Why are book reviews important?

Book reviews, what makes them so important? Well, they can be more important than you may think.

Reviews can be long or brief. They can both critique, summarize and compliment a book. They are typically written by the average reader and on occasion professional book reviewers. The average reader review tends to be a little more personal, focusing on their own reading experience and based off their own personal preferences. Whereas a professional review would be more objective and focus on the strength of the authors prose along with the overall subject matter. But since readers can have such widely differing views of the same book, it is valuable for all involved, when a book has a variety of reader reviews available.

All authors should take into consideration these three main reasons as to why reviews can be vital to both the writer and the readers.

• Saves Time, Decreases Risk to Readers
  Book reviews often give the reader a greater impression to its overall contents and as to whether the book aligns with the readers interests.
  
• Greater Visibility, Greater Chance of Getting Found
  Reviews give a greater visibility and a greater chance of hitting a larger target audience. There is a distinct correlation between the number of reviews a book has and how many units are sold.
  
• More Sales
  Have you ever heard the Phrase ‘the proof is in the pudding’ well in this case the pudding is the review. It’s human nature for people to be curious as to what others are talking about, and then copy by example, this is often referred to as ‘Social Proof’. As a result, a good number of book reviews can help lead to a snowball effect on book sales.

So don’t judge a book by its cover, judge it by its reviews!