Invictus (The Invincible Writers) discussion

Hi everyone,

Let's take a moment to talk about the bread and butter of self and indie publication, which is basically the generating of reviews. It isn't an easy task. Some of you have managed it with great success and that is surely worth celebrating. Something that every writer should be made aware of is that a book without reviews will disappear, which is why (informed) marketing is so important.

In my experience, it is far easier to generate reviews from people like yourself, those struggling to gain a readership, those that fully understand the difficulty of these early stages of being a writer, than it is to gain reviews from interested readers of fiction, or even family.

In the spirit of support, please do take the time to review one another's work. If anyone here is interested in handing out ARCs, please take the time to leave a discussion topic for the group or make note of it in one of the pre-existing discussion topics. All it takes is for enough of us to show our determination to reach that sweet, sweet 30 reviews mark.

Carmen

A note on reviewing.

I know it's tempting to shower your fellow authors with praise, but care needs to be taken when reviewing not to seem like a yes man. This is for many reasons, but you want your reviews to have substance (not necessarily to be substantial), while also leaning heavily on what you liked about the story. A very strong reason to be wary of how you review your fellow writers is that Amazon has a tendency to pull good reviews and leave up bad reviews in spite of the double standard. If they feel that you are "punting" a book, they will take your review down.

I have actually often found that I prefer reading the lower star rating comments on books (and pretty much anything I considering buying). If I see 5 stars, I automatically assume the person he gave the rating has no respect for the rating system. If they follow up the five stars with just a bunch of "I loved it. It's so awesome! Never liked anything better!" then, I disregard the rating entirely.
On the other hand, if they rating is 2-4 stars, my curiosity is piqued. What if they dislike the same kind of things I do? They obviously put more thought into their rating.
1 is the same as 5. It says the person will do just about anything to badmouth the product (be it a book, nappies or dog food).

Anyone else feel this way?

I agree. Personally, I've panicked over a one-star rating on a product before, but would prefer honest, substantive feedback on a piece of writing than a pat on the back and some flowery phrases. But I have to admit, five-star reviews give me butterflies :)