During the launch of my new fantasy novel, Fall of the Western Kings, I was pleasantly surprised to see the book selling better than anything I’d ever written despite the fact that it had only 3 reviews and not a very good average rating. The first reviews were a 5 star, 4 star, and a 1 star. The 1 star reviewer did not have good things to say about the book and it was obvious that it was not their kind of story. Despite that poor initial response from readers, the book kept right on selling and has slowly gained more good reviews. The point is, those early reviews did not seem to affect sales.
And there’s more evidence that reviews may be overrated. With Fall of the Western Kings selling well that interest brought crossover purchases of some of my other books. And here is where it gets interesting because those crossover sales favored my poorest rated book. That defies logic. The only explanation I came up with is that potential readers really don’t look at the reviews or ratings. They must make their decisions from the book’s description not the reviews. Likely they look more for a plot line that interests them than what others have said about any of the books by a certain author.
So for what it’s worth, I am beginning to think having reviews may be important to promoters who want to offer the best deals and possibly help them feel that they are selecting the best books, but actual readers buy what catches their interest despite ratings and reviews.
You can check out the book here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01JH0IKJG