I received my first one-star review for one of my books. It happens, but thankfully it wasn’t for the content but instead, how the work transferred over to someone’s Kindle device. I’m not very technological so I don’t know how the final manuscript looks on theirs but when I used mine, it was fine. Indicating the light was too bright, I’m not sure what could have caused that. What I do understand is that all books are not meant for electronic reading. Ones that have a lot of pictures are nice to share on devices such as Kindle so the pictures can be color. Printing color books cost a lot of money which is why you usually see black and white when the focus is on the text over the photography. This book does feature some photographs where I figured a Kindle or other e-reader device would be nice to show the photographs in color as well as to be able to zoom into certain pictures. Well, not every book was meant to be shown electronically but I’ll keep working on a way.
With what I just said on my mind, I wanted to mention the importance of reviews...well, good reviews, that is. So, with a one-star review hindering future sales, the importance of reviews is key to increasing not only sales for an author, but exposure. Please remember, if you read a book and enjoy it, please share the love with the author and let them know by leaving a review. Also, the more reviews a book gets, the more willing the company, for example, Amazon, will promote the work – in essence helping the author make more sales. And hey, if you don’t like the book, let them know kindly with constructive criticism. What I learned early in writing and taking writing courses was constructive criticism, even though less harsh, helps not only tell the author what they did wrong but more so a reasoning behind it and what they could do better next time. You can’t fix something if all someone does is bash it so even though the one-star review hurts and I wish they would have been more lenient in the rating, the criticism being as constructive as it was, helps me better the book and final product. But, also, please help an author (like me) and if you’ve enjoyed something you read, please leave a review.
