Praise from Across the Pond for "Journal"
Amazon.com has websites not just in the U.S, but all over the world. Many of those sites do offer my novels for sale. I never expected to sell any outside the States – after all, the books are in a language that's not native to most of those countries. But I've been surprised to note that I actually have sold a few copies of A Journal of the Crazy Year offshore. A few readers in places as far away as Brazil, Italy, Germany, the U.K., Australia, and even Japan have bought copies. I haven't done any marketing in those places – I wouldn't know how to begin – and I'm stumped as to how readers there find the product, but a few have.
I got curious to learn whether those overseas sites also offer reader reviews, and if so, if they're different from those that appear on the U.S. site. Upon checking this out, I was very pleased to find two reviews on Amazon's Great Britain website that I didn't know about, and both were great.
One U.K. reader gave A Journal of the Crazy Year a Five Star rating and wrote the following:
"A different twist to an apocalyptic novel. Well written and the technical and medical details were explained in layman's terms and were done with the right balance. Flesh eating zombies, human trees, the mad are sane and the sane are mad, and with humour thrown in to create a very readable and believable book. Could a comet affect the world as in the book? Who knows, but it does make you think of the possibility.... Look forward to more novels from this author ."
Another gave it a Four Star rating, and wrote:
"This was a great book, newly published in October 2013 and I am happy to have discovered it. It deserves some attention. It is good enough to be considered to be published in hard copy. If I had some niggles it would be that it goes along pretty fast and there could be more on the living aspects like food and heating like some other post apocalyptic books. There could also have been more encounters with survivors. This could have been much longer and then I would be very happy. I would like to buy a sequel."
The book was on the upper end of the word count range that most sci-fi publishers say they accept, especially for first-time novelists, so to hear a reader say he or she wanted MORE is pretty gratifying.
There's also a fabulous Five Star review on the U.K. site that the author, a Top 500 reviewer, was kind enough to cross-post manually on both the U.S. and Canadian sites (I'm not selling a thing in Canada – maybe they don't like zombies!) So with all that going on, my U.K. rating is a 4.7 overall, which is higher than here in the States.
Not every U.S. review has been positive, of course, nor would I expect that to be the case. I got curious to see how really good, widely respected sci-fi books do in comparison, so I checked out a couple by my favorite author, Robert Heinlein. I was astonished to see that my second favorite book of his, Farnham's Freehold, only has a 3.8 rating. His most famous and widely acclaimed book, Stranger in a Strange Land – which won a Hugo!! – only has a 4, and a total of 67 people slammed it with a 1-star review. Many (me among them) consider Heinlein the greatest sci-fi writer of all time. So his scores sort of put things in perspective; obviously, you can't please everyone. Of course, Stranger in a Strange Land" has 875 reader ratings in the U.S. to my 9. That gives me something to shoot for!
And toward that end – I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If you read a book and like it – my book, or anyone's – the greatest kindness you can bestow is to go to the book listing where you bought it, and give that author a good review. They really do matter. (And I'll have more to say on that later – I'm working on a piece about the first anniversary of my attempt to reinvent myself as an author.)
I got curious to learn whether those overseas sites also offer reader reviews, and if so, if they're different from those that appear on the U.S. site. Upon checking this out, I was very pleased to find two reviews on Amazon's Great Britain website that I didn't know about, and both were great.
One U.K. reader gave A Journal of the Crazy Year a Five Star rating and wrote the following:
"A different twist to an apocalyptic novel. Well written and the technical and medical details were explained in layman's terms and were done with the right balance. Flesh eating zombies, human trees, the mad are sane and the sane are mad, and with humour thrown in to create a very readable and believable book. Could a comet affect the world as in the book? Who knows, but it does make you think of the possibility.... Look forward to more novels from this author ."
Another gave it a Four Star rating, and wrote:
"This was a great book, newly published in October 2013 and I am happy to have discovered it. It deserves some attention. It is good enough to be considered to be published in hard copy. If I had some niggles it would be that it goes along pretty fast and there could be more on the living aspects like food and heating like some other post apocalyptic books. There could also have been more encounters with survivors. This could have been much longer and then I would be very happy. I would like to buy a sequel."
The book was on the upper end of the word count range that most sci-fi publishers say they accept, especially for first-time novelists, so to hear a reader say he or she wanted MORE is pretty gratifying.
There's also a fabulous Five Star review on the U.K. site that the author, a Top 500 reviewer, was kind enough to cross-post manually on both the U.S. and Canadian sites (I'm not selling a thing in Canada – maybe they don't like zombies!) So with all that going on, my U.K. rating is a 4.7 overall, which is higher than here in the States.
Not every U.S. review has been positive, of course, nor would I expect that to be the case. I got curious to see how really good, widely respected sci-fi books do in comparison, so I checked out a couple by my favorite author, Robert Heinlein. I was astonished to see that my second favorite book of his, Farnham's Freehold, only has a 3.8 rating. His most famous and widely acclaimed book, Stranger in a Strange Land – which won a Hugo!! – only has a 4, and a total of 67 people slammed it with a 1-star review. Many (me among them) consider Heinlein the greatest sci-fi writer of all time. So his scores sort of put things in perspective; obviously, you can't please everyone. Of course, Stranger in a Strange Land" has 875 reader ratings in the U.S. to my 9. That gives me something to shoot for!
And toward that end – I've said it before, and I'll say it again. If you read a book and like it – my book, or anyone's – the greatest kindness you can bestow is to go to the book listing where you bought it, and give that author a good review. They really do matter. (And I'll have more to say on that later – I'm working on a piece about the first anniversary of my attempt to reinvent myself as an author.)
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