{"id":1719,"date":"2013-02-04T18:22:41","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T23:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/?p=1719"},"modified":"2013-03-06T16:01:44","modified_gmt":"2013-03-06T21:01:44","slug":"my-readers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/?p=1719","title":{"rendered":"My Reader(s)"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the low-level at which I’m playing, I don’t think reviews make much difference. On Amazon, where customer reviews can be tagged “verified purchase,” they mean something in that each review represents a sale, and each sale means more sales. Given Amazon’s customer recommendation system, this means more people looking<\/em> at the book, and\u00a0 if they click and make it to the book’s page they’ll see the reviews, resulting in more sales.\u00a0 However, if you only have five reviews, or your reviews are from people who didn’t purchase the book on Amazon than they might not help at all.<\/p>\n

But one thing is for sure, a “good” review on Amazon or elsewhere makes me feel<\/em> good. I’ve made very little from my writing (unless you count writing grants and proposals — in which case I’ve earned millions but not for me). What “feeds” me is connecting to readers, getting validation for what I’m doing. I get that if you don’t have an internal sense of validation, it doesn’t matter how many people “love” what you do. I don’t think I need <\/em>the masses, though having enough readers to not have to worry about a day-job would be nice.<\/p>\n

What feels really, really good is getting a review from a reader who “gets” you, or more than that “gets” whatever it is you intended to do and believes you reached or exceeded your own expectations.<\/p>\n

So here’s a shout-out to Iain Manson. Now go! Buy his books!<\/a> Review them (I would but at this point, people would talk.) Read his the fabulously pessimistic blog.<\/a><\/p>\n

Validate him!<\/p>\n

To read his review (posted today) of Schrodinger’s Telephone<\/a> go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To read his review of Loisaida — A New York Story<\/a> go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Get on it, people!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the low-level at which I’m playing, I don’t think reviews make much difference. On Amazon, where customer reviews can be tagged “verified purchase,” they mean something in that each review represents a sale, and each sale means more sales. Given Amazon’s customer recommendation system, this means more people looking at the book, and\u00a0 if … Continue reading My Reader(s)<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[107,71],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1719"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1897,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1719\/revisions\/1897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}