Best Review of All Time

As a not-so-well-known writer, I feel like I'm always begging for reviews. But after today, I think I can hang up my hat because I have received the single best review of all time.

You can still get Crump for FREE on Kindle through 5/4. Go get a copy, be offended, and write me an amazing review.

Reviews

I'm not a best-selling author, but I do have consistent sales across a variety of genres. But even though a growing number of people have paid money to get their hands on my books, I find that drumming up reviews is like pulling teeth. So when I do get a review, I'm super excited. I love getting feedback from readers. Getting a review on Amazon or Goodreads makes it feel less like I'm tossing my books out into the void and more like I'm making some sort of meaningful contribution to the zeitgeist.

So just to recap: Reviews are awesome. Please review my books. Be brutally honest. I can take it.

That said, would it kill people to sprinkle their reviews with a dash of intelligence? It's grating to get a review along the lines of... 

"This book was great, but it's part of a series and I hate series book. One star."

"Super engaging and fun to read, but I hate science-fiction. One star."

"I laughed, I cried, I shit my pants. But I don't like words with vowels in them. One star."

Why do people write reviews like this? Granted, only two of these examples are based on actual reviews, but the point's the same. People that knock a product because they didn't like some innate aspect of that product (such as its genre or number of pages) should have their reviewing rights revoked. How the fuck can you like something and then give it a shitty rating because of something that is a feature and not a bug?

Anyway, there's my Friday rant.

And again, I love reviews. I want them. Please write them. Just don't be an idiot about it.

Empress Theresa

I just watched this interesting video on the book Empress Theresa by Norman Boutin. I skimmed a bit of the book, and honestly it's pretty terrible, BUT I applaud Boutin for both hacking the internet and getting a bunch of people to read/review his book and also for sticking to his guns and being completely uncompromising.

I'd written a post a few months ago about being an uncompromising, singularly focused, solitary writer. tl;dr just write your book, proof it, and get it published. Stop pussyfooting around with honing your art or whatever. Granted, Boutin apparently spent upwards of four decades putting this book together, so he took his sweet time; but in the end, he published something and didn't bother perverting his writing the the ideas and judgments of other people.

What you write should be your own. Don't apologize. Don't capitulate. Stick to your fucking guns and shamelessly defend your work to the bitter end. But FYI your writing is probably really terrible and you'll die in obscurity.

Reviews!

It's the end of October, which means that the holiday season is just around the corner and the gift-buying frenzy of Christmas is already getting started. During the next couple months many, many Amazon Kindles will be sold and many, many more Kindle eBooks will be consumed. It's a very exciting time for KDP writers. All those Kindles flying off the shelves means more and more people getting access to Amazon's massive eBook library and to the books that we write!

If you happen to be one of those lucky new Kindle owners, or maybe you're just going to be catching up on some reading during the holidays, I'd like to give you a nudge to leave reviews on all the books you read. It's super easy to review a Kindle book (you don't even have to write anything, and you don't need to attach any of your own personal information to the review), and reviews are priceless to authors! Not only do reviews help us with feedback about our work, reviews also play a vital role in how our books are displayed on Amazon. The more reviews, the better. Especially 5-star reviews. And since we are entering into the holiday season, you can definitely think of your reviews as presents to the authors that you enjoy reading.

So feel free to spread holiday cheer this season and leave reviews for every Kindle eBook that you read. Your reviews will make KDP authors very, very happy and keep them writing all those wonderful books that you love to read.

What to Read

As a relatively unknown and unread author, the plight of the emerging writer is one that I can relate to quite well. Because of this, I made the decision back in May to start focusing my scarce reading time on the work of independent, new, and relatively unknown writers. I'll be honest, much of the stereotypes about independently published authors is firmly based in reality, but I've also found some real hidden gems.

That said, my goal isn't really to find authors that I enjoy reading. What I'm aiming to do here is to read and then honestly rate books so that they can be represented on Amazon in a way that provides other readers with meaningful feedback on the book and the author with the chance to get an idea of what people really think about their work. I think that this is the sort of thing that all small time authors should be doing. Not only does it help our own writing, but it also helps out fellow authors. It is frustrating as fuck to have books out there that get consistent (albeit low) sales, but garner zero reviews. Reviews help drive sales and, perhaps more importantly, reviews help keep writers motivated to keep writing.

So, I'm issuing a call to action to all independent, aspiring, emerging, fledgling, amateur, semi-pro, self-published, unknown writers out there: go and read a book by another author that's in your same situation. Once you've read it, leave an honest review. If we all did this, we would all have a handful of reviews (or at least starred ratings), and I feel that the writing world would genuinely be a better place :D