review my stuff!

Let’s talk reviews.

I can’t emphasize how important it is in 2025 for readers to review things on Amazon (and also GoodReads, but for the purposes of this discussion, I’m focusing on Amazon). The reason why is, the more reviews a book gets, the more prominence it’ll get in Amazon’s various algorithms, particularly once you hit 50 reviews. If you want to help a writer out, write a review on Amazon and help that author get to the magic number of 50. That’ll make the book turn up higher in searches and make it more likely that people will see it, which in turn makes it more likely that people will buy it.

If you like my stuff, please go over there and review it. It doesn’t have to be a long or detailed review, but it really does make a difference in engagement. I particularly would love to see reviews of Supernatural Crimes Unit: NYPD Book 1 for obvious reasons, but what actually prompted this post is the paucity of reviews for some shared-world anthologies I’ve been involved in.

Hildy Silverman’s PRISM: The Mission Files (a bunch of related sci-fi thriller stories about the search for strange artifacts around the world in the 1980s) has all of one review, and the three Phenomenons volumes from Michael Jan Friedman (a bunch of related stories about superheroes in an alternate present) have, in total, two reviews, all of the first book — the second and third anthos have no reviews.

Among them, these four volumes have stories, not just by me, Hildy, and MJF, but also brilliant screenwriter Dan Hernandez, award-winning author/comics writer Alex Segura, and New York Times bestsellers Dayton Ward and the late great Peter David, as well as Christopher D. Abbott, Ilsa J. Bick, Michael A. Burstein, Russ Colchamiro, D.H. Eisenberg, Mary Fan, Robert Greenberger, Glenn Hauman, Heather E. Hutsell, Paul Kupperberg, Ron Marz, Aaron Rosenberg, Omar Spahi, Geoffrey Thorne, and Marie Vibbert!

So please, if you’ve read any of these five books, please pop over to Amazon and say what you thought. You’ll be glad you did — and so will we!