Rules and Myths about Reviews
Rules and Myths about Reviews You can find a lot of book reviews on the internet, but you know what you find even more of? Rules about reviews. Every other day there’s a twitter thread with hundreds of comments or a goodreads discussion with passionate arguments from reviewers, readers, and authors. The majority of these rules are based on very strange myths and assumptions so I wanted to take some time to work through my thoughts on them. Authors Shouldn’t Read Reviews of their Own Books This “rule” is thrown around by both authors and reviewers. Sometimes it’s mentioned kind of jokingly: “Well, I went and read my reviews, but I really shouldn’t have done that” and sometimes it’s taken with such seriousness as if it’s some kind of serious and unbendable rule. Personally, I don’t understand how this is even possible to acheive. I’m an author who spends a considerable amount of time on the internet and the number of reviews I actually have is very limit...