There is so much to say about reviews.
In my continuing quest to figure out this marketing thing, I’ve come to almost a full stop at reviews. They make a huge difference to people actually buying books these days, especially self-published e-books. This, I think, is the next nut I’m going to have to crack. I’m going to have to actually try to get some reviews from independent book bloggers, etc. Eek! Why is that almost as scary as the first time I submitted a query to an agent?
Reviews are so important that some authors have even resorted to paying review mills to put up good reviews of their works. Once again, I’ve lost the link, but this was a big deal on the web–at least among writers–a couple of weeks ago.
The reaction to that is another story I saw in the last few days that Amazon is now deleting reviews by authors of other authors work. That’s unfortunate on so many levels. There’s a long-standing tradition of authors writing blurbs for others’ novels in traditional publishing. Why should it be any different for e-books?
I’m not even going to mention the trolls who seem to enjoy writing bad reviews just because they can. This new Amazon policy does nothing to address that. How about, instead, blocking people who only seem to write either disproportionately positive or negative reviews? I’m pretty sure their database could handle that.
But that’s only part of what I want to say about reviews today. Some author–and I’m sorry that I’ve lost the link–proposed an alternative to NaNoWrMo this month. Instead of trying to write a novel in a month, help fellow authors out by writing a review for a book every day in November. What a great idea!
I’m not taking part in this mainly for two reasons:
- Lately, it’s taking me a lot longer to finish books because I just don’t have the time to devote to reading. I love to read. But sometimes it comes down to reading or writing. I can’t always do both.
- Frankly, and unfortunately, I just haven’t loved most of the debut novels I’ve read this year. Not that the only novels worth reviewing are debut novels, but that’s where the reviews probably make the most difference. For the record, the big exception for me this year is SERAPHINA by Rachel Hartman. That one I loved. And I wrote a review saying that I loved it on Goodreads. (As a matter of principle, I’m not going to tell you the ones I didn’t.)
If you want to help an author–and you really did like their work–write a review somewhere that will be seen.
On amazon, all reviews, even those that have loved the book ate helpful in moving an author up ‘the list’, But, apparently now they don’t want us to help each other out.
What? Authors don’t read?
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I don’t think it’s wide-spread yet. But apparently there have been cases of the reviews being deleted. Mine appear to still be up, so maybe I don’t count–yet. 🙂
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