{"id":3088,"date":"2025-09-01T11:08:29","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T11:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/?p=3088"},"modified":"2025-09-01T13:47:51","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T13:47:51","slug":"thou-shalt-not-covert-thy-fellow-authors-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/?p=3088","title":{"rendered":"Thou shalt not covert thy fellow authors\u2019 reviews."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Every indie author knows the importance of trying to encourage readers to review their books. The more four and five star reviews a book has, the higher up it will rise on Amazon\u2019s pages and the more chance it has of being seen by new readers. It can be soul destroying when you know you have a good product, sales may even be ticking along quite nicely, but the reviews aren\u2019t forthcoming. It doesn\u2019t help when you read a book which has over a thousand reviews \u2013 which is probably why you bought it in the first place \u2013 only to discover it\u2019s badly written, with repetitions, typos, missing words and a poor plot.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, I met an author who writes in my own sub-genre at a writers\u2019 conference, and I subscribed to her email list. In a recent blog post she mentioned the latest book in her mystery series was due to be publish at the start of August. At the end of the post, she mentioned she was looking for subscribers who would be prepared to read an advanced copy and post a review on publication day in two weeks\u2019 time. I\u2019d read the previous books in the series, so I was happy to volunteer.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>She emailed me a few days after the book went live to thank me for the review I\u2019d posted on Amazon and Goodreads. Although the first few books in her series had built up a good number of reviews \u2013 over 300 in the case of the first \u2013 the number for her last book was still languishing in single figures a week after publication day. She was very despondent. As she said, one of the earliest lessons we authors learn is that when we do a free or much reduced promotion on one of the many book sites including Amazon, large numbers of readers download copies, but only a tiny percentage of readers actually write reviews. Hand on heart \u2013 how many books are there sitting in your Kindle library still unread? We are all guilty of that.<\/p>\n

When people who are on your subscribers\u2019 list and are presumably fans of your work, and who take the trouble to write and request an advanced copy, but then don\u2019t bother to review it, it is very disheartening. Almost fifty people had asked for an ARC but ten days after publication only nine had posted a review. I\u2019m sure these people had asked for a copy in good faith, but life had taken over and they had forgotten or hadn\u2019t got round to finishing the book on time. I tried to console her by saying she had had done nothing wrong and that it happens to us all – me included. (Hint, hint dear readers!!!)<\/p>\n

It made me feel guilty about the books I\u2019ve read over this year and haven\u2019t reviewed. I\u2019ve just spent the last two weeks putting up reviews on Goodreads.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve made a New Mid-year Resolution! The day after I\u2019ve finished reading a book, I write a review even if it\u2019s no more than a couple of sentences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every indie author knows the importance of trying to encourage readers to review their books. The more four and five star reviews a book has, the higher up it will rise on Amazon\u2019s pages and the more chance it has of being seen by new readers. It can be soul destroying when you know you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,196],"tags":[238,127],"class_list":{"0":"post-3088","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-great-reads","7":"category-marketing-and-promotion","8":"tag-arc","9":"tag-reviews","10":"entry","11":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3088"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3088"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3096,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3088\/revisions\/3096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.judithcranswick.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}