As a newbie to the self-publishing, self-marketing, self-everything world I can tell you there's a huge learning curve. It's also a massive roller coaster of emotions. First of all, you're just excited to see your baby finally out there. IN PRINT! Until you realize, ommigosh, my book is OUT THERE. IN PRINT! Then you become this person you hardly recognize. Or at least, the one you thought you left back in art school, who learned to be thick-skinned against the critics and paint what you wanted anyway. Now I'm back to all the "what if's." What if they don't like it? What if they do? What if they don't buy it? What if they buy it and don't read it? What if they read it but don't review it? Oh man, what if they review it but only give it ONE STAR? You feeling that roller coaster ride with me here? Careful, you might get whiplash. Honestly, for the most part, it's been a great ride so far. Yes, I might look like an obsessive crazy person at times...you know, that person who sits in front of the computer in her pajamas with bedhead and doesn't notice it's past noon until the doorbell rings and realizes she has to pretend she's not home because she might scare the person standing on the other side of that door with her appearance. It's all good though, she justifies, because she's just spent the last 5.5 hours clicking on the VIT'S (very important tabs) on her browser that contain pertinent information about the progress of her book. Information like; how many books have sold, how many pages were read from Kindle Unlimited, how many were downloaded for free. How many people looked at her Goodreads author page? Is it still in the top 100 for Young Adult/time travel fiction? (It is, btw, in case you were wondering, because I know you were...) Yep, that might be an accurate description of my journey as an author up until now. I mean, it may or may not be a slight exaggeration. Of all the things though, even though I'm thrilled beyond belief when people buy or download my book, I'm even MORE thrilled when I get those gold stars. Ah, those stars! They really are golden. I feel like a very lucky Sneetch who went through the awesome star making machine and got another star slapped on my belly. Suess-geek alert! I love reading those reviews. You have no idea, unless you've been in the same seat I'm currently sitting in, you can't possibly know how much those words mean. Now I want to go back to every book I've ever read and rated on my Goodreads page and change them all to 5 stars! I feel terrible now that maybe one of my reviews was read by the actual AUTHOR. Who is an actual PERSON. Who might have felt EXACTLY what I felt when I happily clicked on Goodreads to check my page and my heart soared to see I had 3 more ratings. YAY! Then in the next minute, it plummeted to the ground when I realized that my 5 golden stars went down to 4. Because someone gave my book only 1. One measely little pathetic golden star. Why? I wondered. But there wasn't a review that went along with the rating, so I suppose I'll never know. Yes, I'm aware that not every single person who reads my book is going to LOVE it and rate it with 5 stars. I realize it's not everyone's cup-o-tea. Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, after all: thank you T.Swift. I'm OK with that, I really am. I guess in this online world where people feel they can say whatever they want, without considering the consequences, the old adage, "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" doesn't exist. Or in this case, "If you can't STAR something nice, don't STAR anything at all!" Because in all honesty, I'd rather not know if you hated my book. Or at the very least, if you really did hate it, knowing why would sure be helpful for future writing. Instead of making the author's ratings drop because it didn't meet your own expectations, how about sending her a personal message? I don't want to go on a rant here. I just wanted to paint a picture for you of the other side. The side where the author sits. The person in that chair is a real actual person. That person put a heck of a lot of time, energy, blood, sweat and tears into creating that book. He or she is most likely looking forward to your review more than you could possibly know. They're hoping for at least a 3, maybe even a 4; but really dreaming of those 5's. Especially if they're self-published, indie authors. To the reader, clicking on a star makes us feel like we've done our Siskel & Ebert part, telling the world what we like or don't like about a certain book. To the author though? Those stars, those reviews? They don't just makes us happy or sad, that's only part of it. They give us more visibility on Amazon and Goodreads, and they help others decide whether or not they want to read our book. So when your arrow is hovering over those blank stars, before you callously decide to click only one or leave a bad review, give a little thought to us little authors. Please? Because let me tell you, we'll be, we'll be counting stars.
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