Book Reviews - It Will Either Make You Or Break You

If there is one thing in the publishing industry that its importance can never be reiterated enough,  it's book reviews. Think of it this way, have you ever bought a novel that didn't have a decent number of reviews and predominately 5 star rating? I can tell you on a personal level that I haven't; and I believe that the majority of you haven't either. Our brains are unfortunately trained to sift for the good stuff based on the opinion of the majority. There is so much content out there, that we could never read it all. So our brain tells us, why even waste your precious time on an underrated/non-rated book. It's the same with movies or Netflix - the majority of us rely on IMDB to get a review score. Below 7.0  rating for a movie - generally it's average entertainment. For a TV Series - I would say it's got to have a score of 8.0 or above to be worth your time. Sad situation but that's the cold hard truth. It's like the Nosedive episode in the Black Mirror series. We rely almost soley on rating parameters as our method of evaluation. In publishing this concept is not Science Fiction, it's reality. Obviously there is a small minority of people that are the exception to this rule but don't rely on it.

The top priority when your book is finally published is to garner reviews and hope they will mostly be 5 star. If you can do this process right, you have decent shot at getting some sales rolling. The Amazon KDP Select program enables you to list your book on a free promotion for 5 days. It will also be part of the Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owner's Lending Library. This can be a great way to initially get some reviews. The only drawback to this program is that your book must be sold exclusively through Amazon for a period of 90 days. Considering that they are the biggest self publishing platform, you've got nothing to lose.

Until your book is published, get reading and post some 5 star reviews for other authors. To pay it back is awesome.