Ask any indie author and, aside from sales, the one thing they will all say they need more of are reviews. It’s almost a universal. How is this possible? People read and review books. There are seemingly countless sites out there dedicated to the book review. There’s a catch…always a stinking catch.
Many of these sites seem to want to avoid indie authors (or, as they call us “self published”). Well, first and foremost, I resent the term “self-published”. Why? Because I didn’t do this all on my own. I had beta readers, hired a professional editor — so the moniker “self published” is a bit mis-leading. But that’s not the point. The point is this — these review sites refusing to take on the task of reviewing indie authors are seriously missing out on not only some marvelous books, but on being part of a movement that is only going to continue growing until “indie authors” are no longer a “movement” but the norm.
Is it that these review sites, some of which I had never heard of, feel themselves above the indie author’s work? How do they manage to come to that conclusion?
Here’s the thing — you have tons of reviewer sites reviewing tons of NY Times best sellers. You can google a best selling book and get more reviews than you have time to read. So everyone is reviewing that best seller. So what? What good does it do a reviewer to do the same thing everyone else is doing? Why not stand out? Be unique? Or, better yet, be that reviewer that “discovered” that up-coming best seller by being the first to review their work. How do you think Misty Baker (of KindleObsessed fame) is going to feel when I Zombie I skyrockets and becomes a household name? She’s going to know that people will look to her and realize she was the first to review the book (read the review here) and her popularity as a reviewer will skyrocket.
Listen, dear reviewers, I understand that you might always want to stick with the safe bets. But what good is constantly reviewing the same books as everyone else — especially when you know James Patterson or Deen Koontz simply don’t need your help to sell books? Indie authors, on the other hand, do need your help, and you need ours. Everyone in this industry, on both sides of the page, is trying to make it big. Indie authors need reviewers and reviewers need that one discovery that brings them the notoriety they should have. So, come on — open those doors to indie authors. You scratch our backs and we’ll scratch yours by supplying you with quality works that the public is longing to read.
And to those reviewers already focusing on indie authors (such as Kindleobsessed and Red Adept Reviews) I whole-heartedly applaud and thank you for giving just due to the future of the book universe. Together we will all do great things and if the mainstream reviewers want to ignore us, to them I say “You don’t know what you’re missing!”
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