Author incomes tumble

The Authors Guild suggested that Amazon’s dominance is partly responsible for loss of earnings for US authors. 

Amazon says the findings are flawed.

The report was published in  early 2019, but I never saw it at the time, which is why it is interesting now when I have been looking at my own stats.  On the whole I made more sales prior to 2014 than I do now. One thing the report does not consider is the vast number of books that are now self-published. One report I read stated over 7,000 a day! 

The Authors Guild said the median writing income in 2017 fell 42% from 2009 and pointed out the growing dominance of Amazon as a reason for this. The company now controls 72% of the online book market in the US and keeps costs down and takes a large percentage, plus marketing fees, forcing publishers to pass on their losses to authors.

Amazon disagrees and points out significant differences between the data it compared in its recent survey and years prior, with many of the survey’s conclusions flawed or contradictory. It claims earnings increased almost 17% for traditionally published authors and 89% for self-published authors, and that full-time authors saw their median income rise 13% since 2013.

Read the full report by Alison Flood

Questions, oh questions

I don't know if I should believe Stat Counter.
Today it tells me that some two hundred  people have viewed my blog yesterday, yet when I look at the behind pages, they record only 65. So what exactly is going on?

I've often wondered if the views each post gets on Facebook are recorded. If they are, that might account for the difference. If anyone knows the answer, please tell me - it would be good to know for sure.

It seems that independent book publishers are still going to the wall. The latest to close its door is Samhain, one of the bigger names in the US. I had two books with a smaller independent and that closed in January after 17 years in business, so I have two books waiting to be given a new lease of life, but I don't think I shall look for another independent publisher. They all seem to be rather precarious. Better to publish my books myself via Amazon Kindle. That way I know I am in control, but a .curious question came into my head the other day.

 A case in point is Banners of Alba, the paperback version. The rights came back to me when the independent publisher closed, but I see the paperback is still up there on Amazon. Amazon say they keep every edition up as a record and it has a silly price on it, but supposing someone wanted to buy it. With the e-publishing process, Amazon could print a paperback copy of Banners whenever they liked and I would never know. I am not in control of that particular item as Write Words, Inc went ahead with the paperback some years back. Is there a way of getting that paperback title removed from Amazon? another question is - what happens when I die? Assuming that my books would still sell, do Amazon get to keep the royalties? Can I will my rights to someone else?

In the search for a good way to promote, I've been doing banners, like the one above. They're fun to do and don't take a lot of time, and hopefully they avoid the readers response of "oh, not that old ad again."

Publishing these days

Spotted this article today and saved it here so I can pop back and re-read at my leisure. It may be that other writers missed it, too! and I'm sure they will be interested. It seems author Jane Holland has a blog called 52 ways to write a novel (which I did not know but will now follow) and back in March this year an argument about indie/self publishing sprang up there.

http://52waystowrite.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/on-self-publishing-bad-advice-and-being.html

Something I noted this morning - the Historical Novel Society has redefined the way it reviews books. Evidently there are to be no distinctions between traditionally published and self published, but in order to climb out from beneath the piles of submissions, the criteria for earning a review are to be tighter, higher or just more rigorous, depending which word you prefer. I saw this on Facebook this morning, and now - typically - I cannot find the piece! I believe it was Alison Morton who placed the article, which may make it easier to find, but if not then I'm sorry Alison.

Ten minutes later, again in typical Facebook fashion, I fell across Alison's post and hastily copied the link. Here it is:

https://historicalnovelsociety.org/our-reviews/indie-reviews/

Books and Spikes

If you want a detailed report on how UK publishers are doing, then check out "Review of 2014" by Philip Jones in the Bookseller 20 January, 2015.

Here's a swift gloss -

"e-book sales outpaced print sales during the year."

Domestic e-book sales for Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins and Pan Macmillan totalled 49m units in 2014, a 15.3% rise on 2013. There was an 18% rise in 2012, and a huge 105% gain in 2012 (on 2011).

There are and probably always will be, spikes. The e-book market rate of growth was exaggerated in 2012 by the Fifty Shades trilogy, Spikes like this can play havoc with a companies figures, skew general trends and drive analysts crazy.

Independently published titles are growing, but no one has a way of tracking the rate of growth.

HarperCollins UK chief executive Charlie Redmayne says the traditional Christmas sales spike has "all but" disappeared. Waterstones m.d. James Daunt said virtually the same thing two weeks ago.

The other thing of interest is what everyone is calling the "print renaissance." The book trade has "rekindled its love affair with the physical book." 

Has digital helped revive and reinvent print?

The shift to tablet reading and the rise of subscription services, will likely change the narrative again. As Kindle's Russ Grandinetti suggested at Digital Book World last week, nothing is stable. Let's hope the book business is doing better than we all thought.

Complaints about Kindle Unlimited

Best selling American writer H M Ward has something to say about Kindle Unlimited.

"Ok, some of you already know, but I had my serials in it for 60 days and lost approx 75% of my income. Thats counting borrows and bonuses. My sales dropped like a stone. The number of borrows was higher than sales. They didn't compliment each other, as expected.

Taking a huge ass pay cut while I'm still working my butt off, well that's not ok. And KU effected my whole list, not just KU titles. At the time of enrollment I had about 60 titles total.

I planned on giving it 90 days, but I have a kid in the hospital for long term care and I noticed my spending was going to exceed my income-by a lot. I couldn't wait and watch thing plummet further. I pulled my books. That was on Nov 1, & since then my net revenue has gone up. I'm now at 50% of where I was pre-KU. During the time I was in KU, I had 2 new releases. Neither preformed vastly different than before. They actually earned far less (including borrows).

This model needs to be changed for it to work. Authors shouldn't be paid lottery style. For this system to work we need a flat rate for borrows, borrowed or not borrowed (not this 10% crap), and it needs to be win win for the reader AND the writer. That is the crux of the matter.

Id like to see Amazon create something new, something better instead of falling in step with Scribd and Oyster.

Example: subscribe to an AUTHOR. Easy, clear. When Author X has a new book it automatically gets sent to your kindle, & the card provided is charged.

As a reader, I'd want that. As a writer, I'd want that.

Amazon, stop following other companies and break the mold.

Ok, I'm done ranting. Back to writing."

I'd notice my sales have gone way down since Kindle Unlimited appeared on the scene, but thought there could be many causes for this. It is reassuring to see other top-selling authors complaining about the same thing. And complaining they are!

Here's a link all independent authors using Amazon should read.
http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,202571.0/all.html

There's also a link to this article on the new blog Passive Voice over to the right hand side of this blog.

VAT ALERT!

Usually I find out about new legislation far too late to do anything about it, but this time, thanks to Facebook, I'm up there with the news! There is a fiendish plan afoot to place VAT on digital products - yes, that will mean e-books!

New EU VAT regulations come into force in Jan 2015.

Micro-businesses selling Ebooks direct to customers will forfeit their VAT exemption threshold by doing digital business in Europe.

"From 1 Jan 2015, the new ruling means that should you make a sale to the EU (how one can prevent that with online services is not clear) from the first £1 of revenue your business earns you will need to be VAT registered in the UK and under the VAT MOSS Europe-wide scheme – meaning that you will immediately have to apply VAT to all your services, including those in the UK.

Furthermore, this this means a quarterly obligation to submit VAT returns, increasing the accounting burden significantly; as well as, the cost and complexity involved with meeting the letter of the law regarding the capture and retention of evidence of its customers’ location will bring (which needs to be retained for 10 years)."

In 3 years I have sold less than a dozen books to readers in Europe.

I don't know how I can stop them buying, and I certainly don't want VAT on my other sales in the UK.

Click on the link and sign to petition against it -
https://www.change.org/p/vince-cable-mp-uphold-the-vat-exemption-threshold-for-businesses-supplying-digital-products

Final edits and Createspace

I'm up to Chapter Thirty in my "final edit" of Capture a Queen. What I've discovered on this go through is that I'm getting really good at combining two sentences into one, and doing it more elegantly than I used to. Practice does improve one's technique, if not make it quite perfect yet! I've also found that around chapter 27 I've screwed up the time line. Things happen out of sequence, so that will need a major re-shuffle. I'm going to work it out on a paper copy and then transfer the finished result to the computer. Otherwise I'd always be afraid I'd deleted something instead of transferring it.

I've put final edit in quotation marks because of course this is a major operation. First of all it's on
the computer, and I have several runs at each chapter, tweaking and pruning as I go. When I'm finally happy with it, I print it out. The pages go into a file, and I'm not going to read them until I've got to the end. Then I'll sit down and read it as I would a Rebus or any other novel. Things are bound to leap out at me, even at that stage. I shall attempt to read it aloud but have to admit to feeling silly unless I'm sure I'm alone in the house. Tim doesn't mind. I think he even likes it. He goes to sleep, anyway!

Smoothing out the time sequence among three major characters is going to be difficult, but it has to be done, otherwise it will irritate the reader. I'm thinking about Createspace this time, to give me a paperback as well as an e-book, so I'm reading up on how to do it in between bursts of editing. I suppose I have nothing to lose except my time and effort, and who knows? It might pay dividends. It seems to be the way forward at the moment, and when changes in publishing are speeding up I'd better not miss the chance.

How much do writers earn?

There is a survey that claims 54% of traditionally-published authors and almost 80% of go-it-alone writers earn less than $1,000 (£600) a year. You may have read about in the January 2014 press.

The 9,210 respondents slotted into four groups: aspiring, self-published only, traditionally-published only, and hybrid (both self-published and traditionally-published). More than 65% of those who filled out the survey described themselves as aspiring authors, with 18% self-published, 8% traditionally-published and 6% saying they were pursuing hybrid careers.

77% of Self-published authors make $1,000 (£600) or less a year;

Towpath at Crinan

 0.7% of self-published writers earn more than $100,000 a year

53.9% of traditionally-published authors make $1,000 (£600) or less a year;

1.3% of traditionally-published  earn more than $100,000  a year

43.6% of hybrid authors make $1,000 (£600) or less a year;

5.7% of hybrid writers reported making more than $100,000 a year from their writing. 

Put like that, it sounds a soul destroying exercise if money is the main object of your writing. However,  only 20% of self-pubbed authors and 25% of traditional authors thought making money extremely important. On the other hand,  56% of self-pubbers, and almost 60% of traditional authors, thought it extremely important to "publish a book that people will buy."

The top 2% or so of authors make a good living and the most successful authors – including self-published – make a tremendous amount of money. Maybe that is the lure. We all dream that we'll be one of the lucky ones.

Some writers look to money for validation. If you self-publish, without the prestige of being chosen by a major publisher, then the money is a good substitute. It isn't the only motivation, but matters on many levels. One self-pubbed author thinks the survey is  skewed (my words, not his) because it pits self-pubbed authors with a year or two's experience against traditional authors who spent twenty years in the publishing game. Self-publishing allows authors to learn and hone their skills, and he thinks many are paying bills with money they've earned by writing - and that should be celebrated. 

Read the complete article by Alison Flood: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jan/17/writers-earn-less-than-600-a-year

Amazon's latest deal

Have you heard that a new deal allows independent booksellers to sell Kindles and get a 10% commission on e-book sales with that device for up to 2 years after the sale?

Called Amazon Source, this deal is only available in the US so far, but there are suspicions that it won't be long before it moves across the Atlantic.

Tim Walker of Walker bookshops wonders why Amazon have taken this step, and suggests that selling Kindle devices would simply help convert people to using Kindles.

David Dawkins manages Pages of Hackney. he won't stock the Kindle and wouldn't want his customers to think he as trading with the bad guys.

Sheila O'Reilly of Dulwich Books thinks she couldn't morally stock Kindles because the company does not pay appropriate taxes in this country.

Jane Streeter of the Bookcase thinks it was inevitable that Amazon wants to partner the independents because Kobo offered a similar service. The 10% commission offered by Amazon is said to be a little higher than Kobo's offer.

Lisa Campbell's article quotes opinions of bookshop owners that I believe operate in the south, possibly all in London - though I have not checked this to be sure. My thought is that there may be many small independents in the midlands and the north who will be so close to closure that they will clutch at this as a lifeline when and if it is offered. Perhaps for that, Amazon deserves some credit? What do you think? At the very least I have a smidgen of admiration for the company that keeps on coming up with new ideas.
Here's the link to the article:

http://www.thebookseller.com/news/uk-indies-we-wont-stock-kindle.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Current publishing in the UK

Elvet Bridge - the other side

Here are the current stats for  UK book sales, comparing Jan-June 2012 with the same period 2011. The UK Publishers Association states that the value of total sales of books (all formats) has increased by 7.1%

Sales of digital fiction increased by 188% in value terms

Overall digital sales (fiction, non-fiction and children’s books) increased to £84m against £30m last year; 12.9% of the total value of sales, up from 7.2%

CEO of the Publishers’ Association thinks these figures indicate that publishing in the UK continues to perform well in spite of the recession and that digital sales demonstrate that readers and publishers are embracing e-book reading.
I think this is good news, too! Looking at Sales Reports for  Self-Published Kindle books - which is fascinating and can soon become addictive! - it is astonishing to see the difference in UK sales and US sales. Of course, the populations are so very different, something like 62 million against 220 million (the last time I looked), very nearly 4 times larger. Heaven knows I may not be typical, but my US sales are between 2 and 3 times greater than my UK sales.
Everyone is waiting to see what impact India will have, since the US reports now include sales in that country, which has another huge population. Given that there may only be a small percentage of Indian residents who can afford to buy a Kindle and books through it, there may not be a great difference. It is also said that India has a very good range of books at very low prices, and that most book publishers prices will be way too high to compete. We shall see!

This is the link to the original report: http://www.thebookseller.com/trackback/177906

 

Wengen, Picoult and e-books

A week ago today we decided we wouldn’t ski as the runs were still treacherous because of cloud in the valleys. Instead we went up on the train and walked back to Wengen dorf – a distance of about 10 kilometres. I enjoyed it. Much more time to look around and enjoy the pretty scenery, the pace energetic enough to keep us warm, and the route mostly a downhill drop of 2,500 feet from Kleine Scheidegg. Lots of sledges whizzing about, though none of them made up more than halfway up the hill in the picture!

Sledging

Jodi Picoult, one of the best-selling female writers, happens to be in the UK promoting her latest offering. In the Sunday Times, 5/02/2012, she suggests that electronic publishing may be far from a salvation for writers as so many claim. Writers, she says, get a smaller chunk of the profit when a book is downloaded rather than selling in print format. “The difference could cut their income by as much as a third.”

I must admit my understanding was that e-book writers were offered a larger chunk of the royalties than print contracts. What do others think?

Picoult hopes writers will try and revive interest in the printed book among younger readers, and to that end has collaborated with her 16 year-old daughter in writing a book for young adults. She will be appearing at the Oxford Literary Festival on March 28th. I heard her speak at the Hexham Book Festival two years ago and enjoyed her performance. She speaks clearly, is entertaining and wonderfully professional. When her time was up she smiled, bid us all goodbye and exited smartly, leaving us all staring at the gap on the stage.

E-Publishing

frozen delights

I should have entitled my last post as E-Publishing rather than Self-Publishing, and I'm surprised I didn't get a host of comments pointing out my basic mistake.

So let me say right away that self-publishing is either
a)Vanity publishing or
b) publishing yourself via Amazon Kindle.  (I've not investigated Smashwords, Nooks, Kobos and the like yet. My learning curve has reached astronomical heights in figuring out the Kindle process, and I'm resting on my laurels for a while.)



I think we all know that in Vanity Publishing, the author pays someone to publish his or her work. Using Amazon Kindle is different in that the author pays no one, and has to do all the work of getting the ms up there as a buyable commodity. if you can write good tales but know next to nothing about  formatting and using unfamiliar software, then the obvious route is via Vanity Publishing. For those who have some knowledge of software and not enough dosh to pay someone to do all the hard work, then the Kindle route is preferable.Both situations provide an open door for a lot of authors who would otherwise never get published, who perhaps should not be published - but it also provides a springboard for those who have a good story to offer but find that today's recession-ridden publishing world simply won't take a risk on them. As an aside, it seems that there are a lot of people in the world who want a fast, cheap read that has few pretentions to literary fiction. As in everything else, the range is wide and there is a market at every level.

The independent e-publishers, on the other hand, are more willing to risk taking on an unknown author. They vet the offered work and reject or accept according to their varied criteria.Their editing levels are varied, too, and so are their royalty rates and contractual demands. But it must be remembered that the range is wide, and while one end offers low quality writing for sale, the opposite end offers high quality.

Self Publishing

There is still a lot of confusion about self-publishing out in the writing world and I suspect the lines are blurring again. There are various options:

•  Pay someone to publish your book for you. This used to be called vanity publishing. Basically it doesn't matter how good or bad your book is, there is always someone who will publish it simply because you are paying them to do it.
• Small independant firms, mostly in the US, may choose to take up your book and publish it in e-format. This route requires that you submit the usual partial chapters, synopsis, cover letter and sometimes a plan for how you intend to promote your book if it is published, by e-mail. Everything is done by e-mail. They pay all publishing costs, and you receive a royalty on sales. Editing standards are as variable as the reliability of the company, and the range goes from very good to dismal.
• Larger independant firms, still mostly in the US, who have been around for a decade and have a stable of known authors on their books. They are as hard to break into as the big publishers. Submissions are often closed for months at a time.
• Then there is the fairly new avenue of going with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing programme. For this, you need a fairly good knowledge of formatting, but it is possible to upload a Word programme ms. onto Kindle all by yourself. You decide how much to charge for the book, provide the cover, write the blurb, and promote it yourself. You are managing director of your own publishing company, but you are also the skivvy who checks the books. Royalties depend on sales, but it costs you nothing to put your book up there.  Great for backlist, or for those tired of submitting, waiting, and getting rejections; or those books where the publisher has suddenly gone out of business, as happened with me. 

E-publishing row

http://tiny.cc/h090f  and http://tiny.cc/hziaz

There’s a storm brewing about major publishers banding together to prevent e-books being sold at low prices. You may already be fully informed, but if not, try the two links to get the general idea. For me, the beauty of e-books is the convenience, coupled with the low price. If publishers expect me to pay the same price for an e-book as I do for a paper copy, then I’ll opt for the paper copy every time. There’s nothing to love in an e-book but the story, but just looking at a paper copy with a decent cover gives me pleasure. I can’t look at an electronic copy, can I? I can only look at a Kindle. I wonder if people to who buy e-books buy only those stories that will entertain them for an hour or two and are then prepared to move on to the next. In other words, reading fills and empty hour or two, but the story is instantly forgettable. Whereas I want to be able to buy novels I want to read and keep, perhaps read more than once, and buy them cheaper than a paper copy. Somehow I can’t see the two desires being fulfilled by the same system. Maybe I’m asking for too much?

Sackcloth and Ashes

Scanning the Bookseller today, I found this link about author Lloyd Shephard and ended up reading the whole article in the Guardian -

"This time last year, I was metaphorically invited to the only party I've ever wanted to be seen at. My first novel, The English Monster, was picked up by an agent, and then by a publisher, Simon and Schuster. It hits the streets in March 2012.

I've made it, I thought to myself as I clutched my invite to the most exclusive set of all. I'm going to be a published author.

So imagine my surprise - nay, dismay - to discover that publishing's streets were not paved with gold, but stalked by the anxious, the gloomy, the suicidal.

"Publishing's dead!" shouted men in sackcloth on Bloomsbury street corners. I had arrived at the party, but the coats were being handed out, the drink had dried up and the hostess had collapsed.

So I asked myself (somewhat desperately, positively naively): are things really that bad? What is the actual state of book publishing in Britain? Can writers really only look forward to a life of penury? Or should I stick my head in the sand, if only to deaden the sound of commissioning editors weeping into their lattes?

Follow the link - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/aug/30/death-books-exaggerated - it's well worth reading, for both aspiring and published authors.

Promotion is vital these days

I've discovered software on my computer that allows me to make trailers fairly easily. In the last fortnight I've made two, one for SHADOWS, and here's the one that went up last night: Banners Let me know what you think of it! (I think I'd better re-make the original Dark Pool trailer, which now looks crass beside the other two!)

As for writing, I haven't done any for some time. There's no great angst about it; I'm just having a rest from writing every day by dealing with visuals and matching sound to them. It's a pleasurable thing to do and therapeutic, too. It started as promotion for my new release SHADOWS, which isn't three weeks old yet - still a baby! Because I didn't have a publication date, I was fairly laid back about preparing the sort of promotional tours that authors do these days. When I received a date at the beginning of May, it was a bit late to get on blog tour lists, and even then there was a fortnight's delay. I was lucky to have friends who gave me a mention on their blogs!

So I thought trailers might help, and hopefully they will.

E-books

The latest news from America is that ebook sales in February totalled $90.3m or £55.2m. This makes digital books the largest single format in the US for the first time, overtaking paperbacks at $81.2m. In January, ebooks were the second-largest category, behind paperbacks. America's ebooks enjoyed a 202.3% growth in sales in February compared with the same month the previous year. Print books fared much worse. The growth in February was attributed to post-holiday ebook buying from readers given e-reader devices for Christmas. The greater selection of devices and the broader range of ebooks now available also played a part in the increase. Publishing houses cite ebooks as generating fresh interest in 'backlist' titles, books that have been in print for at least a year. E-book readers who enjoy a newly-released book will frequently buy an author's full backlist. Philip Jones, deputy editor of the Bookseller, called the US ebook sales growth a "significant milestone amongst digital milestones which are coming thick and fast", but pointed out that "the ebook figure includes children's, so overall the trade print book market is still bigger than the ebook market". "Ebooks have grown massively, but they do not yet match overall print books and nor is it predicted that they will," said Jones. "The most bullish predictions suggest that ebooks will account for 50% of the US market by 2014 or 2015, and then will probably plateau." In the UK, "we are one year behind now and catching up quite fast", said Jones. He pointed to small UK press Quercus, which publishes the Stieg Larsson trilogy and which announced earlier this month that its ebook sales increased 16-fold in 2010, representing 3% of revenues. Quercus has predicted that its digital revenues could "realistically reach 10% of our total revenues over the course of the current year". Read the full article here The pic is driving into Melmerby with the Penines rising behind the village.

Fictionwise and Barnes and Noble

Believe it or not the three seagulls lined up beside the ice-cream van at Whitley Bay were not the man's only customers. As we drove away a woman went and bought a fistful of ice-cream cornets. It made my teeth ache to think of eating it on such a cold day.

The news yesterday ~ Barnes & Noble have bought out Fictionwise. I have two titles there and so do many other e-published writers.

Here's a few sentences from the press release:
Barnes & Noble, Inc. the world’s largest bookseller, has acquired Fictionwise, a leader in the e-book marketplace, for $15.7 million in cash. Barnes & Noble said it plans to use Fictionwise as part of its overall digital strategy, which includes the launch of an e-Bookstore later this year.

Headquartered (another of those noun into verb contortions I've been noticing lately) in New Jersey, Fictionwise was founded in 2000 by Steve and Scott Pendergrast. Barnes & Noble intends to keep Fictionwise as a separate business unit and the founders will continue to operate the business.
Barnes & Noble, Inc. operate 799 bookstores in 50 states and (http://www.bn.com/), one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites.

It seems that the bookworld in general is in favour of the move and sees it as another big push for the e-book market. Nathan Bransford, if I'm interpreting his blog comments correctly, sees the worldwide recession as a boost for e-books since they cost considerably than paper books at a time when people have less dosh to spend.
So, maybe a good thing for authors to keep a foot in both camps.

Reviews

I added a comment to Ginger Simpson's blog yesterday along these lines: I have a suspicion that there are people who offer to review via websites because it ensures them a free supply of reading material. Is that so strange?"
After thinking overnight I see nothing wrong in that. Books are expensive things these days. I remembered the few weeks when I offered to review for a well known website. After a test review, I was accepted, and it gave me an astonishing insight into the e-books published today, which is partly what I wanted. I also learned how difficult it is to phrase a review about a book that was not, shall we say, my normal choice of reading material. I got my eyes opened a few time along the way!
Not everyone wants to spend hours reading a book critically enough to be able to put their views up for public consumption afterwards. Thank goodness someone wants to do it, for there are never enough reviewers for the number of books published.
"But they can be a tiny bit biased to their favourite authors and their particular reading tastes." This was always true! Why should it be any different now? I and everyone else I know is biased towards their favourite authors.

"They are not trained to review and evaluate as I hope the reviewers of big nationals are." On reflection, I doubt anyone ever trained to review and evaluate fiction. We all do it at some level, otherwise we would never know what we like and dislike, or where our boundaries lie. The skill comes in being able to express clearly, in 500 words or less, an appraisal of the book without simply saying "I love this book!" Readers want to know why the reviewer loved it. Or hated it.

"So then publishers seek reviewers who will be kind - but is that any better?" At first sight it smacks of authors getting into cliques and giving each other favourable reviews. But it is part of a very professional strategy. Who would deliberately send something to a reviewer who is known to dislike the particular genre? Do that and the book will be ignored, or the review will be painful to read. Every publisher and author hopes to receive a favourable review, and searches for a reviwer who likes their particular genre. Who better than someone who writes in the same genre to understand what's been accomplished?

Reviewing is a strange game. It is possible to have two reviewers give opposing views on the same book, and if they're good at what they do, both will hold nuggets of truth. Authors can learn from good, constructive reviews. On the downside, authors can be incredibly hurt by a negative one. But to be fair to reviewers, it is not their job to tell an author how to restructure the book to make it a winner.

Personally I'm not in favour of anonymous reviews. Someone marked both my titles on Fictionwise as OK, and yet I have glowing reviews of both books.
Who, I wonder was that anonymous person who has forever labelled me as OK?
I'm tempted to bribe a friend to buy a copy just so they have a chance to up the rating! I wonder how many authors do that? Is it allowed to buy your own and put in the rating you want? I must investigate!