More data on why reviews are predictive of very little

A little over a year ago I published a post about why book reviews on places like Amazon and Goodreads mean very little in determining the success or enjoyment level of a book. They simply show you who is best at getting books into the hands of people who are most likely to leave a review.

Well, I have even more data to share with you today.

My most reviewed book (outside of anthologies) is Sorry for Existing. It has 68 reviews on Goodreads.

I’m going to be generous and say that Sorry for Existing has generated maybe $5,000 in revenue for me over its lifetime.

Maybe.

I think the number is probably closer to $3,500, but I don’t have all my data from conventions. Last year I said it was $2,000 at launch, which means $3,500 sounds right to me. Not bad, but certainly not a huge seller for me, either.

I do know with certainty that book has generated $38.80 in KDP revenue and literally $0 in revenue across other platforms.

It was on permafree for over a year, and in that time I gave 5,300 copies of it away on Amazon, and another 4,000 by other methods. That’s almost 10,000 copies of books I’ve given away for free and got fewer than 100 reviews back from it.

Almost all reviews are received from free book giveaways either before or during the launch of a product, and almost all books with big review numbers are in Kindle Unlimited, as those readers can read the book for free with their subscription.

This is not true for all authors, just most of them.

In contrast, my second most reviewed book is Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter volume 1, with 59 reviews.

This was my first completed book, and I have been selling it the longest of anything I’ve ever done. I have given over 6,300 copies of issue #1 away for free, but otherwise I have sold over 3,500 copies of that book. Again, roughly 10,000 copies. I have bled Ichabod for over a decade, from conception to now. I have lugged it to over 150 shows, painstakingly and lovingly selling it for thousands of hours.

For my efforts, that book has generated over $50,000 in revenue for me, more than 10x more than Sorry for Existing, and yet by “review” standards Sorry for Existing is my most popular book.

My USA Today bestseller book, Once Upon a Rebel Fairytale, I actually LOST money on in the end. We sold 8,000 copies of that book, got 196 reviews, and I think I’m in the hole $200-$300 from that book right now.

How am I in the hole on a book that was so “successful”?

Marketing costs were very, very high, the book was priced at $.99, and those sales were divided among multiple people. Turns out the best way to “list” is to sell a book for as cheap as possible and spend gobs of money promoting it. Before Mystery Spot, the book I wrote for that set, went on to clear its costs earlier this year as part of The Godsverse Chronicles Kickstarter, I was over $1,000 in the hole on that book.

My #1 reviewed book is the Parallel Worlds anthology, which has 226 reviews right now, and I made…less than $1,000 on that book, which is amazing for an anthology, but literally 1/50 what I have made on Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter.

Katrina Hates the Dead, Pixie Dust, and the Godsverse Chronicles universe have made me close to $100,000 all together and have received…158 reviews total.

I have sent over 15,000 free copies of some piece of the Godsverse, mostly Katrina #1 and a preview of Pixie Dust, out into the world, which has generated a ton of sales, but very few actual reviews.

Before you go thinking that anthologies are a great way to get reviews, even though my top two reviewed books are anthologies Wannabe Press’s monster anthology series (Monsters and Other Scary Sh*t, Cthulhu is Hard to Spell, Cthulhu is Hard to Spell: The Terrible Twos), has made over $100,000 in revenue, sold almost 5,000 books, and received…20 reviews.

Yes, sometimes reviews align with a popular book, but they almost always…do not.

If you simply looked at my reviews, you would have no idea what brings in money for my company. My single best selling book ever, Cthulhu is Hard to Spell, has a grand total of ONE review on Amazon. ONE!

It made $40,000…AT LAUNCH, and literally sold out of its first print run in less than a year, and it has one review.

in fact, you would think I was a pretty middling author, who hasn’t had much success, which would be absolutely and categorically false. I am just not the best at getting reviews, but I have no problem selling books.

Not complaining, just saying…maybe don’t care so much about reviews.

They are almost always a predictor of absolutely nothing.