't an equal chance for the non custom or NCL / Oasis markings, those are "super rare" outcomes.

As far as I know the description of the RMA hasn't changed; it's always been:

"You can choose a slot and have a chance at it filling up with any random common or custom marking at random opacity. BUT! There is a super rare chance for a rare type marking such as raffle, event or even a rosette!"

The issue is that a few users claim the percentages should be public in the description as they only purchased the item thinking it was more likely for rare markings to appear. I don't see a need to divulge the exact percentages different marking pool outcomes as that would kind of take the fun out of it, and the item itself explains it adds a random common or custom marking BUT there is a "super rare" chance for rare markings.

As an example, would exact percentages for random mutations popping up in breeding be publicized, or, say, the chances of certain breeding items of producing each type of mutation tier we would all likely be discouraged. We already know mutations are rare with the less common ones being even rarer as they should be to preserve "specialness", but despite these small chances, people have gotten leopons and lethals and other super rare mutations from both item and natural breedings. GMO cows, for example, often produce common mutes and fails but some have gotten pons and other specials from them.

When I saw the rare marking percentages publicized myself all thoughts of purchasing a couple to try for project / rare mark disappeared, however, even if they implemented RMA only special markings.

"This Week's Game Poll:

Would you like Random Marking Applicator to have markings that are exclusive entirely to the Applicator itself?

877: Yes! Gamble will bring a unique reward!"

Personally, I think upping the chances of the RMA applying rare / event markings just a liiiitle bit would promote more RMA sales as those who purchase them for projects and customization goals would be willing to spend more if they see results at least more often. Either that or maybe an item extra you could purchase to slightly up the percentage for a certain marking of your choice since the odds are so against you?

It's kinda like egg yolks. Some people purchase them in bulk from the TC with GB purchased from the site, supporting LD. Upon use they sometimes fail and give little to no stats, "wasting" the purchaser's money, but the risk is worth it as sometimes they give up to 15 stats (?) and even if they don't work that well they give a decent amount of stats if you purchase a decent amount which is relatively attainable during the event due to their relatively cheap price and they don't give you 0 stats more than a few times in a row. It depends on your budget, stat goal and how many yolks you get but you're pretty much guaranteed at least some stats from using a couple of yolks so most people are satisfied and purchase more, though some bulk buyers say it is a bit expensive in the long run.

The staff had no responsibility to "refund" this oversight, as the item explains itself clearly in its description in my opinion, a description visible every time you use it, mobile or not. I've defended it further above.

What's more of an issue in my opinion is why they revoked the offer to Jackster, which there is no solid evidence for. We can't see what Jackster said and if it warranted the staff's removal of the offer and can only rely on incomplete, personal accounts of what happened. From what I see Jackster sees polite, reasonable and courteous, but then again people here have said they're rude and brag often in chat, so I don't know. I do think it would be a nice touch to give Locust and Jackster, who have both contributed to the community a little freebie for the trouble if the likelihood percentage is implemented, and even if not it would be a nice gesture. Staff just has to be careful that other members don't see this as an opportunity to beg and guilt trip them into other favors which is the difficult part.

**** As for staff, I think people have gotten too ...jaded with their presence. They may claim "Oh, so and so is an ___, they ___." but they offer no proof. People interpret things differently and can share this opinion anywhere, even here. Some people may believe hearsay from this blog and hate staff with no real evidence of their character. Some users can be overly defensive or entirely misinterpret gentle reminders from staff and go here to complain. Pretty sure one user even said this months ago on this blog about a mod, taking back their original claims that X member of staff was rude saying they were upset at the time and the mod was actually super sweet.

I don't know any of them personally, but all of my dealings with staff & admins have been courteous and given the opportunity a few have gone out of their way to help me out with tickets & questions on their own time, and I've seen almost if not all of them be kind, friendly and helpful in general to others. Staff are humans too, and though they may not always be objective they do their best. They're all humans with lives and worries and forgetfulness and downfalls every now and then, just like you and me. That doesn't excuse any unfair behavior, but they do make mistakes and overlook things. We all do.

Likewise, Jackster seems to be a notorious LD member, yet I don't see why. They seem interesting, intelligent, well articulated, courteous and even generous, though then again I don't follow the community or chat 24/7 or even that closely at all. I could say much the same for all the staff members I have seen in forums and such and talked to personally - they've always been courteous, helpful, interesting, and a few, given the opportunity, have even gone out of their way, taking time out of their busy days to help me out in a pinch.

Tl;dr: There's too much animosity and baseless accusations of staff and also between the general userbase itself. No, it's not always rainbows and unicorns, sometimes some staff may do unfair things but if there is no proof then take those claims with a grain of salt. Many complain about other users or staff here but provide no evidence. If there is proof, courteously confront them if you can. Kindness can go a long way, and often if you don't go causing trouble you never get into it. If you're afraid of being silenced, you could find someone who will help you here.

As for the RMA, maybe for website profit and growth best interests and for users to get more out of the item it would be a good idea to up chances of rarer marks, and maybe an additional item could up the chance of a certain mark and / or pool. Furthermore, a "compensation" gift for the trouble could be given to those heavily impacted who have helped the community out as a kind gesture such as Locust and Jackster as long as staff doesn't turn into a freebie machine.

#submission #staff #players #community #anon response

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tricky-pockets · 5 years ago

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About the Trump survey

I know I’m late to this, but I want to talk for a few minutes about the recently-issued ‘Official Trump Law and Order Survey’ and how it’s a spectacularly shameless propaganda generator. Poor survey design gives you useless data. Intentionally poor survey design gives you propaganda.

There’s a blow-by-blow commentary below the cut. It’s long. I couldn’t help myself. You don’t have to read the whole thing. Maybe read Stanley’s How Propaganda Works instead.

Still with me? God, I’m so sorry.

The first thing to notice about this survey is that all of the questions are yes/no. If a respondent is somewhere in between complete agreement and complete disagreement, dichotomous questions force them to either (1) misrepresent the strength of their position or (2) leave the survey incomplete. This has a filtering effect. People unwilling to commit to an extreme view are unrepresented. It also results in overestimation of the strength of respondents’ support; people who slightly lean ‘yes’ are given as much weight as those who lean strongly toward ‘yes’ (which is, of course, the goal).

I suspect there’s also a priming effect going on, especially in the first question:

Do you believe that Keeping America Safe should be President Trump’s #1 priority?

The phrase ‘keeping America safe’ is broad enough that it’s hard to disagree with. We’re not told what exactly they mean by the phrase. The respondent is free to interpret it however they want, but their answer will be used to support the administration’s specific interpretation. This question is the easiest to agree with, and that’s why it’s at the beginning. The goal is to get people to agree with increasingly extreme statements. If you start with the most extreme question, you scare people off. If you start with something like the above, people are not only more inclined to continue the survey; they’re inclined to continue agreeing in order to be consistent.

Do you stand with President Trump’s efforts to restore law and order in our communities?

This is vague. It forces you to agree with ALL of the ‘efforts’ or none of them, without bothering to mention what ‘efforts’ we’re talking about. It’s also a loaded question. In order to even answer the question, you have to take the following as facts: (1) President Trump has made efforts to restore law and order, and (2) ‘law and order’ has been diminished. It’s like asking someone “Do you still take PCP every Saturday night?”

Do you agree that rioters and anarchists should be punished accordingly?

It’s very convenient that the question doesn’t mention what, exactly, an appropriate punishment would be. This is another one where every interpretation that gives a ‘yes’ will be counted as support for an unstated interpretation by the administration. This is also a double-barreled question, in which ‘rioters’ and ‘anarchists’ are lumped in together (not to mention, they’re both pretty loaded terms). ‘Rioter’ refers to an action or set of actions, but ‘anarchist’ is a political position. We’re being led to conflate the two - a very sneaky way to get people to say that there are some political views deserving of ‘punishment’.

Do you agree with President Trump that Democrat leaders who are letting their communities be destroyed need to crack down?

Another loaded question. You are forced to accept as facts that (1) there are communities being ‘destroyed’, (2) destruction is attributable to Democrat leaders, (3) Democrat leaders are not taking action, and (4) ‘cracking down’ is the solution. We aren’t told what it means to ‘crack down’, but we did just read a question about punishing rioters and anarchists. The ordering is intentional.

At this point, I’m going to stop pointing out inflammatory language; it’s in every question. They’re all leading questions, phrased such that disagreement sounds absurd at best.

Do you agree with President Trump deploying the National Guard to communities where Democrat leaders have proven ineffective?

Again, this assumes that (1) there are Democrat leaders who have ‘proven ineffective’, and (2) President Trump has deployed the National Guard to only and all communities where this is the case. It deliberately excludes communities with Republican leaders, whether the Republicans have ‘proven ineffective’ or not, implying that the only ineffective leaders are Democrats. That’s the only reason to include the word ‘Democrat’ at all. If you phrased it as ‘where leaders have proven ineffective’, you’d still be able to claim support for Trump, but you’d lose the condemnation of Democrats specifically.

This is also a great example of why the ordering of the questions is relevant. It doesn’t actually indicate what these leaders have proven ineffective at, although of course we know; we’ve just had questions about preserving law and order, cracking down, and punishing people. It also makes it sound like Democrat leaders are ineffective in general, not just in regards to this one unspecified issue.

It’s worth noting at this point that the word ‘protest’ doesn’t appear once in the survey, nor is it ever stated what exactly people are ‘rioting’ about. (As a side note, I’m not terribly impressed with a lot of Democrats right now, but that’s personal and beside the point.)

Do you support President Trump’s fearless resolve when he walked to St. John’s Church - a historical church that was set on fire the night before by rioters?

WOW leading/loaded question. WOW. I mean, wow. Holy fuck. I’m going to go get the Emergency Gin. I’m not touching this one. Jesus.

Did you know that Joe Biden’s campaign staff is financially supporting rioters?

We’re just calling all protesters ‘rioters’ now. This is an unclear question. If people say ‘yes’, how is that going to play in the “analysis”? “When polled, 99% of people already knew this thing”? Even if we accept the claim, there’s no good reason to measure people’s awareness of the claim. Even if you had a good reason to measure awareness of the claim, this wouldn’t give you anything useful. (Did you know X? Well, I do now). This is going to be used to say “X% of people know that Joe Biden’s campaign is financially supporting rioters.” And X% of people said they know that thing because you just told them the thing. People believing a claim is not adequate evidence that the claim is true; it might just indicate that PROPAGANDA IS HAPPENING. This is a fucking insidious attempt to insert BullshitTM into the body of things that ‘everybody knows’ and convince dissenters that they are a tiny tiny minority and possibly crazy.

Again, there’s no way to disagree with the claim. There’s vagueness around what ‘financial support’ consists of (donations to bail funds? or a countrywide campaign to arm the antifas?) and who ‘campaign staff’ consists of (Joe Biden? his higher-up organizer people in an official capacity? volunteers who do activism work unassociated with the campaign?)

Do you agree that the Fake News is biased against President Trump’s efforts to restore law and order in our communities?

See comments on the first question regarding these unspecified ‘efforts’.

What’s going on with the capitalization here? Is it a heavy-handed attempt to legitimize the phrase ‘fake news’ - make it sound more like a real thing? It’s not just ‘news’ that happens to be ‘fake’; it’s a proper noun indicating that Fake News is...what, an organization? We can say anything we want about the Fake News because ‘the Fake News’, a monolithic entity, isn’t real. It’ll be vacuously true.

Honestly, I don’t know where to end with this one. If the news is fake, it’s biased against Trump. If the news is biased against Trump, it’s fake. There can exist no criticism of Trump that is legitimate; any opposition is the Fake News. This is a propaganda machine.

Do you believe the Fake News should be held accountable for their bias against President Trump?

In the last question, we asked you if the Fake News was biased. In this question, we’re assuming you said ‘yes’. We won’t tell you who exactly the Fake News is. We won’t tell you what their bias looks like. We won’t tell you how we’re proposing to hold them accountable. Dissent is illegitimate and punishable, in the same way that certain political beliefs are worthy of unspecified ‘punishment’.

I suspect that the ‘Fake News’ questions are at the end just in case you need a reminder that President Trump tells the truth and everyone else is a dirty liar. In case this disgustingly biased survey raised any tiny little whispers of alarm in your head. Don’t listen to the alarm. Remember who tells you the truth. Remember how everyone is out to get him because he’s the only one who tells you the truth. You’re not one of those people, are you? Of course not.

It’s so easy to look at this and discount it because it’s so obviously bullshit. That’s why it’s dangerous. We live in a country where this psycho garbage is coming from the establishment in power. Every time something like this goes out into the world, the window of what’s socially acceptable shifts a little closer to fascism. Propaganda isn’t just people saying bad or wrong shit; it’s manipulation that makes it harder and harder to even engage in political discourse. It’s not about what’s true or false; it’s about what serves the President. The goal is to create a climate in which accuracy is irrelevant, critical source evaluation is impossible, and legitimate dissent is discredited. This is how it fucking starts - this “affirm your unquestioning loyalty to our Glorious Leader and punish the opposition as enemies of the State” bullshit.

As a final note, I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that the survey does not confirm your email address; it’s not constructed to discourage anyone from submitting duplicate responses. All it asks for is a name, email address, and zip code. So, uh...you know what to do. Especially if you’re one of those kpop weirdos (whom I love very much).

#propaganda #i accidentally an essay #fuck trump #samrambles #survey #poor survey design #IT'S PROPAGANDA

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josephkchoi · 5 years ago

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12 Simple Rules to Boost Your Ecommerce Conversion Rates

Would you be frustrated if you discovered that tons of your potential customers are leaving your ecommerce website (and that your conversion rates are in the pits) because of a poor visitor experience?

Unfortunately, that’s often the reality: many ecomm storefronts don’t have the best checkout experiences, and it absolutely crushes their sales efforts. This is most often the result of not understanding what customers need to see before they feel comfortable with buying.

There are several things you can do to avoid common abandonment pitfalls. Today, I’ll go over the 12 rules I follow to create a shopping cart experience that’ll grow your ecommerce conversion rates.

Jump to an Ecommerce Conversion Rule

1. Avoid long forms 7. Simplify your checkout form 2. Use “email” as the first field in your checkout forms 8. Let customers checkout as guests 3. Use cart abandonment software 9. Offer social login 4. Show off your site security 10. Give ‘em an incredible return policy 5. Promise free shipping 11. Provide online chat and phone support 6. Include a checkout progress bar 12. Include exit-intent popups

Rule #1: Avoid long forms

Let’s start with a classic example. In 2011, Expedia made a change to their checkout form that increased profits by $12 million.

What was it? Take a look:

They removed a single and inessential form field. We can learn from this.

Like Expedia, make the checkout experience as easy as possible for your customers. The longer your form, the less inclined people will be to fill it out. This can kill your conversion rates. For that reason, only ask for the information you absolutely must have (including billing and shipping information).

Consider this from the customers’ point of view. Every additional field is just another hindrance keeping them from buying your product—another missed chance at conversion rate optimization (CRO). Focus on the possibility of a lost sale due to friction instead of focusing on filling up your lead gen list.

If a field isn’t essential to your business, then why have it?

Rule #2: Use “email” as the first field in your checkout forms

Repeat business (when a customer returns to your site to make a purchase) is essential for every retailer, not just ecomms. It’s vital to reach out to these customers to entice them to buy again.

For this reason, a customer’s email address is the most critical piece of information you can get during the checkout flow.

Even if a visitor doesn’t complete their purchase, you can still use cart abandonment automation to recoup a sale you might have otherwise lost. (We’ll talk about this a bit more in our next point.)

The Fixed Gear Shop leads with an email address field and lets customers know that they can create an account after checkout if they’d like.

Editor’s note. Even if your customers are based outside of areas where it applies, it’s always smart to ensure your forms are compliant with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Like other security features, it’ll help your visitors feel more secure as well as protect you from liability.

Rule #3: Use cart abandonment software

Even if your checkout form leads with email first, you’ll still have people who drop off during the purchase stage. However, you can use cart abandonment software to engage and nurture these customers—and, hopefully, get them back on track.

There are plenty of options for cart abandonment software available. For instance, you can use Rejoiner to create personalized emails and send them a custom number of days after the date of cart abandonment.

Rejoiner automatically retargets window shoppers with products they’ve viewed and related items. It also follows up with abandoners in real-time by using messaging that relates to their desired product. Plus, it helps save your customer’s carts so they can continue checking out from any device without having to re-enter their data or retrace their steps.

The goal of this type of software is to catch people before they change their minds completely. Clearly, these individuals were in the market for your product and they were so close to getting it, but maybe the price or the cost of shipping threw them off.

You can use cart abandonment software to reach out to these individuals with discounts and other offers to get them to complete an order.

In addition, survey platforms like Qualaroo can poll visitors and find out what they don’t like about your site or why they’re lingering on certain product pages. Then you can put those insights to work to improve your checkout flow, too.

Rule #4: Show off your site security

Cybersecurity is crucial for ecommerce. Without proper protocols in place, online sellers put themselves and their customers at risk for payment fraud. Things can get messy fast!

Trust badges and seals, logos of your payment providers, the little “lock” icon on the browser—all of these add the needed sense of security to get your customers to buy.

Most importantly, you must set up your store with an SSL certificate (“https://” pages). This isn’t optional in today’s ecomm world.

Finally, make sure you require the CVV for debit and credit cards for added security. This extra step will discourage fraud without frustrating customers.

Rule #5: Promise free shipping

Let’s say your product is $100 but your shipping cost is $5. Logically, the value of the product greatly outweighs the shipping cost—but for some reason, many folks are reluctant to pay that $5.

I’m guilty of this myself. People would rather spend an extra $10 to get free shipping than pay a $5 shipping charge. But why?

Like many of the rules I’m talking about, it makes sense when you think of the issue from the point of view of your customer. Why pay for shipping when you could spend an extra 10 bucks to get another item you wanted and have both items delivered for free?

Free shipping is very appealing. In 2014, comScore released a study which found that 83% of US online shoppers are willing to wait an additional two days for delivery if shipping is free. Similarly, 58% of US online shoppers have added items to their shopping carts to qualify for free shipping.

Additionally, the number one reason shopping carts are abandoned is because of unexpected costs. Free shipping puts a stop to these nasty surprises. Since this data shows that since people are willing to buy more to get free shipping, it can also lead to greater sales revenue.

Prepping for Black Friday and holiday shoppers? Read expert-certified tips from Aaron Orendorff, Jonathan Naccache, Taylor Holiday, and Lianna Patch on how to best plan your campaigns and landing pages.

Rule #6: Include a checkout progress bar

Look at this beautiful checkout progress bar example from Haggar Clothing. It’s clean and easy to understand.

Letting your customers know where they are in your checkout flow is an essential way to keep your ecommerce conversion rates growing.

Your customers want to know how long the checkout process will take and what is required of them. So, if yours has multiple stages, make it simple and show them the steps along the way. If customers can’t see how close they are to completing their purchase, they can become frustrated and abandon the cart midway through checkout.

Rule #7: Simplify your checkout form

As I mentioned above, avoiding long forms is the first principle of boosting ecommerce conversion rates. Beyond that, you’ll get a better understanding of how your visitors use your checkout form by examining the session recordings you receive from Hotjar, CrazyEgg, or other qualitative research tools.

If people are unable to click through or follow the questions you’re asking on your checkout form, you may want to consider changing it. Either remove unnecessary questions or add more direction around what you want customers to do.

When optimizing a form, I like to take these creative ideas from Mockupplus.com into consideration:

Don’t force your customers to create an account. Guest checkout is your friend here. (More on this below.)

Don’t use field labels as placeholders. When a prospect enters their information, the field label disappears and they could lose the context of what you’re asking them to do.

Design single-column forms. Multiple columns can cause a confusing zigzag. Simplify the process here so your prospects know exactly how to navigate your page.

Group relevant information together in chunks. This ties back into showing the checkout flow. By dividing information into buckets (such as an address, shipping, and payment), you can make checkout smoother.

Set up autofill with Google’s geolocation search to help prospective customers add their address.

Provide different payment options and design a perfect credit card form. Digital wallets are payment processors like PayPal Express, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, and others.

Walmart offers as many ways of paying as they can. You can even buy online and pay with cash in the store.

And, from my experience, always show shopping cart contents so customers know exactly what they’re buying.

Your checkout form will either improve or hinder your ecommerce conversion rate. Make sure it’s a seamless experience that requires as little effort from the visitor as possible.

Add even more smarts to your ecomm campaigns and landing pages by connecting tools like Hotjar and Crazy Egg into Unbounce. Read about 900+ supported Unbounce integrations.

Rule #8: Let your customers checkout as guests

If you’re visiting a website for the first time, you probably have no intention of creating a long-term account. You want to see if this initial purchase is worth your while.

When a customer buys something, the seller will usually get their name and email from the checkout form. However, forcing visitors to register just gives them another reason to leave—especially if they’re new to your online store.

Don’t distract your customers from completing their purchase by making them create an account.

If they’re happy with your product (and if you provide them with offers through retargeting and email), they’ll be inclined to create an account down the road. More importantly, they’ll feel comfortable buying from you again.

Rule #9: Offer social login options

I shop on a number of ecommerce sites. For the ones I visit frequently, I’ve created a profile. For the ones I’m new to or don’t visit often, I’d rather not have an account.

If we’re not really invested in a website, the thought of making another account (and remembering yet another password) seems like a waste of time. Social login lets customers quickly use the same information for any new accounts they make across all of the sites they visit.

This is a quick alternative to creating a new account because it doesn’t require a new username and password.

Despite the concerns many people have with companies using their data, a Gigya survey found that 88% of US consumers say they’ve used social logins. This leads us to believe that more often than not, people will choose convenience over privacy.

With the WooCommerce Social Login extension, customers can link their accounts on your website with their social media profiles for a simpler checkout experience.

Plus, considering the size of social networks like Facebook and Twitter, customers may feel more comfortable in the security of their personal information knowing you’re using platforms that are current.

Rule #10: Give ’em an incredible return policy

How many of us are wary of purchasing a product that is “final sale”?

The possibility of being stuck with that item makes you think a lot longer about whether or not it’s the right one for you, doesn’t it? A good return policy is an extremely important selling point.

Studies show that 60% of online shoppers make at least one return or exchange per year, and 95% will make another purchase if the return experience is positive.

Returns are a big part of online commerce. However, if you craft and manage your return policy well, you can also drive growth.

Look at how Midori Bikinis explains exactly how their returns work. Providing a 30-day return policy can increase conversions by 17% because they avoid locking their buyers into a commitment upon sale.

It stands to reason that the more flexibility you give your customers, the more inclined they’ll be to stick with your products.

Rule #11: Provide online chat and phone support

If someone encounters a problem during the ecommerce checkout process, you’ll need to address it immediately to save the sale. Asking someone to wait 48 hours for an email reply when other companies offer real-time support will almost certainly result in increased sales—for competitors, not you.

Ensure that your customer service team on-hand as much as possible to address any questions customers have about your products.

Rule #12: Include exit-intent popups

Let’s say someone decides they’re done browsing your site and starts to leave without buying anything. At this point, it looks like you’ve missed out. But wait! With exit-intent popups, you get one last chance to coax visitors into action—whether that be a sale or just capturing their email address.

Exit-intent popups let you entice non-buyers with coupons, limited-time offers, or newsletter subscriptions. (Maybe the visitor is a fan of your brand, but they just aren’t in a place to buy at this very moment?)

You can create them in lots of different programs, but I’m a big fan of popups from Unbounce. They’re easy to create in the drag-and-drop builder, and you can apply them directly to your Unbounce landing pages and your web pages alike.

In this popup from Livingshop, it’s hard to pass up the pitch for 50% off. As a buyer, I may not have wanted to buy before—but if I know I’m going to get my items half off, I may reconsider.

Instead of using popups to try to close a sale, you can also provide your customers with information. This will lead to a higher ecommerce conversion rate and amplified sales in the long run since you’ve added value instead of applying pressure.

For example, Zulily uses this popup to provide important information about how their app works. It allows people to browse brands in their own time.

Interested in a quick way to add popups to your campaigns? Learn more about how Unbounce popups and sticky bars let you present relevant offers to your visitors at exactly the right time.

Next Steps for Boosting Your Ecommerce Conversion Rates

Most of the tips above focus around optimizing your current checkout form. But don’t forget to install cart abandonment and customer review software so you can pinpoint where your customers are getting frustrated or confused. This will save you from losing many more customers down the road.

Your ecommerce checkout is one of the most vital parts of your business. Without sales, there’s no revenue—so it’s up to you to ensure your checkout process is as seamless as possible.

Optimizing this flow may take time, but there are always new tactics out there to test and implement. (Testing should be mandatory when it comes to best practices, even these ones.) Try to keep up with the most effective checkout tactics and you should start seeing an increase in sales coming down your pipeline.

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roypstickney · 5 years ago