In my, so far short, time as a blogger, I've come across some great writers who really know how to connect with others, take a hit if needed, to improve their craft, market themselves, and do it all in a way that doesn't require over saturation - just good person communication and honest self-marketing. Books were always a hard thing to sell - and with the sheer volume of releases, self-publishing abuses, and dwindling amount of readers these days, things are even more difficult. Some of us understand that you need to push your book hard, that novel needs to be in peoples faces to make a impact. However, there are more dishonest ways this is done as well - such as: spam bots, spam bots over multiple dummy accounts, self-serving retweet bots, paying for reviews, deleting negative reviews to favor your book, fake reviews, review counters, and the dreaded self review. Yes, there are people out there that will market their book to you via their own thoughts on the very thing they've written. Usually a writer doesn't know what people will think about their work, they either don't think anyone will or are not completely sure, but hope others will. Most books start as a idea the writer will like and they expand it into something the feel is a little more open to others, if not just a good story they'd want to hear. Others, more then there should be, will tell you to read their book solely on their own thoughts about it - 'I read my book to my children every night', 'I can't put this down and I wrote it', 'my book is better then (or the next) Twilight/Game of Thrones/Hunger Games/etc', and more extreme examples, such as the whole Empress Theresa fiasco. So, why am I telling you this, why shouldn't you do this? Well, the simple answer is that: it's completely self-serving and defeats the purpose of a review. A review should be an outside opinion, the view of another person looking in, and either loving or hating what you've done. Sure, some reviews are not that great and you're not going to like all of them - I could write a list about what I don't think belongs in a review from another person, how the should not be written, but that's something for another article. When a person self-reviews, they have a initial bias - this work is theirs, their imagination manifested, a chunk of what they'd considered creative talent, a mental fart brought to fruition. Who is going to say that some manuscript they've worked on for so many months or years was not all worth it? Not their magnum opus? Yes, the self-reviewer has all the reason to defend, but should not. Even worse, novels self-reviewed seem more like a way of making sales, rather then trying to allow others to experience your work. And, I don't know about you, but I don't mind paying for a novel - I do mind when it feels like what I'm reading is a product, not a work. So please, do not self review. This blogger understands how desperately you, if you are reading this self reviewer, want to feel as if your work is that next major force of literary power. Everyone wants to make money, off of anything really, and there is nothing wrong with that. But there are better ways of doing this. If your writing is truly as good as you say, push it, let people review it, and somewhere in the middle of the good and bad opinions will lie the true measure of your book. -L. BROOKS
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