With my latest book about to be launched, my publisher and I were discussing how to promote it more effectively. When I tell you that my publishers are so small that their Christmas party is held in a dog kennel, you will understand that they don’t have much of a marketing budget. So eventually our discussion strayed to the subject of reviews.

Reviews are important to the author. People buy books because other people recommend them. The majority of the books I have bought this year were recommended to me by other people, either directly or through the review sections of retail websites such as Amazon.

Log in to Amazon and there is the welcome and the link to ‘recommended for you’. So I scroll through the recommendations. Of course these haven’t really been recommended. Its just part of Amazon’s website algorithms to present titles by the same authors or in the same genres that I have purchased before. So to find out if they are my sort of book I have to click on the title and go and take a closer look.

If its an author that I have read before I can be pretty sure about what I’m getting. I’ll either have enjoyed the book or I won’t and I’ll purchase or not purchase accordingly. But what if it’s an author that’s new to me? Well, the books ‘page’ will tell me about the author and give me a summary of the plot, but will I actually enjoy it? So I have to scroll down further to find the reviews.

If there are no reviews then there’s a problem. Either no one has read the book, or no one has enjoyed it, or hated it, enough to post a review.

Then there are the books with a dozen 5* reviews. These I must treat with suspicion. The likelihood of all those people enjoying the book are slim, so there is a strong possibility that the reviews have been posted by the author’s family and friends. A quick check normally betrays this. The reviews will probably be the first ever posted by those people and they will all be remarkably similar in tone and content – probably written by the author themselves and e-mailed around the family.

What I am looking for is the mixture of reviews. Some 5*, some lower. That will convince me that the reviews are both genuine and also representative. No matter how good the book some people will love it and some people won’t and genuine reviews will reflect that spread.

My publisher suggested that it needs 200 sales to generate a single review. So if a book has 20 reviews that suggests 4,000 sales. That’s pretty good these days, especially for less well known author.

As an author, what does it mean for me?

I don’t deliberately go looking for my reviews, but somehow I seem to find them by ‘accident’. Now, let’s say I find I have 20 reviews. 12 of them are 4* and 5*. Another 5 are 3*, two are 2* and one is 1*. Which review am I going to read? Of course I’m going to read the 1* review. I have to find out “why this person doesn’t like me”.

Now, here’s the thing. That 1* review won’t be written in exemplary English, well punctuated and containing pithy observations on style and plot. It will be written in barely intelligible English by someone who doesn’t know how to use spell check and for whom ‘grammar’ is an old lady who gave birth to his mother. Because review sections are the hunting ground of trolls and trolls enjoy being nasty.

Not all 1* reviews are written by trolls of course. Some are a genuine reflection of the quality of the book, but those stand out because they are well written.

I give you a quote from Werner Herzog: “I don’t spend sleepless nights over bad reviews.” So as an author you have to develop a thick skin – and stay away from the review sections unless you are prepared to have your vanity pricked.

So, what about this new book of mine?

Having read this far you will probably have worked out that I’d really like you to review this for me and I hope you will enjoy reading it.

You can find out how to buy it by clicking on this link to my publisher’s website and you can find out more about my books or read my weekly blog by going to my website

I hope you enjoy the experience.