Lloyd Lofthouse

If you are one of the millions of indie self-published authors or a traditionally published author struggling to promote his or her work via the Internet, you may want to read what Joshilyn Jackson has to say about Publicity on Southern Authors.com on what not to do (her opinion).

It appears that Joshilyn Jackson knows what she is writing about. Jackson is the New York Times bestselling author of four novels.

Jackson says, “I have heard I should register and blog and interact on places like Good Reads and Library Thing and Amazon for the sake of this very P word [publicity]. I am told writers must ‘Be a presence’ there. I hear this both from folks in my industry and from reader mail.”

However, Jackson doesn’t quite agree with all of this advice.

“Really?” she asks. “A novelist being a presence on a site where REVIEWS of their own books happen seems weird and counter-intuitive. Like pouring olive oil and aged balsamic onto a perfectly good strawberry shortcake.”

If you are a published author (it doesn’t matter how) that has been told to promote his or her work, I recommend clicking on Southern Authors.com (see link in first paragraph) and read the rest of Jackson’s post on this topic before responding to any reviews of your own work.

The difference between a negative review and a rant explained and why negative reviews are necessary.

One comment from The Readables video said that a negative review points out the bad elements of a book, but does so in a more courteous manner. A rant basically trashes a book, often overstating some things and are quite a bit more emotional than they really should be.

Just so you know, The Readables has more than 15,000 subscribers, which means it should be a good site for a courteous review of an author’s work—pro or con.

Meanwhile, you may want to think twice before responding to a rant of your work on Amazon, Good Reads or any site that reviews books.

However, if all the reviews (not written by friends or family members) are negative and/or rants, maybe some serious revisions and editing are called for—sometimes a courteous and negative review may help an author improve his or her work.

To discover my response to a rant of my first novel, click My Mother Would have Burned this Book

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Lloyd Lofthouse, a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, is the award winning author of The Concubine Saga.

His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.

And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.

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