The advent of the digital revolution has empowered the citizen reviewer. Essentially we are all now reviewers for good or bad. Well New York is cracking down on the pay for review industry that is screwing a lot of people in the restaurant and transportation world. In the article there was no mention of books but authors know what is going on. You are surfing along and you hit a book with a THOUSAND reviews. Not a bestseller. Now you are in awe. You are stupefied. You don't know what to think. And the majority of the reviews if not all of them are five stars.
Because you know how hard it is to get reviewed. I have to fight for every review I get every time a book comes out. I have to make sure I send out all my review copies and then hope and pray the trades and the newspapers and readers take it upon themselves to review my books. Because it is a lot to ask someone to review your book. They have to read it first of all and then they have to sit down and write something about it. It gets really tricky when they didn't really care for the book. I am always amazed when someone writes a really bad review of one of my books. It just seems like so much trouble for their pain.
But suddenly authors were popping up with amazing reviews. And lots and lots of them. When I started out with my first and second novel the internet and amazon were just warming up. Even though the trades reviews were very good there just wernt that many reader reviews. Nine and five I think on the books. But then by about my fourth novel the review boom was in full swing. After four years I ended up with 81 reviews on Rocket Man. Many were not five star. A decent mix of four star and five stars. The Pitcher my latest has the most five star reviews I have ever had and that would still be just over half of the fifty five reviews.
And why is that? Well even if someone loves your book they don't give you the five stars. That is the top of the mountain and the top of mountain is hard to get to. As it should be. So I personally am happy with my mix of four and five stars. I think it allows people to see that there is some honesty in reviewing your book. No one can please everybody.
And if they do...then they probably really didn't.
www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
Because you know how hard it is to get reviewed. I have to fight for every review I get every time a book comes out. I have to make sure I send out all my review copies and then hope and pray the trades and the newspapers and readers take it upon themselves to review my books. Because it is a lot to ask someone to review your book. They have to read it first of all and then they have to sit down and write something about it. It gets really tricky when they didn't really care for the book. I am always amazed when someone writes a really bad review of one of my books. It just seems like so much trouble for their pain.
But suddenly authors were popping up with amazing reviews. And lots and lots of them. When I started out with my first and second novel the internet and amazon were just warming up. Even though the trades reviews were very good there just wernt that many reader reviews. Nine and five I think on the books. But then by about my fourth novel the review boom was in full swing. After four years I ended up with 81 reviews on Rocket Man. Many were not five star. A decent mix of four star and five stars. The Pitcher my latest has the most five star reviews I have ever had and that would still be just over half of the fifty five reviews.
And why is that? Well even if someone loves your book they don't give you the five stars. That is the top of the mountain and the top of mountain is hard to get to. As it should be. So I personally am happy with my mix of four and five stars. I think it allows people to see that there is some honesty in reviewing your book. No one can please everybody.
And if they do...then they probably really didn't.
www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
