The Fuss Over Reviews
Lately, self publishers are freaking out over the restrictions Amazon has put on product reviews. There have been lawsuits, deleted reviews and deleted accounts.
Being new to the self-publishing world, I hadn't put much value in reviews, or getting reviews for my own books. It wasn't until I joined American-based writer's groups were it drummed into us that we must have loads of reviews to sell books and the better the reviews are the more you're likely to sell.
This of course, created a mind-field of fake reviews, paid reviews and even trade-off reviews(if you give me 5 stars, I'll do the same for you). The more reviews, the higher the ratings, the higher the sales. You can understand why people pay organisations to farm their books. When a book is recently released and there are a hundred reviews after three days of being published, you can guarantee there is something awry and consumers are wising up to that. But Amazon is finally doing something about it and I thought this was a good thing until many authors who rely on friends and family to give them reviews, packed a stink. Amazon now blocks friends, family and anyone who uses the same computer as you. All this technical stuff......I don't understand, how can they know this, but they do.
I haven't really bothered too much about reviews. I asked one person who bought one of my books to give me a review and for some reason she was blocked, so I haven't asked anyone else and don't really care about all of that stuff anyway. I love to write and I love to tell stories and I continuously market my books through various means, depending on affordability. They're selling anyway with or without reviews. It is easy to get caught up in all of that BS, so I don't. I'd rather have no reviews than fake reviews. But if someone does take the time to write a review for one of my books, I'd like it to be good critical advice, something I can learn from to improve my art.
I am a prolific writer and have published 6 books in the last few months, four of those books I had written over the last few years, in-between careers and living a life. I have have been disappointed and disheartened a hundred million times in this self-publishing world, but still I continue on doing my own thing, hoping the right people will find my books and read them. Yes! At the end of the day....our goal is for people to read our books and hopefully get some enjoyment out of them and that they are still reading our books in 10-30+ years time. I'd like to think my books are still around in some strange technical form( as you can tell I know little of the latest or futuristic technology) in a 100 years time and people are still reading them.
If you'd like to know more about R.L. Holmes'books please click non the link below to be transported.
