Blogs by Flo Fitzpatrick
Reviewing the Situation
8/4/2025 11:15:29 AM
The world of online book reviews in 2025.
Reviewing the Situation. (Sing with me, "Oliver!" fans!)
Reviewing the Situation (sing with me, Oliver fans!)
Reviews. Vital for an author as part of the process of getting book sales. And in 2025, review sites are very big business. You click on their website and you read that yes indeed, they charge authors hundreds of dollars for one book review because a reviewer’s’ time is “precious.” (Anyone channeling Lord of the Rings here?)
As part of earning an M.A. I took courses in Dramatic Criticism and Play Analysis in Theater History. I can read a play or watch a show and break it down in terms of plot structure, character, dialogue, tempo, and them and whip out an analysis of ten or more pages usually in less than eight hours. Note: An analysis…not a review. Apart from the theme, the elements are pretty much objective.
A review is not objective. It’s someone’s opinion. After reading the book (provided free by an author or, if they’re lucky, their publisher, but either way…it doesn’t get included in the sales stats) a reviewer sits down and provides an opinion. We’ve all written reviews. We might not have posted something online but think of all those times you’ve read a book and emailed a friend to say “You gotta read this!” followed by a couple of reasons why. That’s a review. Depending on how fast one reads, a three or four-hundred-page novel can be finished in less than a day. A “professional” review might take an hour-tops-to write five or six sentences.
Let’s shift to time spent by the author who wrote that three to four-hundred-page novel. We’re looking at weeks. Months. Sitting in front of a computer, often for ten hours a day (reminding oneself to get up now and then and do arm jacks, walk the dog, raid the fridge and order grocery delivery after realizing a few half-empty jars of mustard aren’t going to cut it for the next ten hours of creative activity.) Note…I’m not including the time it takes to do research. Or the editing or galley proofs. Or writing “the dreaded synopsis” and the enticing blurb required to attract the attention of an agent or publisher.
And consider this: Plumbers receive reviews after they’ve fixed that leak in the sink. The plumber doesn’t pay the client to write the review. I’m sensing a paradox here )
Unless an author has an incredibly awesome contract with one of the “Big Five” publishing houses, they’re responsible for hunting down reviewers. And shocker…not all review sites are legit. Okay…not a shocker…sadly, we live in a scammy world. Not sure that’s in the dictionary…scammy…but it should be.
Most authors can’t afford what can amount to literally thousands of dollars for reviews of one book. Let me repeat.: A review IS SOMEONE’s OPINION. That’s all. If they broke up with a significant other on the day they were hired to review your romance with the happy ending…watch out. If they stepped on the scale and gained three pounds and your heroine is thin with a metabolism that allows her to eat like an NFL linebacker…watch out. I once had a reviewer slam a mystery I wrote because of “all the nasty swearing”. There were zero F bombs in the book. Nothing even that rhymed with “fit” and DEFINITELY not the C word (which I think should be erased from existence.) The swear words she found so offensive were damn and hell.
So, I’m reaching out on behalf of No-Name authors everywhere and appealing to their friends, relatives, and the strangers on trains authors meet while passing out their bookmarks or business cards (!) Offer to write a review…and then be willing to follow up and actually write and post it. If you hate the book, there’s almost always something you can find that’s good. “The description of the carrot cake in Chapter Three was so spot on I could taste it! Enjoy!” Write that.
Odds are you won’t even be asked to buy the book. It would be lovely if you did (makes a nice birthday present for an author who’d far prefer a review to a scarf) but most authors will send you a copy you can read online. They won’t charge you a cent in exchange for clicking a ratings button...and writing a simple sentence or two.
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