I’m sure I’m not the only writer out there who has had this experience: your first book is published. You google the title. You get a lot of hits and at first that’s a bit of a thrill, until you realize that 99.99999999 percent of them are the result of keywords being auto-harvested by websites hoping to tap into Amazon affiliate dollars.

Over time, your book does get mentioned by a few actual human beings (Outwitting Dogs gets a hat tip here and here, for instance) but these are the exception, not the rule. So the question is: where are the virtual book reviewers? (I’m deliberately excluding Amazon’s reader review system, if for no other reason than that the reviews don’t come up on search engines.)

I know from experience, having been involved in DYI book publicity for two titles now, that sending review copies to mainstream media can be an exercise in futility. The venue is too finite. If you don’t happen to hit a reporter for whom your concept clicks, whether for personal reasons or because he/she “gets” why your concept is topical, then you are sunk.

What we need are more reviewers.

I’ll do my part by posting an occasional review here. Updates to follow.