Reviews are So Important

 

The more reviews a book has the more visible it becomes on-line. It may surprise you that even a one star review helps.  

 

Most people think of Amazon when they think of reviews and yes, that can be important. However, you can also leave review with other online retailers such as Waterstones.

 

Amazon has some restriction. You have to either have bought the book form Amazon  or have spent enough recently to be allowed to review items you haven't bought from them. And if you do buy the book form them, your review will show ''verified purchase' which makes your review seem more genuine.

 

Good Reads is always open for reviews and there are no restrictions. It is owned by Amazon anyway; if you give a star rating directly from your Kindle it appears on both your local Amazon and Good Reads. I also like to post on Story Graph.

 

I want people to review my books, therefore I review every book I read. I occasionally put a different review on Amazon from the one I put on Good Reads.  On Amazon it's pragmatic. Does the book works as it should? If not why not? What does it do well? On Good Reads I can be more myself. Is this book really for me?

 

I often read other reviews: one at the same star-rating as I have given, plus a five, a four and a one star.

 

I also write longer reviews for my children's book site and for my House on Schellberg Street blog. One book last week had it’s standard review on Amazon, Good Reads and Story Graph and appeared both in the children's catalogue and on The House on Schellberg Street blog.  

 

I notice some reviews don't really give any information so I've developed a little formula: I say what I've most liked about the book, anything that didn't work well,  and a summative positive comment at the end. I'm careful not to give any spoilers. And this sort of review is neither long nor onerous.  

 

The main message is authors need reviews and if you're expecting other people to review your work you should be willing to review theirs.

 

However, I’d also recommend not getting obsessed with reading reviews of your work. Yes, find a few very good ones that you may be able to quote from and if your overall rating has slipped below 4.2 look at some of the more sensible lower ratings. Is there some advice here? You're not likely to rewrite this book but it may help with future titles.

 

And keep on writing.                

Sponsor a Book

 

The money we pay for distribution is a little dilemma for us. At £8.40 a year it is actually very good value for money. It would take us hours of admin to achieve what this does and that doesn't necessarily turn into sales.  

 

We have published over 200 books and are increasing the rate at which we publish. This year we have published twenty-one books. We keep books in print even after rights have returned to authors, unless the author asks us to take the book out of print.  So far, only two have done that. Which means we're paying £8.40 a year for 180  books. Do the sums.

 

To be fair, we've taken some of the annual anthologies out of distribution but they are still available from us and the e-books are still available.

 

So, we're inviting people to sponsor a book. You choose the book and you pay £8.40 a year. That will allow us to work on other books without the burden of that book's distribution costs.  

 

Which book to choose? Well, perhaps obviously you might choose your own. But it might be more fun to sponsor someone else's – they might then sponsor one of yours. Or you might sponsor one of our annual anthologies or one of the best of CaféLit books.

 

Don't worry – if your book doesn't attract a sponsor – we'll still keep it in print until you ask us to take it out.   

 

I wouldn't expect anyone, even myself, to sponsor more than one book.

 

What do you get for sponsorship? Naturally number one is the pleasure of supporting a book and a writer. Also you will be mentioned on the book's page in our online shop. You can provide a short paragraph about yourself and up to three links e.g. Amazon author page, one of your books in our shop, your web site etc.

 

You can also ask friends, family, fans and follows to sponsor. If they’re not a writer and have any other sort of enterprise they can tell us about that.   

 

How to do this: just use the PayPal button and we shall email you to ask  which book you would like to sponsor. In the unlikely event that you pick a book that someone else has already sponsored but we haven't yet updated the site, we shall suggest a similar one.

 

Our celebration event - 6 December 2025

 

Yes it was indeed a delightful event

The thing I enjoyed most about the event was the opportunity to chat to other writers about how they go about the process of writing and editing their work. I picked up a few good tips which I found particularly helpful as I am contemplating beginning a longer piece of writing. Most importantly perhaps though, it was lovely to feel part of a community of writers who are also experiencing the highs and lows of getting the words down and understand how that can be quite isolating sometimes.

 

 

 

 

Russell said what he enjoys about the event is meeting new people while seeing familiar faces, too. 

What I enjoy most is putting faces to the names I see published in the books and listening to the stories read aloud by the authors.

We both enjoyed the excellent food, and the venue is wonderful, both comfortable and now familiar.

 

It was great to meet fellow authors.

Even though we only see each other once a year, it feels like old friends.

I enjoyed chatting with people new to the event.

I love it when Debz calls us family.

I love reading my work out and getting feedback on it.

The Theodore Bullfrog makes us all feel welcome.

I’m so glad I found Gill and the BridgeHouse/Cafelit family.

Thank you Gill and the BridgeHouse family.

The meal and the service were excellent, and it was a joy to talk to other writers and hear them read. Unfortunately, I had forgotten my reading glasses, but someone kindly lent me hers.

 

Had a fabulous time. 

 

I loved the venue, with its beautiful Christmas decorations and attentive staff, and the excellent readings, many of which have lingered in my mind. I enjoyed reuniting with writer friends and making several new ones.

 

 

It was a very enjoyable event. I worried about going somewhere where I knew nobody, but it was fine, with lots of lovely people to chat to, and make friends with (well, social media friends, anyway!) 

 

 

Allison has written a super article about the event. Read it here. 

At which age group will you be aiming my children's book?

 

As an expert in children’s lit and also a former teacher I prefer not to think in age groups, but rather stages of development; I tend to categorize as preschool(picture books where adult and child enjoy a book together), emergent readers, early fluent readers, fluent readers, teen and young adult. There are rough age groups associated with these: 3-5, 5-7, 7-9, 10-13, 14-17 and also there are the key stages in the UK education system.

 

Amazon will change the age group organically. They ask everyone who reviews a children's book the age of the child the book was bought for and adjust the age description accordingly.   

 

What is most important is how well a text suits its target reader and that has more to do with intellectual maturity and reading age than actual physical age.       

There's More to Life than Death by Anne Forrest

 

How we came to publish this one

Anne has written several stories for CaféLit. We also have a connection with her through North Wales.

The title

This comes from the title of one of the stories. This is a reasonably common practice.  

Some notes about the process

The book went thought the usual three stages of editing though several of the stories have been published before. We're finding more and more that we still want to edit.   

The cover

The cover illustrates the story after which the collection was named. Terry Mart, the cover artist, is a friend of Anne's.

Some notes about style

Anne definitely tends towards the literary and has also included extracts form her novel, Quinn. These excerpts do work as standalone stories.

Who we think the reader is

These stories are for the thoughtful reader. They are also a good length - long enough to have some complexity but short enough for people who only have odd moments to read.  

What else

Anne has several more publications with connections to North Wales. .   

Review copies

It’s always great if you can buy the book and give us a review. Just click on the link to be taken to our bookshop. If you would like to review and you are strapped for cash, just get in touch for a free PDF or e-book file. 

Find your copy here   

Do you have a list of booksellers we can contact directly?

We distribute through Ingram’s. We occasionally work with individual bookshops BUT this is work intensive for us especially as indie bookshops are notoriously bad at paying. The vast majority of our sales are handled by our distributor with some coming through our web site and from authors directly.  

 

However there are lists of booksellers available – Google is your friend.

 

Indie bookshops vary in their enthusiasm though many will support local authors especially if they know you. Cultivate their friendship.  They will often facilitate a book event for you.

 

Some will take books on consignment -  i.e. we supply you with the books, they sell them through their till and we or you invoice them for 65% of the RRP. You scoop up the remainder and use them for the next event.

 

A useful pattern is for you to arrange events ten days apart and top up your supply after each event.

 

To help you with this we can let you have twenty books up front. We call this the author kit.           

Invite to a book launch - Amelie at the Window by Penny Rogers

 

In wartime it is not only the soldiers on the front line that suffer. The families and communities left behind must try to make sense of the conflict imposed on them.

This story is set in a fictional town in France in 1914 and again in 1924. We meet Amelie, a teenage girl confined to her room by polio and her dysfunctional parents. Amelie dreams of release from the restrictions of her life in a room above a hat shop. Through her eyes we meet the townsfolk struggling through conflicts and coping with the fundamental changes that war brings.

We also meet the people that Amelie watches going about their business as the reality of war impacts upon their small town. The aspirations and fears of young and old, poor and prosperous, hard-working and indolent, are noticed by an itinerant photographer who returns in 1924 to record what has changed and what, if anything, remains of the old way of life. He sees possibilities for some and catastrophe for others; no one is the same after the war.

Penny Rogers captures the essence of small town life and the profound effects of war. We see compassion and judgment, humour and tragedy, generosity and selfishness; along with redemption in some unexpected quarters.

RRP 

Paperback £7.00 

Kindle £2.25

Find your copy here  

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my book showing as 'out of stock'?

 

Technically our books should never be in stock so an 'out of stock' notice shouldn't  really be cause for concern.

 

We quite proudly use print on demand which means that usually books aren’t printed until they’re sold, our customers get brand new copies, your book need never go out of print, we keep in the black financially and we're looking after the environment..

 

However, some of the big retailers will often buy five or more in one go and then when they've sold the last one will put up the 'out of stock' notice. It seems to imply there may be some difficulty with getting the text. If Amazon does this, I use the 'report an issue' to remind them that our printer does big print runs several times a week and the title should only take two to five working days to get into their hands. So they get the book to Prime customers within three to six working days.

 

We can also provide books but bizarrely it sometimes takes a little longer for our orders to be processed. Plus we have to charge shipping on up to four books. Once a customer orders five or more the per unit shipping plummets and we can waive it.  

 

We can never dictate to retailers what to do. Annoyingly Waterstones often says it will take several weeks to get the book. But it doesn't. The printer does huge print runs for Waterstones – this may include a couple of ours and a couple from hundreds more small presses.

 

We've even had Gardner's (the biggest UK book wholesaler) apologise for giving misleading information.

 

If you’re finding availability problems, they shouldn’t exist. Keep calm and notify us. We'll put whoever it is right. Great if you have a go as well.

Do you distribute the media kit to any booksellers?

 

We don't distribute what we call the 'media kit' to booksellers. The 'media kit' is really for authors. It comprises four different versions of the cover, a PDF, a Kindle file for those books that are also published as an e-book for Kindle, an order form with author discount and the latest version of our marketing plan.  

 

Booksellers find out about our books in several ways. The most important is through Ingram's, our distributor who alert all major retailers about the book. Our books all carry ISBNs and are registered with Nielsen's which means any retailer can find out how to obtain the book.

 

Very occasionally we work directly with bookshops. Often these are local to a particular writer who may have popped in to chat to them or indeed sent them information about the book. Sometimes our writers work directly with a bookshop.