Over the past two years, I have done book reviews sporadically on my blog. Mostly the reviews were for detective/mystery novels by well-known authors. As an indie author, I avoided reading work by other indie authors. I made some exceptions early on reading books by Nicholas Rossis and my good high school friend Nick Davis. Both of those reading experiences were positive.
Lately, I read works by John Howell, an author and blogger well known to many of you. I enjoyed reading his work and I believe the reviews I posted resulted in some positive exposure for John.
This led me to approaching the reading of work by indie authors in a different light. I’m going to continue to read and review work by indie authors as another outlet for helping the community. I am going to lay out some ground rules, however:
- I will not have a set schedule for reviewing indie works
- I will not accept requests to review books. I want it to be spontaneous and something I continue to enjoy
- If a book is not at a a certain level of quality in terms of formatting, story telling, grammar, etc., I will likely not finish it and will not post a review.
I really want to continue to help indie authors and I think posting negative reviews will defeat that purpose.
Anyway, I’m already in the process of reading an indie author’s book and will be posting a review sometime this week. Hopefully some of you who do not generally post reviews will emulate this process and pick up one of my books or another indie author that needs some exposure.
If you have thoughts on this, please let me know.
Author Don Massenzio 
Same rules I use, Don – Requests from authors, to read their works, are gently, but firmly, turned down, otherwise, I’ll feel under pressure and not enjoy what I read. 😀
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Thanks Chris. That makes me feel better.
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I do read other indie authors and leave reviews on Goodreads or on my blog but yes, they are sporadic for me too as so much writing and editing to do on my own works in progress.
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I like that approach, Adele. I have been trying to do the same thing. It’s nice to read someone else’s work and take a break from repeatedly reading my own.
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I agree there, Don. Sometimes the words of mine bounce off the page and hit me in the face, not literally thank goodness. 🙂
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Yes, I do read books by other Indie authors. I don’t care for certain genres, but other than that if the book interests me I will read it and leave a review and comment about it. I will never leave a bad review if I don’t care for the book I don’t leave a review.
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It’s good to know that I’m not alone in the philosophy of not leaving a bad review
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I try to read as many indie authors as I can. I love supporting other indie authors, and always appreciate when other authors read my book. In my writing group which has about 250 members, the rule of thumb is if you aren’t going to give the book a 5 or 4 star review then don’t review it. The stars matter on Amazon and its not productive to criticize another author on Amazon and Goodreads. Im not one to give a bad review anyway, but I like that it’s a norm for the writing group. It creates an air of support as we all want to have our books read.
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This makes me feel so much better. Thanks, Alexis.
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Reblogged this on Anna Dobritt — Author.
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Thanks, Anna.
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I think you’re right to just just review ANY books. They need to be in your genre in order for the review to have credibility.
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I agree with this. If you go into reading a book knowing you’re not into the genre, it is a much larger hurdle for the author to win you over.
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But I do go out of the way to review Indy authors who write in my genres, fantasy and YA.
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That’s very generous of you
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I have started reading books by other Indie authors but if I don’t like the book I wouldn’t leave a review.
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I’m glad to hear this from you and others.
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This is a great approach. Thank you.
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I do try to reciprocate but generally not by reviewing, but in other ways. My head is too full of nonsense most of the time.
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You must be a writer. I try to dump as much nonsense as I can onto the pages of books.
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😀 That would make for good reading!
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I hope so.
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I add them to a list then purchase the ones within genres I enjoy, then I post a review. I never expect a return on investment, but I like to add to the community of indie authors if I can help in some part. Sometimes I stumble across great writing and potential, sometimes not so much.
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That’s a great way to approach it. Thanks for stopping by.
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