Books are magic

It's no exaggeration to say that reader reviews and ratings are crucial for independently-published authors – and not always in the way you might expect.

Of course, five-star ratings and positive reviews are vital for directing more readers to our work and reassuring potential buyers that it might be worth taking a chance on a new or unfamiliar author, but they do a great deal more than that.

They can be a powerful reminder to writers – especially when they come at the right time – that perhaps, just perhaps, releasing their work into the world hasn't been a terrible mistake after all.

No matter how much or little of the author's personal views or history go into the final product, a book is an incredibly personal thing. Someone sat, usually alone, for hours, weeks, months, even years, crafting that book. They toiled over every word, pondering the placement of every last dot and comma. Whether the loftiest literary fiction or the paciest potboiler, everything on those pages came from deep inside its creator's head. Sometimes even their soul. Releasing the final product into the wild for the judgment of strangers takes a special kind of courage. Or chutzpah. Or foolhardiness.

Once it's out in the world, a book becomes a different thing. It's no longer a personal project; it becomes a kind of beacon, out in the world to transmit the author's ideas into the minds and lives of people he, she or they have never met. Sometimes that goes well; sometimes, it doesn't. No book ever pleased everyone.

But when a book does please someone, and they let its creator know via a review or rating, that's a moment charged with a magical mix of relief, connection and validation. Magical because something incredible has happened: Those stories and characters which existed only in the author's head for so long have stepped into other lives, often to be interpreted in ways their creator couldn't have imagined. And that's a beautiful thing, too.

I read just such a review this morning, and it was an absolute thrill. I've made no secret of the fact that I shopped 'How Soon Is Now?' around literary agents for a long time before deciding to self-publish. Despite the message from the publishing business that 'the market' didn't want it, I always felt that there was something in the book to which readers – not 'the market', but individual readers – would respond.

And they have.

'Touching, thoughtful, well-written,' wrote reader Gattaca on Amazon. 'In truth, the time travel element is almost incidental, there is so much more depth to this book than that. We get to meet characters who are satisfyingly fleshed out, and the main protagonist is someone we grow to care about.'

It is magic, isn't it? Thoughts turn into shapes on a page, which, when they meet readers, are then translated back into thoughts and turned into emotional responses. We take it for granted every day, but it's an extraordinary thing for humans to have invented.

'How Soon Is Now?' – and my next book, and the one after that – aren't written for 'the market'. They're written for readers, and to tell the stories I wanted to tell, about characters worth spending time with.

If writing a book is a big commitment, so is reading one, and I'll never fail to be grateful to every single reader who takes time out of their own lives to devote their attention and imagination to something I've written.

Instead of sitting, neglected, on my hard drive, 'How Soon Is Now?' is out in the world. It's not a million-seller (yet!), but that's okay. It's doing its job: connecting with the right readers. And that's a gift.