I don’t normally join in with pleas to readers and listeners for help. But these are extraordinary times for so many people, and those of us who write for a living are far from immune from the effects of this seemingly interminable catastrophe. While The Garden of Angels came out yesterday there are no physical book shops open in the UK, nor do I have a single public event in the diary for this year where I can talk about it.
What I say now applies to all books coming out at the moment, not just mine. If you have the time and the inclination, please find room to write a review and rating for the work you read or listen to on one of the websites where it’s sold – Amazon, Audible, Goodreads, Waterstones, whichever you prefer.
This isn’t about authors’ egos, which are always fragile but unimportant. Those reviews are part of the metadata system which determines whether our work has much of a chance of reaching a larger audience. They feed back into these organisations’ marketing systems and can make a huge difference to a book’s chances and perhaps even save a few threatened careers out there. They’re a reader’s opportunity to make quite a difference.
So whoever you’re reading… if you like the book please take the time to say so somewhere. We’ll all be very grateful.
Thanks… and I promise I won’t bombard you with this plea again.
David Hewson 