Ten Ubiquitous Tips for Getting Book Reviews, and How Reviews Impact Authors

Staci Troilo

I recently got a book review that I didn’t care for. It was a five-star review, but one of the comments was, in my opinion, way off the mark. Which got me thinking…

• Why would the reviewer give the book five stars if it was lacking in some way?
• Why are there not better criteria for reviews?
• We need reviews as a mark of credibility, but how credible are the reviewers?

I’m not going to say which book of mine I mean or who reviewed it or what comment I didn’t like. I’m bringing all this up because I think we need to have a frank discussion about reviews. I knew I was taking that particular comment personally, so I decided to look at reviews of books I had no stake in. I looked at reviews of bestsellers. You know, books by household names that have hundreds of reviews.

It was…

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