Publishing has entered a bold new frontier, and in these wild, uncharted waters, it is your hand that rests upon the tiller. Where once the direction of literature rested solely with the classic dictators of the publishing industry, now it is all up to you, the readers. From the most popular of bloggers to the humblest of readers, your reviews are now what gives the industry shape.

Like any frontier, literature’s new world is fought over by aging empires, but this frontier is full of opportunity for everyone. The heroes of this vast new realm will not be the earth-shakers trying to pound it into a mirror of the old world, but instead the humble guides who help us explore it.

The old world produced many wonders, but it was a blighted place. When I was a kid, the library stocked no popular fiction, and the local book seller had but two shelves of my favorite genre, fantasy. Those shelves were mostly taken up by Piers Anthony. If I wanted a new fantasy book, there were only four or five titles to choose from at any time. That store had, at most, perhaps a dozen fantasy authors represented, and their success depended entirely upon getting a spot on those shelves.

In time, stores grew bigger, but for most of history the central competition of every author was in finding a spot on the shelves. In the new world, shelf space is infinite, and if you do a quick review of new titles you will see that supply has already swollen to fill the space available! When I was a kid, I found my next book just by skimming the blurbs on the back of every single option, but with infinite options, that’s impossible.

Instead, we writers now exist at the sufferance of the algorithm. No matter the seller when you’re shopping for books, some algorithm decides what, from the infinite array of titles, to show to you. It decides that based upon how likely they think it is you will buy those particular books (and it doesn’t care whether you ultimately enjoy them). It determines that likelihood based upon many factors, but paramount among them are those little stars. A book with a certain number of reviews, with a certain average star rating, is displayed more often, and thus finds more readers… but it doesn’t end there!

Showing up in searches is also impacted by advertising. If someone does a search for ‘steampunk novel’, Amazon (for example) sells the top few positions in that search as advertising, and a big part of how it determines who gets that advertising, and for how much, is based upon the stars from the reviews! More stars means a book is more likely to sell, which means it will get more ads for less money, which means it will appear in more searches, which means more buyers will see it.

Once a buyer gets to the listing, they will often look at the reviews, usually reading only those voted most helpful, but many also base their decision on the total number left by readers. I’ve seen readers say that they won’t read anything with less than 20 reviews, as those first 20 are just the author’s friends and family. I promise you that’s not true: I have as many friends as anyone, and more family than most, but from among all that acquaintance I can count on about 5 reviews – and Amazon regularly deletes anyone they suspect may be socially connected to an author, often with an excess of vigor!

Reader reviews are how an author is found, at all. If you’ve read a book to the end, I urge you to leave something, anything, wherever you can. It doesn’t need to sell the book, merely convey that you enjoyed it. Simply writing ‘good book’ and adding to the total of reviews is an enormous favor to the author, and I wish it were a behavior more akin to tipping a delivery driver. If the pizza is hot, you tip – if you finished the book, leave a quick review.

But merely being able to find the book isn’t enough!

Once the book is found, it’s the longer, insightful reviews, such as those from bloggers and other book enthusiasts, are what helps it find its way to the right readers. This is why book bloggers are the key voice in the new world of publishing.

With infinite shelf space, you don’t just get more books, you get more variation. I love the fantasy genre, but within that genre there aren’t just sub-genres of setting, like dark fantasy, and steampunk, and portal fantasy, &on &on, there are also key differences in what fantasy readers want from their stories. What I love to see in a fantasy story may not be what you love, but with infinite shelf space, there is suddenly room for books that cater very specifically to each of us. Bloggers are who make it possible to find not just a good book, but the right book.

With longer, in-depth reviews from practiced reviewers, we get insight not just into a mere binary of good/bad (or even a quinary of stars!), but also a glimpse into how and why a book works, or doesn’t. The Silmarillion is the classic example of a book that is both brilliant, and of limited appeal. The action falls to the background, there’s no cohesive epic, and it’s mostly just a jumble of world building lore – I love it, but for many fantasy readers, it just doesn’t have the story elements they prize most. The blogger (or other long-form reviewer) is who helps the potential reader navigate that vast array of particular tastes and find books we are more likely to love.

Without bloggers, we’re left solely at the mercy of the algorithm, and own guesses based on the blurbs, which is only a little better than the two-shelf world I was born into.

As a reader, the perfect books for me are out there, but I need you to find them.

As a writer, my perfect reader is out there, and I need you to help them find me.

It’s a bold new frontier, and power over it rests in your hands. Please use it!