Author GG Vandagriff is in need of some help. Her newest Regency Romance, Lord Grenville’s Choice, was released last week.

Talking about books has been proven to be the best way to draw attention to the good ones (and, sadly, the really bad ones; I have heard over and over from authors whose sales spike after a bad review). And one of the best ways to get people talking about a book is to start the conversation yourself.

So…

Anyone who’d like to read and leave a review of Lord Grenville’s Choice, GG wants you. Amazon, GoodReads, heck, even Paperbackswap.com or any other outlet you can think of. Reviews help foster conversation about books, and conversation is what it’s about.

Unsure if you are reviewer-caliber? Well, I’ll make you a deal. Drop GG a line via her website. Work out the details of getting yourself a review copy. Then come back to me once you’ve written the review and my team and I will help you polish it up.

Not want to be that intense? That’s fine. Even a review that says, “Loved this. Felicity and Elizabeth make life difficult for our poor hero!” or “Wow, this book shows why men are stupid.” … Yes, ten words can make a difference! (However, please pick ten words that aren’t the exact words I used above.)

C’mon. Be that difference for an author. Drop GG a line and pay the kindness back with a review. You’ll be glad you did!

Mid-month, I took a look at how the Smashwords Summer/Winter July sale was going for me. The results were interesting, so if you missed it, head on over and see how the month was shaping up.

Now that the month is over, I have even more fascinating facts to report.

First is that even though I have one new title out since last year’s sale, I sold eight fewer books. This is despite having two books for free that had never been free before, including Trevor’s Song.

Demo Tapes 1 and 3 tied for top seller. If you recall, mid-month, Trevor’s Song was tops. It actually came in fourth of my six books, trailed only by the standalone short story, Mannequin, and my non-free title, King Trevor.

Conventional wisdom holds that novels sell better than short stories, especially short story anthologies, and the Demo Tapes are, I think, marked pretty clearly that they are short stories. Not only are they short stories, they all appeared on The Meet and Greet in a less-edited fashion.

I don’t know. I don’t get it. Maybe the opening of Trevor’s Song is too rough for people; he’s too hard to like. Maybe you really do need that intro of the Demo Tapes to come back for the novel. I’m not sure. Maybe it’s that The Demo Tapes were more visible, since more people write novels than short stories. Maybe it was the phase of the moon, the severity of the sunspots, the colors of the Northern Lights…

In short, who knows? Only the people who bought the books know for sure what they were thinking, and even if they leave reviews, we may still never know what led them to their purchasing choices. We’ll only know what they thought of their reading experience — and so long as that experience is good, that’s ultimately all that matters. It’s those reviews that help power sales. We all know this.

Which means I’ll wrap up with a big thank you to the people who’ve joined the Trevolution for the first time; a lot of gratitude for the repeat offenders, so to speak; and a reminder to leave even a few words in a review. “I liked this because… but I didn’t like…” Fill in the blanks, folks. That’s all it takes, and us authors will be your fans for life.