Why Is No One Reviewing Your Book?

Why do people bombard restaurants with reviews and ignore writers?

Wearing one of my other hats I have just finished writing reviews on Trip Advisor of places, mostly restaurants, I visited on holiday.

I enjoy trying to come up with something interesting and witty that gives a flavour of the venue, and provides useful information. It’s fun and it hones my writing skills.

It’s also a good chance for payback. If I enjoyed the experience I can try and help that business by encouraging other people to eat there. If it was awful, I can write about the cold food, poor service and extortionate bill.

You might have noticed that I picked the two opposites of enjoyable and awful. People tend to write reviews when they either love something or hate it. Even as a writer, I find it difficult to put. ‘OK but not great’, into an interesting sentence . Most people don’t bother or just hit two or three stars and move on.

But what if we had got chatting to the waiter, felt as if we had got to know them a little? We had a good time but the food wasn’t great. Ah, now there’s an idea for a review.

Before expanding that to writers reviews we need a few numbers. If only twenty people visit a restaurant every day that is still 140 per week; 560 per month. If only one percent leave a review that is still five plus a month. The average sales on Amazon are 250-300 books per year (Elite Authors) but an often quoted figure is that 90% of authors sell less than 100 books per year.

Applying the one percent theory that is one review per year.

Now it gets worse. And before you rush to sign up - there’s no quick fix.