I’m now only days away from launching my latest novel and I’m so nervous, excited, busy, and tense about it all at the same time.  But I’m also focused on seeing how well I can test a few theories about social media, Amazon, Ranking systems, and a host of other things.

As someone who’s been involved in publishing many other people’s books over the years too, it’s interesting to note how things are changing in the publishing world, and what additional tools authors now have.  So that brought me to thinking about how hard it must have been years before the internet to have written and produced a book, published it, and marketed it.

We are so lucky with many options for getting our material into the hands of our readers, and then also finding out what they thought of our efforts.  No longer do you have to hope the mailman brings a stack of fan mail to your door, you can read reviews as soon as they are posted.  But then of course so can everyone else. If they are bad reviews, that can be a real blow to any artists self esteem.

But the reviews are the best way anyone has of knowing what readers liked and how well an author did or didn’t live up to their readers’ expectations.   And because readers have so many easy ways to convey their feedback it’s worth encouraging this – yes even the negative stuff – so that we writers can take that information and use it to form our next work.

So – if you have read a book you really enjoyed recently, please be kind enough to jump onto Amazon and Goodreads and post a comment.  It will only take a minute, and will be worth a lot more to the author.

And – five, four, three, two, one… yes my novel is out in only three more days – just in time for Christmas holiday reading.   Please remember to share your reviews too wont you. The build up to the launch is one thing, and then I will be nervously biting my nails awaiting the first reviews.

Writing a book is only a small part of the journey – The launch and feedback are just as big a part of the project too.

Thanks, and happy holiday reading where ever you are next week,

Dixie

 

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