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Showing posts from March 25, 2008

The Problem With Reviews

In the current system, just before a book's release date, an author or a publisher will send out review copies of a book, hoping to generate buzz. They want the book to sell well, from day one. Bloggers across the Internet post a review on their site and their readers, the author hopes, will go out and buy the book. The problem that I see with this is that people who read don't time their purchases around when a publisher releases a book. A few authors may have fans anxiously waiting for the next release, but most authors don't. People who read a lot may go ahead and purchase the book, knowing they will get to it eventually, but many won't buy a book until they are ready to read it. That may be weeks, months or years after the release date. I see so many reviews that I mostly ignore them. I happened to scroll through the reviews at novelreviews.blogspot.com. Most of what I saw didn't interest me, but I noticed a review of My Heart Remembers, from fifteen day...