Short little reviews are the best way to promote a friend’s book, whether you liked it or not. Here is a one-star review from a parent regarding my book about Little Red Riding Hood with a Spanish twist, so Little Roja. The story has Roja taking sopa to her abuela’s house while her mama watches telenovelas and can’t do it herself.
“First let me say that I LOVE Susan Elya’s books and we have almost all of them. But this one, my boys ages 3 and 4 don’t like — perhaps too scary. Between throwing hot soup on the wolf’s face and the mom being too busy with watching her soap operas, I wasn’t that fond of it either.”
The version I was told when I was little had a woodman chopping the wolf in half and Grandma stepping out of the split wolf. I didn’t think throwing some hot soup on the wolf seemed that bad, in comparison. But what do I know? That’s why reviews are so helpful to the author, even if they aren’t five stars.
My adult book, which I co-wrote with a friend, needs 50 reviews from verified buyers before Amazon will put it in its search algorithm. Right now, Kama Suture defaults to Kama Sutra, and our book is skipped.
Algorithm sounds like a vice president who didn’t become president because of hanging chads.
But I digress.
We have 54 stories in the book. We gave free copies to everyone who gave us a story. We asked them to give us a review. Many did. Many did not. We are stumped as to why someone wouldn’t take five minutes and do that for us. One woman said she didn’t know how. I’d be happy to go to her house and show her. It’s just an excuse. It still baffles us.
With the thousands and thousands of books on Amazon, we are at a disadvantage. One friend in Arizona tried to leave a review and had a terrible time getting Amazon to let her get to our page. How will a stranger ever find us until we get our 50 reviews?
We have 34 reviews as of today, with six people with free books who promised to leave us one. I know they don’t want to say anything bad if they didn’t like the book (too repetitive), but even a bad review counts towards our 50, so I say, Go for it! Leave us a 3-star, 2-star, 1-star, whatever review you feel.
Little Roja has 71 reviews, and only one is one star. The woman had her reasons. She clearly didn’t know the original story with the wolf getting chopped in half. And moms are humans, too. They need to take a break every now and then and watch their stories on TV. No one is Super Mom. That’s a total burn-out waiting to happen, maybe not when your kids are three and four, but it’s coming. Take a break, Mom, and do something more fun than leaving a bad review.
Unless that’s what really floats your boat.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 