The Importance of Reviews...

Do you read a lot of books? Do you have a favorite author? Have you ever left a review on Amazon?

If the answer to the first two questions in "yes" and the last "no," then shame on you.  Okay, maybe "shame" is too strong a word.  But, honestly people, do you have any idea how important those reviews are?

I'm a working writer in 2019.  I struggle along in a world where the traditional publishing industry is shrinking more and more.  There are now only perhaps five major publishing houses and a plethora of indies who do great work but, by and large, don't have the marketing and distribution clout necessary to compete with the likes of Random House.

Writers like me aren't bestsellers, at least not yet, and we sure as heck aren't rich or particularly famous.  We write for the love of it, the passion of it, because storytelling to us is as natural and necessary as breathing.  We write in the hopes of being read, acknowledged, appreciated.  We write to entertain, inform, inspire.  We are poets and novelists and essayists and journalists.  We are ... and this is a word that most writers tend to shy away from ... artists, many of us of the starving variety.

Reviews, to us, are about more than vanity, more than bragging rights.  They are a professional necessity.  Reviews attract readers, who then provide more reviews, and so on.  They are the gasoline in the engine of "buzz," and they are the vital corner piece of every writer's marketing puzzle.  Dig those metaphors!

So I'm blogging today to ask, beg even, that each and every one of you go on Amazon and write a review TODAY.  Right now.  It doesn't take more than few minutes, it costs nothing, and it matters.  So, if you know a writer, or simply appreciate one, spare them just the tiny bit of time and effort it takes to tell them that. 

It means more than you can possibly imagine.