My MWSA review has been posted online... Now What?

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Reviews are a “precious commodity” for authors. 

Almost everyone in the publishing industry will tell you that it’s much more important to have a large number of reviews—even if those reviews include a spattering of the dreaded 1-star variety—than it is to have a handful of 5-star ones.

MWSA Reviews—The “Author Veto” and Credibility

  • Since MWSA’s main mission is to help our members, we will not “slam” an author with a purely negative review, nor will we keep any review on our website if the author requests that we remove it.

    • Just ask the Awards Directors, and we’ll remove it—for any reason, or no reason at all.  Period!

    • This is the “Author’s Veto.”

  • To maintain our credibility as an organization doing reviews, we cannot provide 100% positive (or “pure marketing”) reviews to every book submitted by our authors.

    • To ensure that MWSA reviews are credible, if a book’s numerical evaluation (the combined average scores of all three reviewers) fails to reach a certain threshold, our MWSA review is required to mention the shortfall(s).

  • If this happens, one of our Awards Directors will contact the author and…

    • inform him/her that the scoring threshold was not met.

    • forward our reviewer comments (but not scores).

    • provide a draft review, which will include the applicable critical comments.

    • ask the author to choose to accept the review or not (see the “Author Veto” discussion above).

Reviewer Comments

  • MWSA strongly recommends that all authors have a look at their reviewers’ comments.

  • All authors will be able to see those comments (but not scores) once we announce awards finalists (normally mid-August).

  • However, only those books whose final scores fall below the minimum threshold (per the last bullet in the section above) will be permitted to see those comments at the point where reviews are posted (i.e. before the announcement of finalists).

  • If your book scored higher than the low-score threshold (i.e. you were not notified of that fact when your review was uploaded to our website):

    • Your book is still “in the running” for an award.

    • We will not share your reviewer comments before the announcement of finalists, as doing so might “spill the beans.”

Spreading the Word and Outside Reviews

  • The review is now yours—post it to your website and your own social media sites.  When you do copy it, please remember to attribute it to us.

  • Once your review is posted to our website, MWSA will also “blast” your book and its review to our social media websites (see our social media page for a listing of those sites).

  • Do not post our MWSA review on any website that requires adding a star rating (i.e., Amazon). Only MWSA can decide on the number of stars to award, not the author. To post our review on Amazon, we suggest you copy it into the “Editorial Reviews” section of your book’s Amazon listing.

  • Since your MWSA review will be attributed to the individual reviewer (always the #1 reviewer), that #1 is able to copy their MWSA review onto other websites (most likely on Amazon) under their own name.

    • Please keep in mind that 1) this additional “outside review” is purely voluntary on that reviewer’s part, and 2) the additional review cannot be posted until AFTER the awards ceremony.

      • Why wait?  Because no one will know the actual MWSA medal result until the day of the awards banquet and ceremony. 

      • Any early release of an Amazon review with a star rating, would represent a “sneak preview” of our MWSA scoring before the actual announcement.

 

Updated 1/10/2023