A satisfyingly supernatural back story for the all-too-real final war of the Roman Republic.
So ends the rather positive review that The Shards of Heaven has received in Kirkus Reviews, one of the foremost trade book review outlets. You can read the whole thing here.
There are a lot of things I have discovered by virtue of publishing a novel this year through Tor Books, but one of the biggest lessons is that reviews matter. A lot. Within the publishing and book distribution business, great weight is especially cast upon particular trade magazines, like Kirkus; so having this solid review come out is awesome. It makes my publisher happy, it gets book distributors interested, it encourages libraries to order a copy … in short, it does Very Good Things for my book right now.
But I want to say this:
To your favorite author, every review is important.
All of them, whether from paid reviewers on Kirkus Reviews or from unpaid consumers like you on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes and Noble, Facebook, or your local independent bookshop.
In a very real sense, what matters in the end is moving books, and for that every review is important.
You see, every single positive review an author gets has the potential to convince someone to buy his or her book — and every single purchase is one more tick in the ledger that determines what kind of contract (if any!) he or she can earn on the next book. Plus, I think most of us tend to read reviews. And, believe me, for an author seeing a positive review is like a shot in the arm of the greatest drug ever devised by man or god. It’s amazing.
So if you as a consumer read a book and like it — if you want to support the author of it — please give it a positive review somewhere. It doesn’t matter if it’s detailed or just a “five-star-click.” The important thing — really, the essential thing — is that you tell other people you liked it.
It will move copies, believe me.
Order-Boost-Review: The Shards of Heaven. Tor Books. November 2015.