I started reviewing in part for selfish reasons. No, not the free books, by the time those started showing up I’d already been reviewing for a while.
When my story <i>BloodWalker</i> came out in Read by Dawn volume 1 I was incredibly excited. My second official sale, and it had huge distribution (six countries!). It’s sold better than I imagined, the other stories in it were ones I still beam about (I was in a book with Lavie Tidhar!) and overall it was everything a writer could want from a beginning sale.
Only no one seemed to be read it. Well, someone was because the sales figures said so. But no one was talking about it. A year later there were four reviews. One was my own, pointing out my favorite stories from the book. One was another RBD author who briefly mentioned my story reminding her of Laurell K. Hamilton. One other one mentioned my story.
I swear the only thing worse than horrible feedback is no feedback. It was a lesson, for sure, about how writing (like blogging) often feels like you are blindfolded and yelling into an echoing stadium. I know people read RBD. I know people read my blog. But there’s very, very little feedback.
So I started reviewing to be a voice talking back to that poor blindfolded author.
I didn’t realize how big of a part of my daily life it would become. I really love books and reading, and BookLove gives me an outlet for that, and a way to feel like I’m accomplishing something, which is always an underlying problem for writing careers.
But reviewing is a political move for some people. There’s a whole backwoods world of “You give me a 5 star on Amazon and I’ll do it for you”. Or “you rejected me so I’m bashing everything you put out”. For some people reviewing is a weapon, and some places, like Amazon.com, have given these people a field to play on.
There’s a recent stir up in the field about a publisher who pushed friends and authors to give out 5 stars mindlessly, and to report all negative reviews as violations. I’m not sure how well that worked, seeing as Amazon has left up some brutally offense bashing reviews by people with personal vendettas. I’m not linking to the controversy because, well honestly I’ve seen it before. Quite a bit.
Ann Aguirre on her MySpace blog asked if reviews really need to be all criticism or praise. Well no. Much criticism is lost on readers and is only attacks on the writers. All praise, even when it’s sincerely meant, comes off insincere.
IMHO, what it takes some reviewer quite a while to realize is that reviews are not for or against the author. They’re for the readers and potential readers out there.
Recently I bought Rogue by Rachel Vincent. I read a review of it that was really hard the book. The reviewer labeled the lead Too Stupid to Live, among other things. And yes, maybe for some people it’s true. But I’m over halfway through it and still loving it. The same points that the other reviewer said made the character TSTL I think show the character as uncertain of her own instincts. So do a lot of other people because the series has a find fan following for a new series.
The site that posted the negative review (which, for the record wasn’t by any means a personal attack or an attack on the book) forms their review as a letter to the author. But even they know that the review isn’t for the author.
Yes, I’m dismayed at the number of people who game the review system. Often it’s covering for poorly composed works. Of course, I suspect that is going to become it’s own little rant for later. I’m also dismayed at those who use reviews as an outlet to “get revenge”.
But I’m not surprised anymore. Like nearly all aspects of publishing, technology is making it easier for anyone to get in. This can be a good thing, but it is a bad thing (it’s both at once, really), because it’s allowing people who would normally never have gotten close enough to spatter their mess around to get right into the heart of things, and of course, our internet-loving society loves snark and a fight.
But it doesn’t equal respect or “professional” Just something to remember.
