Facts about reviews…

When I read a book that touches me (or makes me touch myself, but we won’t need to go into that), I feel that I should show the author how much their work meant to me. So I do a number of things.

#1 – I write a note to say thank you. This has led to me some great friendships with people like Eden Winters, KC Wells, SJD Peterson, Tom Webb (who helped me to find Laura Harner, Lee Brazil, and Havan Fellows), Silvia Violet, Angel Martinez, and more.

#2 – I try to make a post on Facebook to tell people about the story. This has been pretty successful at sharing my thoughts on books, but…well, you see, there is a very limited audience to my posts (about 1100 friends or so). While it’s great, I don’t think that it has a long or lasting impact.

#3 – I try to write a review on Amazon, Goodreads, AllRomance. These are the biggies. People will see these reviews quite often over there, and that helps the author out a lot. In fact, I recently found out that some of the promo companies won’t touch a book that has less than 20 reviews. Now that might not seem like a huge number, but when you look at the number of books an author sells, and then at the number of reviews they get, it’s pretty far out of line.

What am I saying? Show your love of good books. Take a few minutes from your day to write a review for a book you’ve loved. Sing the praises of the author for others to find.

This is especially important for the smaller genres (m/m, m/f, menage, etc). While it has a vibrant community, it is definitely not on everyone’s radar. So show the authors you can’t live without some love.

Buy from a reputable source. Read. Like. Review. And spread the love.

Make an author happy today.