Authors live and die by their reviews. Oh, there are other things that can kill a writing career but nothing with as much impact as reader reviews or lack thereof. In the absence of a review, a reader is taking a gamble on your book. It is an unknown and a lot of people will not want to invest their time and money on something that might not even be any good. And with self-published titles, it could be anywhere on the spectrum. At least with the product of a big publishing house, you know that novel has gone through several levels of review and refinement. Self-published, not so much.

Which leads us to reviews. They are dang hard to get! As one friend said, “I don’t do reviews. They feel like homework.” If you want a professional review, you either have to pay out of pocket and hope it’s worth your money or you have to wait for months for a response. Both are maddening. If people find out you paid for a review, they will assume that it is biased in your favor because money changed hands. Which leaves us begging our readers to leave a review, whether that be on Amazon or Goodreads or any one of a dozen book review sites. Anything to get feedback.

We just tallied our numbers and we have over several thousand copies of our books out in the world and only fourteen, just fourteen, reader reviews and four editorial reviews. At least they’re all good. As you can see, it is a frustrating business.

We know that as time goes on, the reviews will trickle in. We’re willing to wait. But in the meantime, if you’ve read one of our books, we’d love it if you left a review…pretty please.

Happy Easter, everyone!
Anne, Nancy and Eric