Back in the dark ages, when we communicated with smoke signals and steam-powered fax-machines, when I sold my first book to Baen (1999) someone at the publisher’s office collected all the reviews – cut out with scissors, and posted them to the author.

Yes, really. I have a bunch from the first few novels sitting in a folder somewhere. Within a few years it stopped, and, although I was selling far more copies than that first book, I never had another envelope full of cut-out treasures. They were treasures: living in the middle of nowhere, with fairly little contact with the wider world outside of Baen’s Bar, I really didn’t have much feedback of any kind, from anyone. I didn’t generate much publicity (not because I didn’t want to, or try: I just lived in Africa. On dial-up.).

I was never sure how much of this was from Baen withdrawing from it, or the wokerati boycotting Baen, or just the changing times. All three, maybe? Or maybe just me. Anyway: it was a small, cheap gesture that meant a lot to me. Of course, I had no way of sharing them with the wider world, so, in promotion terms, the publisher – and the reviewer, got very little out of me seeing those.

The reviewing business obviously went through some hard times, with media losing a lot of market share to the internet –which started having review sites, and of course the media moving onto it. There is still a lot of political activism there, meaning only the chosen dahlings get a look-in, unless you sell truly vast numbers — comes back to ‘If you don’t need publicity, they’ll fall over themselves giving it to you. If you really do need it, you’ll have to do it yourself or do without.”

Slowly that architecture too is changing: New sites, new people.

I will grant Raconteur this: they have tried. It’s not easy, but this was an e-mail this morning – which I am taking the liberty of sharing with you.

What follows are the reviews, interviews, media mentions, etc. related to your Raconteur Press books that I am aware of. I am providing this for you:

(a) in the hopes that you will find it informative and perhaps useful, and
(b) so you can let me know if I missed something that we should be tracking 🙂

• Ricochet – Mark Lardas – Adventure on a Frontier Planet
• Scanalyst – Mark Lardas – This Week’s Book Review – Storm-Dragon
• Epoch Times – Mark Lardas – Epoch Booklist: Recommended Reading for May 9–15
• The Worldshapers – Episode 193: Dave Freer – Storm-Dragon
• Forks and Hope – Early July book reviews
• Caroline Furlong – Review: Storm-Dragon by Dave Freer
• Libertarian Futurist Society – The Special Prometheus Award for YA fiction isn’t well-known yet, but that could change with the nomination of Dave Freer’s Storm-Dragon
• Libertarian Futurist Society – Last call for Prometheus Best Novel nominations
• Libertarian Futurist Society – Liberty, literacy and younger generations: Why Prometheus Best Novel winner Dave Freer wrote Storm-Dragon
• Libertarian Futurist Society – New generation of writers dominates this year’s 14 Prometheus nominations for Best Novel
• Locus – 2026 Prometheus Novel Award Finalists
• Michael Grossberg – Review: Dave Freer’s Storm-Dragon offers Heinleinesque Young Adult tale of discovery, self-reliance and courage against abuses of power
• Upstream Reviews – Review: Storm-Dragon by On a storm-tossed world, an unlikely friendship may bring salvation – or damnation!

That’s a pretty good haul, really. I did know about quite a lot of them… but there were a few I didn’t. Which brings me to my point. If you’re writing reviews – times have changed. Telling the publisher and the author improves YOUR reach, because both of them will have their circle – which you don’t share. You improve your reach… for free, with minimal effort, for work you were doing anyway. Likewise, as a publisher, you’re getting a large slice (generally larger than the author) of every sale. If you give the author ammunition to increase those sales… who is benefitting? Once again, minimal effort for a return.

And if you’re an author and don’t share these as soon as they come out, with your social media network… well, you’re an idiot, or you have too many sales already. Pick one.

The biggest problem any author has is not the writing. It’s being invisble.