Finding Reviewers

Finding people to review your book is a lot like throwing a goldfish into a tank with hungry piranhas.

Here you are, the innocent little goldfish, and they, the ravenous piranhas, hold your future in their hands (or fins). If they hate your book, you're eaten, if they love it, you're spared.  (Although on occasion you will actually find a reviewer that will help you fix the problems in your book instead of just saying it sucked.)

The torturous part is waiting for said review, as you're dangled above the tank for an agonizingly long time. In the end, we as authors need reviews. Rarely will a person buy a book that has zero reviews. People are just weird like that, myself included.

I'm wondering what people did before customer reviews. Not to long ago you went into a store and bought something because you thought you might like it. Now you research it on the internet, reading each review before making any decisions. I can't decide if this is a good or bad thing.

Sometimes you get the occasional disgruntled customer that wants nothing more than to torpedo a store because they had a bad personal experience and other times you get spies for the store leaving fake reviews. It's a dog eat dog world out there, or in this case fish eat fish.

It seems everyone has an opinion these days and to make it in the new review saturated world you have to get some of your own. Ugh.