As I mentioned last week, I had planned to look at the issues surrounding the writing of the second blog. However, it occurred to me during the week that I was doing a disserves to you all by forgetting to talk about reviews and reviewers. We’ll talk about the second book next week.
Let me start with a question: What’s worse than a bad review? Answer: No reviews at all.
One of the greatest gifts a reader can give an author is an honest review. It takes time, intent, and skill to analyse and critique a novel. Even if you don’t have time to write a full review, you can award the book as many stars as you think it deserves. Trust me: we authors really appreciate that.
Of course, there are always those authors who think if a review is less than five-stars, it’s worthless. That’s such a silly attitude. All reviews are valuable. Yes, those that come with masses of praise and a galaxy of stars are delightful to have, but even less effusive reviews can prove valuable. Indeed, you could argue that they are even more important to the author because they (generally) offer an unbiased summary of things the author needs to work on. If more than one of the reviews makes the same observation — the hero is manipulative, the plot is thin, the author overuses the word ‘amber’ — you, the author, should take these criticisms seriously, and fix those issues in your next book.
Watch out for poor reviews that use words like ‘rubbish’, ‘stupid’, or ‘boring’. While there may be exceptions, for the most part, these are written by trolls. One of my books earned a 1-star review with this pithy comment: “This is supposed to be s Sherlock Holmes book, but it isn’t written by Arthur Conan Doyle.” I admit I was rather nonplused by that. Didn’t the reviewer look at the name on the cover? I suspect troll, but that’s just part of the scenery for a writer.
There’s no rule that says you have to read your reviews. A lot of writers claim they never look at them. That may be true for some, but I suspect it’s the minority. Most of us are too curious not to want to know what people think of our writing. It’s one of those itches that demands a scratch.
If you have been lucky enough to have a book published, encourage everyone you know to read it and then write a review. Even one sentence is something. The more reviews you have, the better for your sales. There’s an algorithm that determines these things. Please don’t ask me to explain it.
Finally, speaking of reviews, if you’ve read my latest novel, Great Warrior: The Sherlock Holmes Diaries 1901, please consider leaving a review on any of the usual sites. You can order a copy from MX Publishing, Amazon UK, or Amazon US if you haven’t read it already. And thank you.
Next Week: we’ll talk about that second book. Honest!
Geri Schear 