The Importance of Reviews

You ever take a class where you have multiple assignments throughout the semester, which you always turn in on time, but never get any feedback on?

Just imagine you have five assignments and throughout the entire semester you’ve been thinking you are doing good, great even, but at the end of the semester you get a F.

Your professor doesn’t even give you an explanation as to why. Just a big, fat, bold F sitting on your transcripts now.

I imagine that’s how authors feel when they don’t get reviews, but keep pumping out books. By the third or fourth book, they are probably wondering why it isn’t selling or people are leaving poor ratings and no review.

A review is the constructive criticism people need to improve in basically everything they do. In most jobs, there are reviews for raises. In school the grade a student gets back on an assignment, with a small passage of what was good or bad, helps them to get better for the next assignment.

For authors, a review and a rating help them know what they are doing right or wrong. If people love how they are writing a particular book, then they are probably on a solid writing style and can stick with it as they continue to develop. If people are not fond of their writing, then they can figure out what it is that people aren’t catching onto and learn to improve their craft from the reviews they receive.

Yeah negative reviews suck, but if it’s honest and constructive not harmful and attacking then it can help an author.

I didn’t realize how much indie authors in particular can learn and develop based on the reviews they receive. It helps not only grow their readership, but also their writing skill for future novels.

So as both a reader and an author I just want you all to know, reviews are important. They help other readers find books to read and teach authors what readers are looking for or enjoying in the stories they absorb.