A few days ago I indulged myself by googling to see how many reviews of The Pagan Man had been posted online. I was astounded that over 1,000 had been posted, but a hour of checking the links quickly made two things clear: One, that a single Pagan author had posted a review at a dozen different sites — thanks, Mike! — and two, every other review appeared to be a reposting of one or more of the Amazon.com reviews.
I checked out the situation with some of my other titles:
* Real Magic: 1300+
* Rites of Worship: 400+
* Witchcraft: A Concise Guide: 150+
* Bonewits’s Essential Guide to Witchcraft and Wicca: 150+
In each case, there are a handful of independent book reviews overwhelmed by multiple repostings of the Amazon.com reviews.
When people post reviews of my books at Amazon.com, those reviews appear in a thousand other places. Amazon seems to have completely replaced, at least online, the tree-based media as far as the importance of their reviews are concerned.
So, if you’ve read one or more of my books and enjoyed them, please go to each book’s page at Amazon.com (and barnesandnoble.com) and post a review. If you have a Pagan website that you frequent, post your review(s) there too. If you hated my stuff, as I also always say, “nevermind.”
[Addition 09/10/06: Lately there have been a few really lame reviews of my books posted by people who obviously don’t understand that I first wrote Real Magic over thirty years ago and last updated it in 1989. Seems I write like an “old hippy” or something … of course, I was a young hippy at the time! And someone who fantasizes about enslaving women hates The Pagan Man, and just etc. So those of you who belong to Dumbledore’s Army, er, I mean Isaac’s Iconoclasts, might want to weigh in over at Amazon.]