It's great when receive emails from our authors, still excited about having found new reviews of their work, and none moreso than our recent message from Nick Brown, author of the Luck Bringer series.
The Luck Bringer series is set in ancient Greece and draws upon the academic studies in Archaeology and Ancient history to which Nick has spent many years immersed. Having launched his book 'Luck Bringer' back in 2013 we received a message of excitement from Nick, as a resurgence in it's popularity sparked a feature article on Victoria Blake's blog - victoriablakewriter.wordpress.com.

Victoria writes:

Reading this book reminded me how much I enjoyed fiction set in the classical age and how little of it I have read since I devoured Mary Renault, Rosemary Sutcliffe and Robert Graves in my teens. At the beginning I became slightly confused by the politics but that ironed itself out soon enough.I loved the descriptions of the triremes and what it was like to be in one when it rammed another ship. The moment Mandrocles puts on his heavy helmet and his world narrows to the eye slits will stay with me for a long time. If you want to know what it was like to fight at the Battle of Marathon my guess is this is as close as you’ll get.  Luck Bringer is an example of a vivid imagination fertilizing the seeds of detailed historical research. A great read. And I do love that cover.

Firmly establishing himself as a credible author, and one with a wealth of factual knowledge to bolster his novels with elements of fact, true life and real events, Nick has continued to promote his work on every level and is enjoying the rewards.

Why are reviews so important?

• Credibility - Having an established author, blogger or even better, a book critic is a surefire way of generating intrique and adding value to your work. For the people that already value their work, it's like them saying 'this is as good as mine, you should read this'. Much like when a busy tradesman passes you the number of someone who has a more forgiving timetable, you expect whoever they recommend to do as good a job. On this occasion, Nick has struck gold having his work picked up by Victoria. Not only did he receive a thorough and positive review, but that's now given him exposure to her readers and has an expert's opinion on his style and presentation. Perfect for his next novel! Victoria writes crime novels and true crime and her recent book Far Away is based on her father's memoirs, a historian named Robert Blake. Not only does her experience as an author qualify her reviews, but her knowledge of book publishing lets us know she's no keyboard warrior.

• SEO - Without boring you too much on this, if someone links to your website, you get 'a point' and those points add up to help search engines decide how important your site is. The more links, the more points you get, the more popular your site becomes compared to your competitors. The authority of the site that links to you determines how many points are awarded to your site! Exciting eh? If your site's been around a while and collected loads of points, when you then link to someone else's site, you're effectively vouching for them and awarding them with a little bit of authority. You can use this free tool to check your website authority. Alas, sometimes you don't win any points and in this case Nick was out of luck. Why? Because wordpress.com sites add a little bit of code to their links to stop this authority being given away lightly. With the ease of setting up a wordpress site, SEO guys all over the world could set up a bunch of sites in an hour and start boosting their clients' website rankings in an instant. However, don't let this put you off asking! Links are important and those tiny crawl spiders follow every link on the internet to build a picture of where things are and what they should rank for! A link to your site is a great gesture. One with link-juice is an honour!

Find out more about Nick Brown at his own website www.nickbrownbooks.com

It doesn't stop there either Nick! Here a few more places we've found some cracking reviews - keep up the good work!!

Good Reads (4.38) - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21293169-the-luck-bringer 

Historical Novel Society - https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/the-luck-bringer/

Book Depository - http://www.bookdepository.com/Luck-Bringer-Nick-Brown/9781909740518

Ancient.eu (Wooden Walls..) - http://etc.ancient.eu/2015/09/28/novelist-nick-brown-on-the-wooden-walls-thermopylae/