Amazon Reviews & What They Mean To Self Published Authors

I opened my Amazon dashboard as usual today.

Sales? Not awful, but not paying the bills yet, as expected.

No issues with the book I updated last night. Good.

Oh, look. A new review.

 

Well, that's not good.

The part that really hurts is that the cover on this one is the first one I paid a human artist to build for me.

 I don't write with AI.

So, this is either someone who thought my writing felt like AI, which I find difficult to imagine, or who saw my cover and assumed that it was AI generated.

Granted, I have used AI covers on early books, but not on this one, so this stings.

That aside, a nasty review like this hangs on forever. It will be there as long as the book exists. 

I'm sure I'll survive. I have 9 books, more coming, more than a dozen reviews and more coming on that front as well.

But what if I didn't? What if this was my only book, I'd slaved over it for years and someone just slapped that review up there and sabotaged my dream?

Please read independently published books. Please review them HONESTLY. 

This sort of thing hurts a lot worse than you might imagine.

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