Melissa Maygrove

  This is my   Insecure Writers Support Group   post for July 2026. Alex's awesome co-hosts this month  are:  Rebecca Douglass,   Ronel Janse van Vuuren,   Cathrina Constantine,   and Jacqui Murray! Please stop by their blogs and say thank you .  💻💻💻💻💻 July question - Is there anything you'd like to see changed, added, and/or rearranged about the book publishing industry? Increased discoverability I despise dependency on Amazon’s algorithms. Every time I figure it out, it changes. I want search engines to reward quality and backlist titles, rather than just rapid-release trends and ad spend. And if an ad glitch messes up my sales, at least restore my rank when it's fixed. Bring back the gatekeepers... sort of I don't want to go back to the Big 5 system, obviously, but I hope retailers can figure out a way to stop the flood of AI slop (books written by AI and published without being edited for quality). Anyone can publish crap, but AI has...

  This is my   Insecure Writers Support Group   post for December 2023. Alex's awesome co-hosts this month  are:    C. Lee McKenzie,   JQ Rose,   Jennifer Lane,   and  Jacqui Murray! Please stop by their blogs and say thank you . 💻💻💻💻💻 December 6 question: Book reviews are for the readers. When you leave a book reviews do you review for the Reader or the Author? Is it about what you liked and enjoyed about your reading experience, or do you critique the author? This one is complicated. Not only has my perspective changed, but being honest is going to reveal a side of me I'd rather not. I became a voracious reader before I became a writer. I began leaving reviews that praised stories I enjoyed, but I wasn't shy about saying what I didn't like if one didn't meet my expectations. As I learned more about fiction writing - about what authors *should* be doing - my negative reviews turned harsh. Too harsh. When I finally published, that c...

Image Source: David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net “If you get a bad review, it’s because someone outside your target audience has found your book and gave it a shot. It’s no reflection on them as a reader, and no reflection on you as a writer. If, as an author, you don’t understand this, your writing will suffer, because you’ll be writing not to get bad reviews instead of writing to reward your target audience.”   – John Locke The current consensus on whether or not authors should reply to a bad review is 'don't.' Some say don't even read them at all. I personally find myself torn between reading my (eventual - thinking positive here) reviews to see if there are repeated comments on certain aspects of my writing that might need improvement and ignoring them entirely to spare my feelings and my motivation. For a thought-provoking post on the subject, click here . And for a hilarious post on the subject, [click here... Update: Unfortunately, Melj...