Thursday, November 17, 2011

Getting reviewed: the deafening silence

Greetings gentle readers. Happy to announce that the Three Women, Three Books reading and panel discussion at Library and Archives Canada was an awesome success! I was delighted to be sharing the stage with Jasmine Aziz, author of Sex and Samosas, and Nerys Parry, author of Man and other Natural Disasters. We had a lot of excellent questions about the pros and cons of traditional vs self publishing, a lively discussion, and of course, animated readings from three very different books. So now on to reviewing. As a result of sending our press releases and backgrounders, I got a few nibbles for review copies, which I dutifully sent out. But now I have been faced with a deafening silence...everyone said they were looking forward to reading the book, and hopefully doing a review or a profile, and now....nothing. Am I too impatient? I know it isn't because of the quality of the book....so far reader reviews have been wonderful. So why should I care? Because I want to reach people....a wider set of readers, and sometimes a good review is all it takes. More on this soon, but for now, it seems a frustrating business, after all the hooplah of the launch and the anticipated success of the book. Thoughts?