Book Giveaways and Other Futile Actions

I suppose all writers have at least one issue they swim upstream on, and for me it’s handing out books for free to get reviews. Reviews are precious, it’s true! And even the people who claim they loved your novel to pieces act like you're asking them to stick pins in their eyes when you request that they review the book on Amazon or Goodreads.

That’s a phenomenon I can’t help anyone with, even myself. If I broke down on the highway an hour outside of town, I know there are people who would not hesitate to come pick me up and give me a ride home, but if I asked them to take eight seconds of their life and say “Great read!” on Amazon, and hit five stars, they would act like I was asking them to drink poison. Wish I understood why it goes that way, but I don’t think any of us ever will.

This is why writers are tempted to make desperate moves, and it is my firm belief that “giveaways” do nothing but devalue your work. This is particularly true where reviews are concerned.

I’ve been studying this for a long, long…long time! Some of the worst reviews I see would never have been published were it not for the fact that the author gave the person a book for free in exchange for a review. I literally wanted to cry the other day when I was reading reviews of a very enjoyable historical fiction book, and was trying to figure out why the rating was mediocre. When I took out all the reviews that were done in exchange for a free book, the star rating went from 3.75 to 4.33. That may not sound like a big difference, but believe me, it’s a big difference. The closer you get from the middle of the bell-shaped curve ( three stars) the better, and this great book was literally dragged down by freebie reviews.

Some people might argue that maybe I just thought the book was great because it was written by an author I know. That’s not true. I actually became friends with the author AFTER I read her books, and I wanted to get to know her BECAUSE I liked her books. I’ve read historical fiction for over 40 years, so hopefully I’m a pretty good judge of what’s good quality fiction in that genre. This author writes good quality fiction. If I were her, I would not have given out the free copies to get reviews. All it did was drag her rating down. And then…how do you get it back up? You still need more reviews. To me, it’s a self-created problem that you then have to come up with a solution for.

I just lost 16 legitimate reviews for Hot Winter Sun because of Amazon's incompetent AI software that goes on occasional rampages to rip down perfectly legitimate reviews that it decides, in it's AI stupid pea brain, are "fake." My impulse is to "get those back" by running around the neighborhood handing out coupons for free Kindle downloads with the understanding that the recipient leave a review. But, I won't. Because I know I will never get the reviews.

Like I said, I’ve studied this a long, long time, and it’s an odd phenomenon, but the majority of “I’m giving this review in exchange for a free copy, thank you very much for the free copy” reviews are mediocre. I can’t tell you why, I can only tell you it’s a fact. If you don’t believe me, do your own research. It takes a long time to get real numbers because you have to log it for a significant length of time to determine an average, but you’ll see what I saw: some of the worst reviews are generated from freebies. My advice? Don’t do it.