The New World of Personal Book Reviews

We read a lot in the media these days about how the book industry is changing. Notice I didn't say publishing industry. That's just one piece of the overall industry. There are authors, agents, publishers, printers, distributors (unseen by the public, they buy books from the publishers and sell them to the retailers), and finally, the booksellers. Then there's what I call the auxiliaries: the magazines about books, the newspapers that review books, and of course, the reviewers themselves. This whole massive industry had a strangle hold on book publishing for decades. And they have been very, very impressed with themselves. To the point of arrogance.

Notice I said had a strangle hold. In the last few years, dramatic changes have swept the industry. Authors don't need agents anymore, or publishers, even. You've always been able to print your own book, if you wanted to bear the financial burden. Now you can do it for nothing. Zero, zip, not one cent. Marketing that used to be inaccessible is cheap and easy. An author can reach millions of people at a nominal cost to do his own promotion. Prospective buyers can read sometimes twenty percent of a book before they buy it. All because of the Internet. And I haven't even mentioned the impact of ebooks.

An interesting trend in the last couple of years has been the advent of personal reviews: the reviews posted by everyday people who read books and like them (or hate them) enough to go back to where they bought the books and post their thoughts. And people read them. Many people have found they trust the opinion of several dozen of those everyday people over the thoughts of perhaps one professional reviewer. As newspapers shrink and give up their book review space, those personal reviews become even more important.

Not that they're perfect. Consider reviews on Amazon, for example. Last night I looked at a book that had 212 reviews, including over 100 five-star reviews by people who thought is was fantastic, but also twelve one-star reviews that called it the worst book ever written. The downside to open, public reviews is that they can become a weapon. There are actually unscrupulous writers who hire people to write poor reviews about their competitors books. Amazon (and the other online booksellers) police as they are able to prevent this, but watching millions of books isn't easy.

For self-published authors, online personal reviews are vital. The mainline book industry tries very hard to ignore us. Most newspapers and periodicals have a specific policy against reviewing self-published books. "We have to draw the line somewhere," they say - with their noses stuck very high in the air.

So far, An Ordinary Fairy has very good online reviews. They all have a common thread that warms an author's heart - two thirds use nearly the same words: "I couldn't put it down." Some are friends, I'll admit, but more are from the people who pop up from somewhere I've never been, people I've never met, who post a great review.

So - when was the last time you posted a book review?