Geoff Habiger's Blog - Posts Tagged "review"
Unremarkable Review
Just got notified of a review for Unremarkable by Publishers Weekly. I think it's a glowing review, but check it out yourself:
https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781...
https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781...
Dresden Series Gains Traction
Summer Knight by Jim ButcherMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This fourth installment of the Dresden Files series finds our hero essentially strung out and on the verge of a break down after the traumatic ending from book 3 (Grave Peril). Once again Harry Dresden is called upon to solve a murder, but this time his client is none other than the Faerie Winter Queen, who has bought Harry's debt from his Godmother and now wants his help to find a murderer and recover something that was stolen. That might be easy enough to do, except the vampires of the Red Court are gunning for Harry, and the White Council has basically given him one more chance to prove his worth, or be thrown to the vampires as a peace offering. It's never easy being Harry Dresden.
As with all of Butcher's books about the troubled wizard in Chicago, I loved this installment. The gritty, noir world that Butcher creates is always fun to visit, and the characters are top notch. In Summer Knight I really like that Harry finally gets it through his stubborn head that he can't always do this on his own. Yes, he is chivalrous to a fault, but he's learning that people (friends - gasp) are willing to help him. And this time he needs all the help he can get.
I also love that we learn a lot more about Harry this time, about his past, and what happened with him after he fought his first master, Justin. The interactions that Harry has with the White Council were quite fun, and it was nice to see the larger wizard-world being shown. I also liked that characters that have appeared in the earlier books were making a return engagement, helping to create a living world.
My one quibble comes at the end of the book when the events have been resolved. Harry was given a task by the White Council, which he completed, but there was no resolution with the Council. You assume that there was a conclusion, and that Harry at least passed the test given him, but I really wanted more interaction - especially between Harry and the Warder, Morgan. I wanted to see that interaction play out, as well as the reaction of the senior council, and that didn't happen in this book. That was a disappointment for me and why I knock a whole star off my rating.
I "read" the audio version of the book, narrated by James Marsters. Marsters does an excellent job of making Dresden's world seem real. He is engaging, and his narration really makes Dresden and the other characters come to life.
Despite my quibble, this is a wonderful installment in the Dresden Files series. If you've read the previous books you probably know that already. If you've never picked up any of these books I highly recommend that you do.
View all my reviews
The Review Paradox
Recently a good author friend and I were chatting over pizza and beers. Like my blog posts our conversations tend to meander and head on tangents. We just talk and let the conversation flow. On this occasion our talk turned to book reviews – and our collective lack of them.
First, some background. I have co-written (along with Coy) two novels with two more coming out this year. We have received positive reviews from such illustrious places like Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, and notable bloggers. We have received mostly positive reviews on Goodreads and Amazon. Our sales have been good. Not great, but not piss poor either, and on sales (especially free promotions) I know that our titles have been downloaded thousands of times. Yet despite all of this we have very few reviews on Amazon. (As of this writing 12 for Unremarkable and 11 for Wrath of the Fury Blade.)
My friend Eric is a lot more prolific than I am. He has the luxury of being able to write full time. He has nine books released with several more coming out this year. One book (the first one in his first duology) has 46 reviews. But book two in that series only has 11 reviews. The books in his next series (a cool sci-fi trilogy) have 19, 5, and 4 reviews respectively for each book in the trilogy. His next series (currently five books with number six coming soon) have 3, 1, 1, and zero reviews (#5 was JUST released).
I have another friend (yes, I do have more than one friend, thank you very much) Zachry, who is also an author. He has two main series of books plus some short stories all available on Amazon. Series one has three books in it, plus three short stories and has 67 reviews for book one, but then the reviews drop off rapidly to 9 and 9 respectively for books 2 and 3, then 4, 4, and 2 reviews for the shorts. His other series (two books currently, book 3 coming out this year) has 42 reviews for book 1 and just 12 for book 2.
Now, I know that both of my friends have spent a lot of time promoting their titles. Eric runs Amazon ads and has his own newsletter and does newsletter builders. Zachry does book sales and combines those with ads and newsletter promotions. So, I know that they both have sold hundreds, if not thousands, of their books. Yet despite really good sales (heck, even great sales in terms of downloads of ebooks) our review numbers seem to be pathetic, anemic even.
Why is that?
How can a title with large sales figures have so few reviews, while another title by other authors (not counting books by “big time” authors published by large publishers – those numbers are skewed) can have hundreds of reviews?
Is it a time issue? Maybe people have bought the book but haven’t read it yet? Their TBR pile is so huge that they’ll be lucky to finish reading it by the time hell freezes over. I know that my own TBR pile is starting to rival Mt. Everest in scale.
Is it a time management issue? Are our lives so busy that we can’t take a couple of minutes to leave a review? I always leave a review for books I do read, but sometimes it can take me a few days to find the time to log onto Goodreads and Amazon to leave a review. (I also post my reviews on Bookbub when I can and on LibraryThing.)
Is there another reason? Do readers not know what they should say? Do they think a review isn’t needed? Do they personally not look at reviews, so they don’t think a review is needed? (And for the record you can keep your review as simple as you want – “I loved/liked it” is acceptable. Reviews are always needed, especially for small/indie/self-pubbed authors. And for the last one…I got nothing there.)
Reviews are very important for an author. Especially for indie, self-published authors and especially on Amazon. Amazon is the 8,000 lb monster gorilla in the publishing world. Reviews on their site go into their black box algorithms that Amazon uses to determine a book’s ranking, where it appears in searches, cross-promotions (if you like this, then try that), the winner of the next Eurovision contest, the presidential election, and whether it will rain on your birthday. (Okay – those last few probably aren’t determined by a book’s ranking on Amazon, but you never know. Heck, I don’t think even their programmers know. “Hey, Alexa! What cryptic algorithms do you use for ranking books by unknown authors?” Well, maybe I don’t want to know the answer to that.)
I don’t have an answer to the Review Paradox. I wish I did – I could write a book and make hundreds. Short of holding a gun to people’s heads there is not a way to force people to leave a review. (NOTE – do not EVER hold a gun to someone’s head. That’s dangerous and just makes you an asshole.) But…if YOU want to help fix the Review Paradox there are some things you can do.
1. If you read a book – leave a review. It’s very easy, takes less than five minutes (depending on your internet connection and how well you remember your passwords) and can be very simple. Here are some examples, so feel free to cut and paste for reviews you leave: “I loved this book!” “Worth reading.” “I couldn’t put it down.” “So good that I am now going to stalk the author until they write another book in this series!”
2. Share your reviews and tell others you reviewed a book. Even if you are not writing the next New York Times book critics review, or a Kirkus masterpiece, sharing your opinion helps spread the word about a book. Plus, guilt can help get others to leave reviews.
3. If you are a reader, you probably know other readers. Encourage them to leave reviews. If peer pressure can get your friends to agree to try that new Greek/Indian/Sushi Fusion restaurant you want to eat at, then it can work on leaving a book review. Besides, you are a cool person, and people like to do things that cool people do, so if you leave a review they’ll want to mimic you and leave reviews too.
4. What are your suggestions. Leave a comment to share your thoughts.
The Review Paradox may never go away. But with some simple steps maybe we can at least all get to double digits for the number of reviews on our titles.
First, some background. I have co-written (along with Coy) two novels with two more coming out this year. We have received positive reviews from such illustrious places like Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, and notable bloggers. We have received mostly positive reviews on Goodreads and Amazon. Our sales have been good. Not great, but not piss poor either, and on sales (especially free promotions) I know that our titles have been downloaded thousands of times. Yet despite all of this we have very few reviews on Amazon. (As of this writing 12 for Unremarkable and 11 for Wrath of the Fury Blade.)
My friend Eric is a lot more prolific than I am. He has the luxury of being able to write full time. He has nine books released with several more coming out this year. One book (the first one in his first duology) has 46 reviews. But book two in that series only has 11 reviews. The books in his next series (a cool sci-fi trilogy) have 19, 5, and 4 reviews respectively for each book in the trilogy. His next series (currently five books with number six coming soon) have 3, 1, 1, and zero reviews (#5 was JUST released).
I have another friend (yes, I do have more than one friend, thank you very much) Zachry, who is also an author. He has two main series of books plus some short stories all available on Amazon. Series one has three books in it, plus three short stories and has 67 reviews for book one, but then the reviews drop off rapidly to 9 and 9 respectively for books 2 and 3, then 4, 4, and 2 reviews for the shorts. His other series (two books currently, book 3 coming out this year) has 42 reviews for book 1 and just 12 for book 2.
Now, I know that both of my friends have spent a lot of time promoting their titles. Eric runs Amazon ads and has his own newsletter and does newsletter builders. Zachry does book sales and combines those with ads and newsletter promotions. So, I know that they both have sold hundreds, if not thousands, of their books. Yet despite really good sales (heck, even great sales in terms of downloads of ebooks) our review numbers seem to be pathetic, anemic even.
Why is that?
How can a title with large sales figures have so few reviews, while another title by other authors (not counting books by “big time” authors published by large publishers – those numbers are skewed) can have hundreds of reviews?
Is it a time issue? Maybe people have bought the book but haven’t read it yet? Their TBR pile is so huge that they’ll be lucky to finish reading it by the time hell freezes over. I know that my own TBR pile is starting to rival Mt. Everest in scale.
Is it a time management issue? Are our lives so busy that we can’t take a couple of minutes to leave a review? I always leave a review for books I do read, but sometimes it can take me a few days to find the time to log onto Goodreads and Amazon to leave a review. (I also post my reviews on Bookbub when I can and on LibraryThing.)
Is there another reason? Do readers not know what they should say? Do they think a review isn’t needed? Do they personally not look at reviews, so they don’t think a review is needed? (And for the record you can keep your review as simple as you want – “I loved/liked it” is acceptable. Reviews are always needed, especially for small/indie/self-pubbed authors. And for the last one…I got nothing there.)
Reviews are very important for an author. Especially for indie, self-published authors and especially on Amazon. Amazon is the 8,000 lb monster gorilla in the publishing world. Reviews on their site go into their black box algorithms that Amazon uses to determine a book’s ranking, where it appears in searches, cross-promotions (if you like this, then try that), the winner of the next Eurovision contest, the presidential election, and whether it will rain on your birthday. (Okay – those last few probably aren’t determined by a book’s ranking on Amazon, but you never know. Heck, I don’t think even their programmers know. “Hey, Alexa! What cryptic algorithms do you use for ranking books by unknown authors?” Well, maybe I don’t want to know the answer to that.)
I don’t have an answer to the Review Paradox. I wish I did – I could write a book and make hundreds. Short of holding a gun to people’s heads there is not a way to force people to leave a review. (NOTE – do not EVER hold a gun to someone’s head. That’s dangerous and just makes you an asshole.) But…if YOU want to help fix the Review Paradox there are some things you can do.
1. If you read a book – leave a review. It’s very easy, takes less than five minutes (depending on your internet connection and how well you remember your passwords) and can be very simple. Here are some examples, so feel free to cut and paste for reviews you leave: “I loved this book!” “Worth reading.” “I couldn’t put it down.” “So good that I am now going to stalk the author until they write another book in this series!”
2. Share your reviews and tell others you reviewed a book. Even if you are not writing the next New York Times book critics review, or a Kirkus masterpiece, sharing your opinion helps spread the word about a book. Plus, guilt can help get others to leave reviews.
3. If you are a reader, you probably know other readers. Encourage them to leave reviews. If peer pressure can get your friends to agree to try that new Greek/Indian/Sushi Fusion restaurant you want to eat at, then it can work on leaving a book review. Besides, you are a cool person, and people like to do things that cool people do, so if you leave a review they’ll want to mimic you and leave reviews too.
4. What are your suggestions. Leave a comment to share your thoughts.
The Review Paradox may never go away. But with some simple steps maybe we can at least all get to double digits for the number of reviews on our titles.
