The Importance of Amazon Book Reviews

Posted on August 28, 2006 by Isaac Bonewits

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.]

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Spells for Democracy: 13 Tuesdays

Posted on August 21, 2006 by Isaac Bonewits

On August 14th, a member of our Spells for Democracy e-list made a suggestion for a series of weekly workings on Tuesdays between then and Election Day. Here’s the list of Tuesday assignments that she posted on 8/14, with a few additions for gaps:

(08/15) Glamour to improve candidate’s charisma, attract attention (past)
(08/22) Wit, skill and intellect to handle all that new attention, can be combined with #1
(08/29) Press awareness, wipe the veils from their eyes, do their job right
(09/05) Enchant money to spread the energy & bring in donations
(09/12) Leave pictures of the opposition in the hot sun and call on the light of
Truth to expose their evil
(09/19) Spell to increase curiosity, courage, and tenacity of local and national journalists
(09/26) Klutzokinesis spell on opposition candidates, political party spin- masters to make them accidentally speak truth in public
(10/03) Spell to encourage whistle-blowing at the Diebold corporation about secret programming and hacking plans for their voting machines
(10/10) Call on the Founders, Lady Liberty, Columbia, Justice and the other
spirits of America for help
(10/17) Release the salamanders! (undoing damage of gerrymandering)
(10/24) Set up an energy matrix on the astral around all polling places to
ensure fairness
(10/31) Offerings to powerful Changemaker deities like Sekhmet, Kali, etc.
(11/07) Big honkin’ spell-casting all day long combining the first 12 workings
(or as much participation as you can manage) & nighttime results vigil

Remember in all cases, having photographs of the people we are targeting is a big help. You can also use campaign flyers, images of donkeys (or an elephant when appropriate), etc.

For background on who we are and what we’re trying to accomplish, visit our Spells for Democracy page at this website. For more details on the project as it proceeds, join the Spells for Democracy egroup at yahoogroups.com.

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Book Sales So Far

Posted on August 21, 2006 by Isaac Bonewits

I’ve heard from my publishers about how the sale of my latest books are going, and so far so good. Sales are brisk on Bonewits’s Essential Guide to Witchcraft and Wicca, though not as high as I might hope, since many people who would buy it bought the earlier edition (Witchcraft: A Concise Guide) a year or two ago. The Pagan Man: Priests, Warriors, Hunters, and Drummers seems to be hitting its stride as word of mouth advertising is spreading the buzz among Pagan men that there’s a book focused on them for a change.

Most exciting to me, however, is the evidence that Bonewits’s Essential Guide to Druidism is selling very rapidly, especially online. It’s been in the 50Ks in sales rank at BarnesandNoble.com, at Amazon.com, and at Amazon’s foreign outlets, which is fairly high for a non-Wiccan book on a Pagan topic. I attribute the rise in sales rank in part to the fact that Amazon had it listed as available for two weeks before it reverted to saying it wasn’t out yet (the “official” release date is August 31st). Considering that there has been only one review of it published online (at the RDNA Druid magazine site “A Druid Missal-any”) and none at the online bookstores, these are pretty amazing sales!

Of course, I won’t actually make any more money from these books for six or nine months, but don’t let that stop you from getting your own copies before the first run printings sell out. (For more info on these and other books of mine, please visit our Books Page, where you will find links for reviews and purchases, including the purchase of autographed copies.)

As soon as Phaedra and I finish writing Real Energy, we’re going to start on an update to Real Magic, as well as my Poisoned Waters and Bonewits’s Essential Guide to Neopaganism. That should keep me busy for a while!

Posted in Money, Products, Writing Notes | 6 Comments

The Druid cried “Peace!”

Posted on August 11, 2006 by Isaac Bonewits

And there was no peace. No, I’m not talking about a lack of war, though that is certainly something I have shouted about before, but rather the sort that happens in the phrase that ends, “and quiet.”

Today has been a lovely day here in the northern suburbs of New York. I found myself thinking of how many summers have gone by where I was indoors (or incars) 24/7 only to realize in the Fall that I had missed the whole season. So I decided to go out to our landlords’ rather large backyard and just spend some time listening to the sounds of summer.

Cars and trucks driving by, planes droning overhead, hammers and powertools around the corner where yet another house is being built on land that had been nothing but trees a few weeks ago. Off in the distance, a train’s whistle and a freeway’s roar. From the landlords’ house, a television chattering and an air conditioner whirring. Every now and then, in between the raucous sounds of human technology, I could hear a bird calling or some crickets chirping. In occasional moments of relative silence, I could hear the wind rustling through the trees. That was it.

I found myself wondering just exactly where one can go to completely escape this other kind of air pollution. The middle of the farming country? Nope, too many tractors and pickups roaring. The middle of the Rocky Mountains? Nope. Have you ever seen the map that CNN shows when talking about airplane traffic patterns? During the daylight hours at least, every square mile of the USA seems to have one of thousands of planes flying noisily overhead. The South Pole? Maybe. For now. But it’s hard to get to and from, especially for brief trips.

Perhaps I can find an island somewhere…

(Phae has just reminded me that I can always use the “Summer Night” circuit on our white noise generator!)

Posted in Fun, Polytheological ~ Philosophical | 4 Comments