I’m going to be blunt. 2015 was a crap year for me, with pretty much all my energy was sucked up by efforts to recover from my broken arm (Jan 26, 2015 – I’ll celebrate the anniversary by hiding in bed). I’m finally starting to get over the mental fog, but the best of 2015 lists? Um yeah. Didn’t happen.
I’m still committed to The January Project, even after last year’s abrupt interruption. My goal this month is purchase nothing new (not even free books) and to clear some books off of my shelf while also giving reviews to authors in need.
If you don’t know much about the book business, think of your own life a moment. How much do you depend on reviews? Would you buy a two star vacuum from Amazon? What about a book that had thirty five star reviews, but the only text ones said things like “This is the best book ever!” I was burned a few too many times on that last one in 2015 and quit a lot of crap books with lousy editing.
Book reviews and sales are a numbers game. An author has to have a certain number of reviews to be considered for those nifty newsletters or special sale promotions. An author can’t get sales and reviews without visibility. You can’t get visibility in the form of “readers who liked … also liked….” without a certain number of text reviews. It blows. I cannot change the system. I also cannot change the policy that strips some authors of reviews because they know another author or because a fan friends them on Facebook.
What I can do is read books and write reviews. In the month of January, I commit to cleaning my shelves and reviewing books with less than twenty reviews. I challenge you to read a new to you author and leave a thoughtful review.
Look for reviews over the next few weeks.
Lyra's Musings 