Never Judge a Book

I recently sent off a synopsis for a book idea to a publisher I had not dealt with before. Said publisher specialised in the both the area concerned and the subject was also appropriate. It seemed my research had been spot on when the response at first seemed positive, they liked the idea, my CV was admired, but then came the final paragraph.

It seems this individual had checked with Amazon to see I had not exaggerated any of the statements. It was then they noticed the only reviews of any of my books had just one star and would therefore not be interested in pursuing the idea further. I was not overly disappointed by such a comment, this simply showed I was lucky not to have to deal with someone with such weird ideas, but I was dumbfounded that a professional with a proven record could be so naive.

As stated in my blog post A Matter of Opinion two reviews can be poles apart. The review they read was on Amazon.co.uk where only one star was awarded. However another buyer across the Atlantic purchased their copy at Amazon.com where a very different five star review followed. It is a shame the two sites cannot be combined to show an average. Incidentally I later found another one star review of my books from the same buyer and it struck me as odd that a man who had clearly disliked his first purchase should ever consider buying another by the same author. I later discovered the reason, which was not entirely in the spirit of the idea.

Hence to base a decision not to publish seems a little odd. Incidentally, within a few days of receiving the email I discovered two new reviews on Amazon of another two of my books, this person being quite pleased with his purchases and resulting in four star reviews.

Perhaps this publisher should take note of some reviews of books which went on to sell quite a few copies!