Friday, April 25, 2008

Yikes: A Bad Review


It's not very often that one of our books gets reviewed in Library Journal. So we were excited when we heard that Seven Days to Online Networking was going to get a review. Glee turned to glum when we actually read it: They panned the book.
My knee-jerk response to the publicist was "Oh, well, there's no such thing as bad publicity!" But I know she could see the unease behind my fake smile. Is that really true? Will we still sell more books because we got a mention than if we got no mention at all? The last time we got a Library Journal review (for Firestarters), it was glowing and marked with a red star. We sold 5,000 copies as a direct result. So it will be interesting to see what happens as a result of a less than favorable review.
The fact is, of course, that this is just one person's opinion. And I don't really think it's warranted. Anyone can pick up this book and learn something valuable about online networking. And at $9.95, the price is right.
So I'm keeping my chin up and treating this as an experiment and a learning experience.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The reviewer's main gripe was that the book places too much emphasis on LinkedIn. But with LinkedIn dominating online career networking (as opposed to social networking), as it clearly does, I don't think this emphasis was misplaced.

Lori Cates Hand said...

Thanks, Lawrence. That is exactly what we were thinking when we planned the book. But we thought a book on just LinkedIn was too narrow, so we hedged our bets and expanded the coverage.