An author lives, and dies, on book reviews. It’s how we gauge the interest of the audience, how we write and develop our stories, and what works. Its essential for authors to get reviews, both good and bad.

To give you an example, here is a review of my first novel, Forever Avalon, when it was first published in 2009.

“Nice try, but the book seems to be the effort of someone truly not gifted in the art of writing. Skip this one and save your money.“

Yeah, that hurt a lot. It made me wonder if I even had a future as an author; but I didn’t waiver. I forged ahead, corrected my mistakes, and strived harder to be a better writer.

Did you know that reviews on Amazon determine if you get a higher placement and “pushes” by the algorithms built into the Amazon search engine. That makes reviews even more important.

To be frank, I’ve invested a lot of money in my writing career, from publicity and marketing, to art, editing, and publishing. I consider it an investment in my future career, although my wife has a different opinion. This is why reviews are more important, especially to self-published authors like me.

We are making phone calls, setting up our own book signings, sales, and other events to promote our books. Getting reviews is how we can grow as an author, good or bad. That bad review was really the worst one I ever got, but I took it to heart to make myself a better writer.

I would like all my reviews to be “5 Star” glowing reviews, praising my work, but that’s not the case. I want people to experience the world I created and enjoy it as much as I do. I’ll take the good with the bad, just please, leave a review!

In a final note, I will do exchanges for reviews… book for book… to support my fellow independent authors. Leave a comment or email me to exchange books. Thanks for your support!

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Mark Piggott is the author of the Forever Avalon book series. Forever Avalon is available for purchase as a paperback/ebook at Amazon. The Dark Tides is available for purchase as a paperback/ebook at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and iUniverse publishing. The Outlander War, Book Three of the Forever Avalon series is coming soon from Austin Macauley Publishing.