I recently published a book on Amazon called “Photoshop Layers: Professional Strength Image Editing”. It took many hours and days of effort over a 6 month period to develop the end product and I was very pleased with the end result. It was actually doing quite well until it received its first review. The review gave it 1 star and quite simply said “Do not waste your money in this book.”
In all honesty I believe the book is a lot better than 1 star but the review, as you can imagine is putting people off despite the very modest pricing.
If you have you have purchased the book from Amazon.com and you like it, please help me out and post an honest review. I’m hoping this will help give potential readers a little more confidence and means that it’s worth my time spent developing these books.
Thank you
The Lightweight Photographer 
Pretty sure I bought this but have not yet read it. Will try to get it read over the next few days and get a review up for it.
Thank you
Done and pending Amazon review. I really appreciate all of the work I’ve purchased from you. It is like having a close friend who has already spent the time and effort help you know what you need to know AND what bunny trails are to be avoided. Keep up your explorations and your sharing with us!
Thanks Bruce. I will keep on sharing for as long as people find my work helpful.
Robin,
I don’t know why you are so concerned about this matter.
This book has already been reviewed, very favourably, by several people. One person only has rubbished your book, but (s)he did exactly the same to another book, and nobody found either of his/her reviews ‘useful’.
Web reviews sometimes say more about the reviewer than about the item reviewed. A prime example of this is TripAdvisor – would anybody risk going anywhere?
Hi Mike,
At the time I wrote the blog post there was only one review and it seemed to have killed the book dead. That’s a big hit when the cost of the book is so low. But as you say, people have now added their reviewes and things are picking up again. I’m not trying to make my fortune but I do need to recover the investment I made.
Cheers
Robin
Robin:
I saw that review and was confused because I learned a lot from the book. I left a short review yesterday. I enjoy your writing style.
Thank you
Hello Robin,
I just purchased the book, read through it quickly, and left a 5-star review for you. Don’t know why that idiot gave you only 1 star and Amazon didn’t even enforce the 20 word minimum for reviews. I would complain to Amazon. I leave reviews all the time via my Kindle and the system typically will not accept a review with less than 20 words. In this way, one has to explain ‘why’ they felt as they did about a given book.
Keep up the great work!
Regards,
David Martin, Ph.D. 68 Sweetbriar Street Norwich, CT 06360 860-705-0701 dmeephd@comcast.net
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Thank you and I will do my best to keep on sharing.
Robin – I don’t know about others but when purchasing anything from Amazon I do check reviews, however, I discount any ‘1 & 2 stars’ reviews if they only contain troll reviews ie: that are those with ‘Do not buy’, ‘Waste of money’ etc as their only content. BTW – equally true for TripAdvisor.
Thanks for the reassuring comment Steve.
Robin.
I have recently purchased your book from Amazon, and not had not enough valuable time to read it all. but what I have red and seen I cannot see or find anything wrong with it, the book is well explained and well written. I have quite a few of your books now and find them excellent value. in the next few days I will put a recommendation on the Amazon site.
Thanks John, I appreciate that.
Hi Robin, sorry for just replying but having connection problems on my main PC again so this is from my Android tablet. Just to say I gave your book 5 stars and a good review a couple of weeks ago. Very glad to hear the problem is now resolved.Best Wishes, Tracey Hodgson.
Thanks Tracey, that’s much appreciated.
Robin, I recently bought your Printing book and have had my first read through it – lots of useful information about the importance of soft proofing etc.
However I was a bit stuck about how to do printer profiles if you were going to use a commercial service to do your printing and you didn’t know what printer they were using or the right profile? How do you suggest getting around that other than calling them and asking what it is?
Sorry I couldnt easily find your email address on the blog so I put this here
Most print providers these days seem to have the profiles for soft proofing on their website. If not, the only option would be to email the company and ask if they can send you a profile for the printer and paper combination to be used. If they can’t or wont do this I would look for another provider who can. The only other option is if the print company do the soft proofing for you. Correctly soft proofing your images can make a huge difference. Even if you get a print that looks OK, it wouldn’t compare to one that has been correctly soft proofed.
The reason I wrote the book is that I receive regular emails from people who have either tried to print their own images or sent them to print companies and had poor results; sometimes wasting hundreds of pounds. Please don’t try to miss out the soft proofing step.