Thoughts On Book Reviews

By James M Jackson

What are authors to do when they and their work aren’t sufficiently well-known to allow them to potentially win a National Book Award, or a Pulitzer, or in the mystery field an Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, or the like? Unfortunately, there is no Excalibur we can pull from a stone to prove our worth. Instead we (and more importantly, our readers) must rely on book reviews for external verification of our work.

An author’s publisher may provide review copies to newspapers and national review sources (such as Kirkus, Booklist, Library Journal, Publisher’s Weekly), but what are Indy authors to do? A Kirkus review costs a minimum of $425. Library Journal requires proof copies three to four months before publication. The necessary money or timing required might be beyond an author’s means.

It’s a thrill to have a newspaper review one of your books. Cabin Fever scored an excellent write-up in the Portland Book Review. And I was over the moon when my nonfiction One Trick at a Time: How to Start Winning at Bridge was reviewed in the New York Times and Chicago Tribune bridge columns. Over the years, most newspapers have severely cut back the number of books they review, and with online books sales being dominant, many people find their next book online. Regardless of the method used to arrive at the book’s online page, they will look to the star rating and the number of people who have provided ratings as first blush verification that the book is worth reading.

After that, they may look at the distribution of ratings and read a few reviews. All of which leaves an author with the dilemma of how to encourage readers to write reviews. I hope you will let me know what works for you. I find the most straightforward approach is to ask. Many Indy authors include at the end of the book a specific ask for the reader to write an online review. (If it’s an electronic book, they provide the link).

I’ve concluded that for some people, writing a review rates right up there with going to the dentist. I have friends who loved my books, promised to my face they’d write reviews for Amazon and Goodreads, and . . . nothing ever appears. If you have any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

An issue with books in a series

I’ve noticed that in a series, books tend to have fewer reviews the later the book is in the series. Partly, this is because many people hear of a series and prefer to start at the beginning, so that first book is the one most read. I suspect, with no proof, that series also suffer from review fatigue. If you’ve already reviewed one or two or three books in a series, is it worth the reader’s time to review another? Every author answers that, of course, please, please, please—but readers, not authors, are the ones who write the reviews.

To illustrate this series die-off, I looked at three series: Multiple-award winner Hank Phillippi Ryan’s Jane Ryland series (big publisher), fellow blogger Tina Whittle’s Tai Randolph series (medium-sized publisher, Poisoned Pen Press), and my Seamus McCree series (various publishing entities from Kindle Press to small independent to self-published). For each book, I looked at two sources of online reviews: Goodreads (www.goodreads.com), an online community for readers of all kinds, and Amazon, the largest online book retailer.

Goodreads members have a choice of leaving a review with a star rating (the number in the parenthesis) or simply leaving a star rating (the larger number); to leave a star rating on Amazon requires at least a minimum review.

Hank and Tina each have five published books in their series. I have four (with numbers five and six scheduled for 2018 publication). Here are the stats:

Author	Book	Title	Goodreads	Amazon
Hank	#1	The Other Woman	2058   (415)	216
	#2	The Wrong Girl	1418   (249)	153
	#3	Truth Be Told	691   (140)	80
	#4	What You See	444   (93)	45
	#5	Say No More	384   (69)	40
Tina	#1	The Dangerous Edge of Things	623   (105)	130
	#2	Darker Than Any Shadow	171   (22)	24
	#3	Blood, Ash & Bone	141   (31)	23
	#4	Deeper Than The Grave	111   (32)	27
	#5	Reckoning and Ruin	53   (14)	13
Jim	#1	Ant Farm	64   (25)	49
	#2	Bad Policy	45   (20)	34
	#3	Cabin Fever	31   (15)	29
	#4	Doubtful Relations	9   (4)	9

Our distribution outlets may affect the ratios of Goodreads to Amazon reviews. All of Hank’s and Tina’s books have been available on a wide distribution of online and retail platforms. Of my books, Ant Farm and Doubtful Relations have only been available on Amazon; Bad Policy and Cabin Fever were widely distributed, but are currently only available on Amazon to be included in the Kindle Unlimited program.

With two more books in the Seamus McCree series, I will need to find a way to turn this statistical trend around or I’ll have fewer than zero reviews by the time I get to False Bottom (Seamus McCree #6)!

A more realistic and serious concern is that because marketing efforts are often pointed to the most recent book in a series, and if that book has only a few reviews—either because of series review fatigue, as I’ll call the “disorder,” or because of inadequate sales advertising—readers are likely to get the impression the series isn’t one to consider and quickly move on to some more popular series.

My work is cut out for me with Empty Promises. I must develop better strategies to promote it than I did for Doubtful Relations. Fortunately, I still have time to do that, as Empty Promises is not scheduled for publication until Spring 2018.

In the meantime, if you’ve read one of my books and haven’t left a review (or star rating on Goodreads), I sure would appreciate it if you’d take a few minutes and provide a review.