My Book Reviews

            When I tried to get my books reviewed, some of the first places I thought to go to were blogs and Youtube book reviewers.  They were the logical choice considering the fact that they were themselves self-publishers.  I was shocked and amazed at how many of them refused to review self-published materials, never recognizing their own hypocrisy.

            I’m a believer in putting your effort where your mouth is, so I did a Youtube book review show where I only reviewed independently published books.  It was the only one on Youtube of its kind.  I was proud of it, and I mixed it with doing my weight loss as I would read the books while out on walks, and check my weight after doing the reviews.

            What was frustrating was that the views never got to be very high.  I would get the people whose books I was reviewing, some of their readers and friends, then I would get completely different viewers the next week.  None of them were watching other reviews, supporting other independently published authors.

            It’s frustrating seeing this sort of every man and woman for him and her self.  This whole industry is very difficult already, and we’re competing with large corporations that have many employees.  The best thing we can do for ourselves is to band together and help each other.

            I want to go back to reviewing these books.  I feel strongly about independent publishing, and I want to help others as I want to be helped as well.  But I’ve been taking a break from it for now as the effort was going to waste while I was ignoring my own projects.  Hopefully that will change.

Independent Book Review - End of Pawnee Starlight

Independent Book Review - Raiders!

Independent Book Review - Evolution of a Wine Drinker

Independent Book Review - Curse of the Fates by Sydney Olson

Everything Wrong with The Ables by Jeremy Scott

Independent Book Review - Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and other Creeps

Book Review - Secrets of a Hollywood Private Eye

Independent Book Reviews

Last week I went off on self-published bloggers who refuse to review self-published books.  I have also noticed that vloggers on Youtube who review books do not review independently published books.  They, too, are self-published, but refuse to recognize the hypocrisy.  I've even confronted a few of them.  Most did not respond.  One responded only when I made a comment on one of her videos; so when she was faced with the public seeing what I was saying, she finally spoke out.

Her reasoning was that self-publishing is more personal, and she doesn't want to hurt the writer's feelings by saying something bad about the book, and hurt all the other authors who she doesn't review by turning them down.

There are two problems with this logic.

First, if her viewers were to use the same logic, she would have no viewers.  They would all be so concerned about hurting the feelings of every Youtuber they were not watching while viewing her videos that they would instead just not watch her at all rather than hurt the feelings of those they turned away from.

Second, while it is noble to be concerned about someone's feelings as to how they will be hurt if she says something bad about their book, the simple truth is that it's better to have SOMETHING said than nothing.  By reviewing the books published by large corporations, she's making people aware of those books, regardless of whether she gives them a good review or a bad one.  So more people learn about these large corporate books and no one learns about the smaller ones all in the interests of "protecting" those small publishers.  As a result of "protecting" them, they are dying out because they can't afford to continue publishing.

What's particularly amazing about this second part is this vlogger pointed this same issue out with bookstores, saying people should support the small bookstores or they're going to die out, but she couldn't see the similarity of independent publishers to corporate ones.

I became very disenchanted with Youtube book vloggers.  There's a whole community of which I wanted to become a part; but not a single one of them will have anything to do with independent books.  The vlogger I spoke of above at least responded.  None of the others did.  They refuse to see their hypocrisy, so I made the same decision with them that I did with bloggers.  Any independent artist who refuses to support other independent artists are not worthy of my time.

However, I'm a big believer in putting my time where my  mouth is.  And so I've decided to review independently published books on Youtube.  As far as I can tell, I am the only one doing this.  I hope others do.  I want the competition.  But until they pick up the torch, I will run with it, and do the best I can.