Barnes & Noble
Online purchases: whether cotton balls or books, customer reviews are a must!
If a book doesn’t have any reviews on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other booksellers’ sites, does it really exist?
It does, but to potential readers, no reviews may equate to a risky purchase. Let’s face it, you can hardly purchase a bag of cotton balls online without having dozens – if not hundreds – of reviews to peruse prior to consider pushing that all important BUY button.
The same goes for books, but even more than that, an author’s literary credibility is tied in with author and sales rankings and reviews are part of what feeds those rankings. Authors aren’t getting rich on their craft, and that is certainly not my goal. What is my goal, however, is that many people read my novel and at its end, they feel they’re better off having done so.
If you have read REQUIEM FOR THE STATUS QUO, won’t you please post a review on three of the sites for which said reviews are very important? Here’s the link for Amazon, and for Barnes & Noble, and for Goodreads. But fear not; you do not need to write a unique review for each of those sites, simply write a review on Amazon, for example, then copy and paste it into the review sections for the other sites. Easy peasy. And many, many thank you to those who have already posted your reviews. You have fed my soul and made my day.
AND IF YOU’RE ONLY GOING TO POST A REVIEW ON ONE SITE, PLEASE MAKE IT AMAZON.
If you have yet to purchase my novel…please consider doing so. And if you have a copy but have yet to read it, please remember my shameless begging in this post and submit a review once you have. Please, no mention of your relationship to me…absolutely not necessary and it’s advisable, from Amazon standards, that you don’t.
My plea for reviews isn’t my attempt at stroking my flaccid ego, no, it’s merely my efforts at making my novel more attractive to the person looking for a book on the subject, and when they purchase and read it, and they are impacted in a positive way by my words and my experience, then all that has lead up to this time will have been worth it.
Kindness Fridays
I’m launching a new series this year called Kindness Fridays. You’ll still be privy to my Lighten up Mondays series (humor to start your week) but with Kindness Fridays, I’ll report on at least one episode of kindness that was recently extended to me. My first kindness encounter actually occurred in December of last year and was the inspiration for this new blog segment.
The beginning of December, I road the bus into downtown Seattle to have lunch with my sister-in-law. I allowed for plenty of time to do some Holiday shopping prior to meeting up with her.
One particular shopping structure called Pacific Place has an entrance through a Barnes & Noble bookstore. Not being super familiar with Pacific Place but pretty sure I could access it through B&N, I chose that entrance. Upon entering, a security guard greeted me. I asked, “Can I enter the rest of the mall through this store?” He assured me I could and provided instructions for me to do so.
There were escalators to ride up and down and quite frankly I got confused and arriving at the top of an escalator, I found myself right back where I started. The security guard – whose job it was to stand at the street entrance to the store – noticed me, waved, and walked over to me.
“I’m sure you gave me the correct instructions but somehow or another I translated them incorrectly.”
“No problem, let’s go down this escalator and I’ll show you.”
“Really, you’ll escort me to the mall entrance?”
“Absolutely!”
We talked on the way down and upon arriving at the bottom of the escalator, he walked me to where I could access the Mall.
“Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. That was very thoughtful of you.”
He lightly touched my arm and said, “That’s why I’m here, I was happy to do so. Happy Holidays and enjoy your day.”
Wow. Such a brief yet powerful interaction but it was an act of kindness, the positive effects of which still remain with me today.
Living: the ultimate team sport 