The Battle For Reviews

I was once asked what advice I would give to someone wanting to write and publish their book independently. My answer was to save up

Once the euphoria of publishing your sparkling new novel subsides, reality kicks in and you realise you have to tell people about the book. Advertising costs a lot of money, particularly for someone using the independent route, and don’t have the backing of the publishing companies.

A lot of people like to post novel reviews online, which is great. When the reviews are good or at least written in a supportive way,  they provide a much needed confidence boost. Whilst attracting honest reviews can be hard, once your book is published and thrown to the masses, you tend to get bombarded with e-mails from people who love your work and they’d love to write a review. Which is nice, but…

Then comes the crunch, they offer a range of services at the bargain price of blah de blah, and feature you on their social media platforms that get a gazillion views, and loads of likes (about ten). Everyone wanting their piece of your action, whether you are amassing book sales or not. It does get quite wearing.

The fact is, these aren’t true, honest reviews and are instead paid advertising. I suppose if you get enough of them they’ll boost your product, but at what price. Not many authors make barrel loads of cash, for most it’ll be an expensive hobby. How many people actually scour all the written reviews, rather than simply look at the star ratings?

I do wonder whether readers and consumers of all types, aren’t getting a bit “reviewed out.” Everything you buy now is followed up with a “how did we do questionnaire” that will only take ten minutes of your time. To make matters worse, once you’ve filled out the form of so many stupid questions, they then want to know your age, your income, and your inside leg measurement.

This review weariness affects us writer type people. Even Kindle reads asks how many stars you’d rate the book you’ve just read and, even without writing a full review, I reckon most people don’t even bother marking a star rating.

So, just for the record, and I know it’s irritating but writing a book takes a lot of time and effort (unless you’re using AI – don’t go there), and when someone has enjoyed reading it enough to take the time to rate or do a review , it means the world to us.