Hello, my Freaky Darlings!

Rejection sucks, but it’s, unfortunately, something we all have to deal with in normal life. It’s something we as writers have to deal with in our personal lives as well as our professional ones. It used to be that you only had to deal with rejection when you submitted a story or novel to an agent or a publisher, but thanks to self-publishing that’s no longer as big a deal as it used to be.

Back in the day if a string of agents or publishers said no then the chances of your writing career being over before it had even begun was a huge possibility. The endless rejection letters were enough to kill off most writers dreams, but now that is no longer the case. Those rejection letters are no longer the death knell to your writing career, but that doesn’t mean we still don’t have to deal with rejection that stings.

Now we deal with the rejection from book bloggers, reviewers, readers, and any other form of rejection in publishing can take. Now if you don’t get enough reviews, your book will simply languish in obscurity. The only tried and true method of selling books is via word of mouth and reviews and the only way to get that is through book bloggers since most traditional media outlets no longer have a book review section.

Book bloggers have become the gatekeepers of the publishing world. There are thousands of book bloggers out there all receiving books from big publishers, small presses, and indie authors in a myriad of genres and sub-genres. In fact, they’re inundated with review requests from thousands of authors all over the world, and they can’t always keep up with the demand.

There are now so many authors peddling their books that many book reviewers and book bloggers can now simply reject an author’s books without even a second thought. Gone are the days when bloggers were the ones begging authors for a free book to read. Authors are the ones who go cap in hand begging for a review.

Apparently for a book to get any kind of traction you need at least 50 reviews on Amazon. Over the last couple of weeks, since I released Fury, I’ve sent out 50 review requests and still have quite a few more bloggers to contact. Out of those 50, I’ve so far sent 21 of them review copies (many of them may never even be read), of those I’ve received 7 reviews so far, a whole bunch haven’t even bothered to reply to my request, one refused to read an ebook copy (and I can’t afford to send him a paperback copy), two demanded I pay for the review in the form of advertising (needless to say I said thanks but no thanks), and so far 4 of them weren’t even remotely interested. I’m expecting a few more of those ‘I’m not interested’ emails in the not so distant future.

But those 7 reviews have been pretty awesome! Those 7 reviews more than make up for any rejection or lack of interest. All I can do is be grateful for the time those bloggers put into reading and reviewing my book. They took the time out of their hectic schedule to share my book with their audience, which is something they didn’t have to do. They chose to read my book out of millions.

And now, in between working on my new book, I have to tackle yet another list of bloggers and send them a very polite request to get them to read my book because without them I’m pretty much screwed and my book will die slowly in the bowels of Amazon and every other retail outlet.

So … Thank you book bloggers, I’d starve without you!