​Yes, Please Write That Review

​Yes, Please Write That Review
By Guest Blogger Brenda Remmes
 
            Kindle Unlimited has a nifty little pop-up that comes at the end of any book you read which asks how you liked the book.  On a five star rating with one being “not at all” to five being “excellent read,” all you have to do is click a button.  Then it asks you to write a comment…not a thesis, just a comment.
 If you happen to have a hard copy of that book, unfortunately, you don’t get a similar reminder.  Instead you have to make the effort to go into Amazon books and under the title of the book scroll down to the Reviews section and click  “Write a customer review.”
Too much trouble?  Please reconsider. If you happened to like the book, please take the time to do it. It means a lot to the author. If you didn’t like it, I suggest you ignore the process. That’s the author in me speaking.  Why?  Here’s why.
            Marketing books is a major factor in selling books. Selling books online includes getting connected into the algorithms that are computerized to advertise the book by attaching it to other popular books of a similar genre. “Customers who read this book might also like….” 
Every author wants to have their book cover get viewed as frequently as possible. There are numerous estimates of how many reviews a book has to get in order to get kicked into the algorithm advertising.  I’ve been told fifty, seventy-five, and a hundred.  What matters is not as much what you say, although compliments are always appreciated, but the overall average the book gets in the reviews. Anything below four or five stars is not good.
            After every book I read and enjoy, I write a review.  My reviews are simple—two or three sentences.  Books I choose to write reviews for are all four or five stars.  If I can’t give the book at least that, I don’t write a review at all.  I know it takes a lot of work to write and publish a book, and I respect every author who manages to do so.  Just because I didn’t like the book, doesn’t mean that someone else won’t. We all have certain genres that we prefer.  I think it’s unfair for me to judge the quality of genres I rarely read unless the book has unexpectedly captivated me.
A low rating on a book brings down the overall average, and many publishers look at how the books were rated by previous readers plus how many books were sold when determining whether or not to publish the author’s next book. It takes a lot of fives to upgrade an average after someone throws a one into the mix.
Be gentle. Be kind. As my mother taught me, if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. But by all means, if you enjoyed what you read, give the author a pat on the back and take a few minutes to tell them in a review. They notice, I promise.
 
Brenda Remmes is the author of the bestselling novel The Quaker Café and two other Quaker Café novels titled Home to Cedar Branch and her most recent release, Mama Sadie which is a Next Generation  Indie Book Award finalist. Her stories and articles have appeared in Newsweek as well as southern publications and journals.
She currently lives with her husband in an old family home near the Black River Swamp in South Carolina.   
Learn more about Brenda and her books at https://brendaremmes.

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