[One a completely separate note, I also have an interview up today over at the A to Z Challenge blog, stop by and check that out, too.]
To
bring the impact of the “nice” review down to a more personal
level, when the the independent market suffers the effects of
undeserved good reviews, so do you.
Let me
put this another way: The only way you can ever become successful as
an independent author is if the larger audience of readers begins to
buy your books. It's all well and good for your blogging friends and
a few of their friends to buy your book, but, really, that's just a
handful of sales. To make it, to really make it, you have to break
through the “friend” barrier out into people that don't know you.
That is a hard thing to do.
You
want to know why it's a hard thing to do? Because the larger audience
of readers doesn't trust the independent market. They don't even
really trust the small publishers, so how do you expect them to trust
you, some anonymous author with a sign saying, “Buy my book! It's
really good!”
See,
when we just do the “nice” thing and give good reviews to our
peers, the independent market suffers, as I said, but, also, you,
specifically you, as an
independently published author, suffer. You are not immune to the
overall perception that people will have of a market place full of
good reviews that don't mean anything.
You want to know how I know this? Because I don't buy independently
published books except from people I know or that have been strongly
recommended to me by people whose opinions I trust. Why? Because I
can't tell what's good and what's not. And, even then, half the stuff
(and I'm being generous here) I've read from people I know or has
been recommended to me shouldn't be out there available for purchase,
anyway, so why would I expect that other stuff is any different. But,
yet, I can browse through the "indie book shelf" (yes, I just made that up) and find plenty of books with a stack of
good reviews (on Amazon or on blogs) that I know to be... dishonest,
for lack of a better word. In some cases, I don't think the person
giving the review even read the book, because the review is about the
author not the work.
A
review beginning with “this is a great guy” or “I went to high
school with this guy and he wrote a book” or “this girl spends
all of her time writing” does not inspire me to buy the book or
give me any faith in the independent market. If you didn't read it,
don't go click 5-stars on it! Just don't do it.
To
make this as clear as I can, it doesn't matter if you genuinely have
written a great book, the best book ever, even, if no one can find
it. It's like being the one apple tree in the middle of a forest of
crab apple trees. The only way to be seen in all of that other mess
is if reviews, all reviews, are honest reviews and are clearly labeled “crab
apple” instead of “apple.”
So
far, we've been pretty self-centered and only talked about how all of
this stuff affects ourselves, but let's look at how the “nice”
review affects the author in question. Does the “nice” review
actually help him/her? Again, I'm going to say “no.”
Sure,
as I said in Part One, getting the “nice” review may gain the
author a few sales, but, if the book is really not good or not ready
or not whatever, it's going to hurt the author more in the long run.
First,
people buying the book are going to find “oh, this book sucks”
and decide to never buy another book from that author again. It
doesn't matter if, later, the author does put out something good, why
would a buyer (that doesn't know the author) come back and try again
after getting burned once? Most people are just going to remember to
not buy anything from him/her again (like I won't buy any more
Goodkin or Hamilton, I don't care how good people say they are).
But
what's the likelihood that the author is going to improve if everyone
is just being nice? The author, at that point, believes that the work
is fine and s/he can continue in the same manner. I've seen a lot of
this out there, too. Authors that whip out some 40,000 word "epic" in a
couple or few months, get some nice reviews and continue on doing the
same. Over and over again. Their friends are all giving them good
reviews and telling them how great they are, so they never bother to
actually look at the work or how much (little) time they're spending on it.
They don't edit beyond spell check or have anyone with any kind of
skill read the manuscript before they hit the publish button.
These
authors think everything is just fine. “Look at how all my friends
love what I'm doing!” But no one is buying their books. Why?
Because they're no good. But no one is brave enough to tell them
that. No one wants to damage the friendship by saying, “Hey, you
need to work on this some more.” Again, it's a short term gain, but
it's kind of like allowing your friend to walk around with a huge
booger on his/her face. Sure, s/he'd be embarrassed if you told him,
but how mad at you is she going to be when she finds out that you
didn't.
Doing
the “nice” thing doesn't help anyone. It doesn't help the market,
it doesn't help you, and it doesn't help the author in question. Not
in the long run. Yeah, I know, it can be really difficult to see past
the short run to the long run, but, if we want independent publishing
to survive, we have to do that. Right now, the big publishers are out
there banking on one thing, that this lack of quality among independently
published books will drive people back to only buying from them. The
sad thing is they may not be wrong. Until we, the independent
authors, have the courage and fortitude to be honest about what we're
flooding the market with, people will continue to orbit the big
publishers as their main source of reading material.
