In my last post, prior to devouring my Thanksgiving meal, I gave thanks to readers and reviewers for supporting and promoting writers' work.  I also mentioned that this week I would post a guest blog from the reviewing organization, Page Bookshelf Central.

The site owned and operated by Suz and Jaydee Parry was launched on Facebook in March 2010.  Bookshelf has reviewed many books, holds competitions, hosts author interviews and is a site dedicated to helping the writer and reader. 

As writers, we know how important reviews, especially good reviews, are to getting our work noticed and read.  Now I want you to read, in her own words, what it is like for the reviewer.   

A Day in the Life by Suz Parry

Having been asked to write about Bookshelf, I really thought about what it is like to do bookshelf. The history is on our blog, which tells you why, but the actual doing is so different.

Daily we talk to authors and publishers and try to persuade them that we should do a review for them and some days we get lucky and they send us a copy of their book. Other days we head out to the bookstore and get the book anyway. Either way the author/publisher gets a review.

From our point of view a review helps book sales, which are what is wanted by both publisher and author, but we also like to give reviews as it opens reader’s eyes and minds. We have emails and PM’s from people thanking us for introducing new authors to them, which is the reason we do this. New authors are fabulous as they need a way to get their book out there and what better way than word of mouth, which has always been the best way to sell anything. Bloggers far and wide will always accept a big named author from publishers or authors themselves, but we love the self published or first time authors. These are the people you get the most appreciation from. One author who is now quite big is such a lovely lady but I really didn’t like the look of her book when she first sent it. However, I have just read her third novel and loved it just as much as her first and second. She always sends us her completed book soon as its ready and is always appreciative of our honesty, which makes every day so worthwhile.

Some days we have to give a not so good review as we didn’t enjoy the book, which is one of the hardest things we have to do. But we would never give a good review just because it’s a big author, nor would we give a bad review, we will always try to be honest and say that the book is not our thing but others may like it. One ‘friend’ of an author got quite angry because we said it wasn’t our cup of tea, but we have to be honest.

We love finding gem’s of books like Dorothy Koomson’s ‘Ice Cream Girls’, or Jojo Moyles ‘Me Before You’, before they are big. But we will never like a book because it is fashionable like the 50 shades books. We got a lot of grief because we didn’t like them, but we just believe that everyone has a difference of opinions and if we were all the same life would be boring.  We hope we help a lot of authors make sales and we also hope we help a lot of readers discover new authors.

Thank you Suz for your post!

As I stated last week, the relationship between the writer and reader/reviewer is symbiotic--we exist for and because of the other.  Page Bookshelf Central is a prolific reviewer who values the interest of the reader and respects the work of the writer so please check them out at http://no1bookshelf.wordpress.com/