The Word on Book Reviews

I have this theory about book reviews -- great ones can help you a little, bad ones are generally forgotten by everyone but the author, and okay ones are never read.

Now if you disagree, I want to hear! So post a comment.

However, I'm not finished, because this is supposed to be a rant, and so far I haven't been very rant-ish.

I've gotten two bad reviews for different books. One was for my first book, TRUE SEEING, and while the rating was really low, the words themselves were really nice. Sadly, that was my first review ever, and so it sent me orbiting around planet Neptune in one of my classic freak-outs.

The second one was for IN HEAT, my second book that is still on the best selling and best reader review erotic lists at Fictionwise.com, 20 months after its release. The reviewer said that while she loved the first half of the book, she could barely finish the second half, it was so awful. That book came out in November of 2003. I can remember reading that review as if it was yesterday. I lost a week of writing after that. I paced the floor and discussed with myself if I should even be an author. I agonized the impact to my sales (of which, there were absolutely none - this is still my all-time best selling book by 150%). I emailed my publisher and asked if I should withdraw the manuscript. I was a mess.

But I'm glad for that review. I owe that reviewer for letting me have that massive slap early on, before I had a book come out that would impact my career more than IN HEAT did. Learning how to take hurtful feedback and go on is a vital weapon in the author's toolbox. For that, reviews are great. And they're an ego stroke when they're good, although a million great reviews can't temper one bad one, believe me.

However, what else do reviews bring us? A writing resume stuff if you're just starting out. Something to put on your book cover and website. Sales? I don't actually think so. Maybe you'll see a small bump for a really stellar book review, but to be honest, looking at daily sales, I saw no decrease or increase for anything except for a mild jump for my RT Bookclub Top Picks. Not enough to even come close to covering the cost of my RT ad, by the way. (In case you were wondering, I'm a complete numbers freak - give me data and I'll start running all kinds of analysis on it.)

Some other truths about reviews from my perspective:

-- Don't worry! No matter how bad your book is, you'll have someone review you high. It's the way of the land, I'm telling you. Think of the worst book you've read recently, then do a search across review sites. Someone will have given it a high score. I guarantee it!
-- The more generic and inoffensive (and boring) the book is, the more you'll see it getting consistent 4 out of 5 review scores. The books that fly up and down on the review scale usually have something interesting about them, something that may cause a reader to love it or hate it. (I don’t think this is the case with my published books, by the way. I’m just trying for love it or hate it and I can’t sell any of those books – LOL!)
-- Some review sites will not review books badly. If the book gets a 2 out of 5, the owner will hand it over to another reviewer to try again. If that reviewer gives it a 2 as well, the owner will email the author and ask if the author wants to withdraw the book. Now I don't know about you guys, but a review site that never gives a low review seems a bit counter-intuitive to me. Aren't they supposed to keep people from wasting their money?

So the long and the short about this rant? Reviews are cheap to obtain, especially when most sites take emailed galleys. So your time isn't wasted. But don't blow their importance out of proportion. They’re a tool. Use them all you can, then lose them. They are, after all, one person's opinion... and we all know that we can't please everyone all the time. Maybe, just maybe, we don't even want to...