Please, please please take the time to rate and/or review the book. It takes only a few seconds to click a star rating but it can make or break a self published author. If you have the time to write a written review that’s even better. Even if it’s just one sentence “I loved this book” or “great story” you would really be helping out us self published authors. We can’t sell books if we don’t have reviews. Being a self published author myself, I’m always hearing how people loved my book but I still have a hard time getting reviews, which in turn means I have a hard time getting sales. Please guys, at least for me this is my business. This is how I make a living and I know that many of my fellow authors are in the same boat!
I’m still only really starting in self-publishing and learning how it all works, but it’s convinced me I need to try and rate and review everything I read now.
Now, when you write fan fiction, it feels like you’re almost guaranteed to get at least some feedback, regardless of quality. But when you write fanfic, the really hard parts are already done – you already have a template for all the characters, world and themes. You can put your own spin on things, different interpretations, variations on the original material, but still it’s something people are more or less familiar with and that there’s already an audience for.
When you start writing original fiction, and you only have a small Tumblr following (half of which are porn blogs, obviously), and a marketing budget of $0, I find myself starting to really treasure any feedback I get. (I’ve been told a few times now that I refer to characters by their hair too often, so that’s something I’m making a conscious effort to cut down on now.)
Of course, when I publish my next and future novels, I will try submitting them to various review blogs out there, although understandably many of them are very busy so it can take months to get an answer from them, if at all.
NB: I have heard that Amazon has some pretty bizaar and nonsensical rules about reviews, like they’ll delete reviews if the reviewer follows the author on facebook. I have had a couple of reviews disappear, but I don’t know if that was the reason or not, or if that rumor is true at all. Something I’ll have to investigate.
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