Do Reviewers Matter?

Okay...show of hands. How many of you have heard some film critic give a nasty review to a movie? Right. Now, how many of you decide that the critic is probably channeling Ace Ventura--Pet Detective and talking out of his or her butt? You go anyways and absolutely LOVE the movie that just got panned!

Now, this works both ways of course. A movie that is a critical darling can leave you feeling like you lost part of your soul. So what is my point? Well, my point is that a critic is ONE PERSON. And these days, the critics have been infiltrated by "trolls" or those who go on negative review jihads to fill a hole in their nasty, hate-filled centers that were probably created by not being breast fed as children or being pushed into lockers in school.

So you might think that this is some sort of anti-reviewer spiel. To quote Captain Tenneal from MXC...

"Well, you're wrong!"

Reviewers--good and bad--are a valuable resource to any write. Believe it or not, Amazon actually hold stock in the number of reviews that a title receives. It goes into some secret formula that they use to determine how much they will promote a book in their "You read this, so you might like..." emails. A reviewer whop give a well-crafted review that hit the highs and lows of a title will sell more books for a writer than a million "Buy my book!" spam posts on Facebook. (Yeah...don't we all ignore those now?) So what is a person to do?

First, you need to find reviewers who obviously READ the book. If it is a few paltry line of "This was good..." of "This sucks...", that isn't really telling you anything. Also, if you read a review (good or bad) and then get the book and find yourself thinking that 'Reviewer X' was spot on, then perhaps you should bookmark that individual. There are a lot of ways that you can get notified when that person posts another review. The easiest is to find their blog (they USUALLY have one) and follow it. 

However, there is another little thing that you can do to actually help that reviewer. At the bottom of the review there is often a little button that you can click on to say that you found the review helpful. CLICK YES! Those little buttons matter A GREAT DEAL to the reviewers. And when they get lots of "YES" clicks, they get more books to review because writers know that people actually READ THIS PERSON'S REVIEWS!

I have a few that I follow. And I feel quite honored when I receive good marks from them. The biggest thing is that I know I will be given an honest appraisal. These individuals do NOT just toss out 5 Star reviews willy nilly. In fact, one of them actually entered into an active dialog with me about some points that would make my "That Ghoul Ava" series a better book for my targeted female audience!

So I invite you to check out the links below...and find some of YOUR favorite reviewers. Follow them...click that button!

The Bookie Monster

Audio Book Reviewer

Now fly, my pretties...FLY!