Me Ranting about Self-Published Authors

When I first started reviewing back some 3+ years ago, I would request books from self-published authors. I always enjoyed reading books from new authors. You may have noticed that most of my reviews as of late are from established authors and their books are from established publishing companies.

There are two reasons for this: the first, I was getting way too many books to read and review and secondly, some of those self-published books were poorly written and needed editing.

I always give my honest opinion on books I review even if they were one or two stars (poor and fair). In the beginning, I had reviewed a self-published book and gave it one star and posted it on Amazon. Within a few weeks, I received an email from the author’s representative asking me to take down my poor review. He apologized and said this was the first time he had been asked to do so. Being a new reviewer, I took down my review and to this day that book still has no reviews posted on Amazon. I wonder why. I also noticed that I have not gotten any requests for reviews from that agency again. Now I do not review self-published books that I feel only deserve one or two stars.

Recently, and the thing that is pissing me off, is that I am being harassed by a self-published author on a review of his first book that I gave three stars (good). I don’t know but I feel that getting a good rating for a first book (especially self-published is an accomplishment). But this author doesn’t think so and has come to name calling. What makes it worse is that I reviewed the book over two years ago and he now is attacking me.

This has made me very weary of reading and reviewing self-published books. These people need to learn to take the good with the bad. They are only hurting themselves.