One of my writer friends entered her novel into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Competition and is now a quarter-finalist. Wheee! Tomorrow, she’ll find out if her (excellent!) excerpt (Undisclosed)moves on to the list of 100 semi-finalists.

I have my fingers crossed, of course, but I also zipped over to her excerpt, gave it a read and a review. Every little bit helps, right?

The thing is, the writing of the book is just the beginning. After you’ve poured out all the blood, sweat and writing tears, you must move on to the selling blood, sweat and tears. And I’m beginning to think that the writing part is the easier of the two…

Anyway, you may not be able to help your writer friends come up with a dazzling query, snag an agent, or sell the book to a publisher. But you can help out if your writer friends finally get that book on the shelf, real or virtual. You can write a review.

I hear those Amazon rankings make a difference, and the reviews are part of the process. So if you’ve read a book that you really like, consider writing a brief review. If you win a book, say from a friend’s blog, or a book blog tour, say “thank you” by writing a swell review.

And someday, when you’ve got your own book on the shelf, they’ll do the same for you!