Reviews

Another author scandal, this time by a British crime author, RJ Ellory.  Ellory was caught writing glowing five star reviews about his own books, and giving his competition scathing one-star reviews.

Before I published on Amazon, I would have heard about this and given a big "so what" to the whole thing.  But now that I see how important reviews are to the sales, and therefore ranking of our books, I can certainly sympathize with the need to help the process along.

As an author, reviews matter.  Not only are they a way for us to get feedback about our work, IMO they are also the best marketing tool we have.  I can spend hours promoting on social media, and expose the book to hundreds of eyeballs.  But these are all superficial.  The person who is on my Amazon page is the equivalent of the browser in a book store who has my book in their hands---this is the critical 'buy' moment and what influences them at that moment is golden.

If the person is like me, they will read the reviews.  True story; before buying a pair of pants online that I ALREADY OWN, I read the reviews.  I have a pair of pants that I love and simply wanted to get a different color.  Yet when I found myself reading what other people had to say about the pants, I grasped how influential reviews were.   

This influence is more amplified with self-published authors.  Reviews can reassure a buyer that what they are about to spend their hard earned money on is not an unintelligible vanity project, but a story that at least meets a minimum standard for editing and craft.

In turn, the more sales a book has, the higher it places in the rankings, and the more exposure it gets.  Which leads to more sales, etc.  Really, there's nothing I can do to market my book that is more powerful than someone leaving a good review.

My book has reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, and as much as I wish they were all five stars, I'm OK with the two-star ones because they legitimize the other reviews.  Full disclosure, I also gave myself (using my own name!) a five star rating on Goodreads.  I hesitated about doing this because I've read rants about how misleading such a practice was.  But ultimately, I decided that as a reader and purchaser of the book, I was entitled to that one vote.  If politicians can vote for themselves, I reasoned, then why couldn't I?  Of course, I didn't write a review, let alone one that called my book a "masterpiece".  I also didn't attack my competitors.

Which brings us back to RJ Ellory.  I'm fascinated by what he did because he is already successful---his books have sold over a million copies total, and one of them was named Crime Novel of the Year 2010---can a person with that kind of validation still be subjected to the same insecurities about his skill as a writer, and the worth of his books as the rest of us just starting out?

The answer, apparently, is yes.