I Simply Can't Get Reviews

Would you take a chance on a book that only has one review? And not even a review, technically, but just a star rating, even if it's five stars? I didn't think so.

Everyone wants to be cool. "Well, everyone else is doing it, so I should be doing it, too." 

"Wait; no one is doing it? Well, I don't want to look like a loser, so forget it." 

The only thing I can ascertain is that my story doesn't sound interesting. There's no solution to that. Then again, when I offered it for free on FreeBooksy, I got over twelve hundred downloads, so it must have sounded interesting to somebody. Of course, it was free.

Yesterday I received the following email message from one of the review sites:

We wanted to update you on the status of your book review request. Unfortunately, no one has picked your book "Running From Herself" for review in the past 89 days.  

All signs point to my novel being useless. BookSirens wasted no time in rejecting it; I'm getting no bites from the book bloggers I contacted. There's another free site that allows members to review books, but again, in the two months since I listed my book, not one person has chosen it. 

It's not as if the two people who read it thought it was terrible. Quite the contrary. Those two reviews are awesome. Of course, neither of those reviews is populated on the Amazon US site.

I've changed my blurb probably eight or nine times (so far). I'm not making excuses, but the story is difficult to pin down in two or three paragraphs, because it's (literally) all over the map. It's "sweeping". If I completely omit the first fourth of the story in the blurb and people read the preview, they're going to be utterly confused. "Hey! This isn't what was promised!"

Yet I can't waste a lot of territory explaining that yes, Leah, got a record contract, but a lot of other things happen before that. 

I finally surrendered and pasted my synopsis into AI and let it come up with a new blurb. And I used it ~ no changes. Because I obviously can't do any better.

I rejected the idea of ARCs for a very good reason ~ a lot of ARC readers have personal axes to grind, and they sharpen them on innocent indie authors. I'm not going to get into the psychological aspects of that, but I've seen it. They want to hate a book. Who needs it? 

Then there's the fact that I accumulated almost 200 ARC readers for one of my novellas when I used Voracious Readers Only, and I netted not one single review.

The fact remains that I'm proud of this book. It's good! Look, I know when I've written something mediocre, and this is not it. I was watching one of those writing advice videos, where the guy lists ten reasons for this or that, or ten things you can do when this particular problem strikes. (He's big on top ten lists.) And all his solutions are things I did! Too bad no one will know that.

It's so disheartening to find an actual lead, only to learn that there's a cost associated with a "free" review. Who are these authors with so much disposable income? I'm barely hanging on by a thread. One "top-notch" review site wants $140.00 for a review. That's my grocery money! If one is looking for a free hobby, maybe try creating art out of found objects or something, because writing is NOT free. Well, I guess it is if you want to tuck your writing away in a drawer, like it's your personal diary.

I hope I reach the acceptance phase soon, because I'm sure not having any fun.