When I published my first Quill
Gordon mystery, The McHenry Inheritance,
on Amazon a bit less than two years ago, it went out there on its own. It was
the first book by an unknown author, so there was no other book in the series,
no reviews, and no recommendations from other writers. The first few thousand
people who bought it, and who didn’t know me, were taking a leap of faith.
The second
novel in the series, Wash Her Guilt Away,
went up on Amazon last week, and it had some things going for it that the first
one didn’t. The first book has already established whatever level of
credibility I might have with readers and provided a small base audience for
the second one. For example, one reader, who found and read the first book
months after it was published, snapped up the second one within 15 minutes of
when I posted a link on Facebook, and “liked” it as well.
But perhaps
the best thing going for Wash Her Guilt
Away now is the reviews that the first book now has under its belt on
Kindle.
The Crowd Paints a Picture
In past
blog posts, I’ve expressed some skepticism about online reviews, and I still
believe they have to be read intelligently. A scathing Yelp review of a
restaurant, for example, might owe something to the fact that the review’s
author was dumped by his girlfriend after dinner there. And of course there are
people out there who will do bogus reviews for a fee
Assuming
the reviews are legit, though, once there are enough of them, the crowd has
painted a picture that a discerning viewer can interpret. In the case of a book
by a hitherto unknown author, I’d put the base number of credible reviews at
ten. Contrary to what some people might think, it’s next to impossible to get
ten friends to review your book. In fact, it’s hard to get that many even to
buy it and read it.
So hitting
a double-digit number of reviews is an indicator that some strangers out there
are buying the book; that it was good enough that they read it all the way
through; and that they had enough of a feeling about it to put up a public
response. Even if the response isn’t entirely positive, those are good things.
Going by the Numbers
There are 16 reviews of The McHenry Inheritance as of this writing. The average
review was 4.1 out of 5 stars, and nobody gave it less than three. If it’s
somebody else’s book and I’m the buyer, going by those numbers, I’d be willing
to risk $2.99 on a something that sounds good from the dust-jacket blurb.
Plus those
reviews can be used for promotional purposes. The second book has a page of
review excerpts (honest, I might add) for the first book on Kindle. Now the ordinary reader doesn’t know Mountain
Mom, Bob from Salt Lake City, or the other four reviewers I quoted. On the
other hand, the average reader doesn’t know anything about the book reviewers
for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Indianapolis Star or the Orlando Sentinel, whose comments are
liberally quoted in the books you see at the book stores.
More
important than who, exactly, is doing the commenting is, as I said earlier,
that the book is being read and the comments are there. And if people say the
characters are likable, the plot and atmosphere well done, then that’s another
bit of reassurance to the customer swiping $2.99 on the credit card. If not, wait
for a free-promotion day.
