Reviews are not for Authors
I've noticed a pattern among my friends who are new authors. They almost always start off reviewing books. Even if they don't write reviews for a review site, they write up what they think about the books they read and post them on Amazon or on Goodreads. There's a good reason why so many writers also write book reviews – it's because, being writers, they a) read a lot and are excited by books and b) are interested in all those technical matters that go into making a book a good one.
Writers read voraciously and they pay attention to things like the strength of a book's plot, characters and setting, because writing books has taught them the importance of such things. They have learned to analyse how books are written, what's a good technique and what isn't, what works and what doesn't, and why. So really, with these qualities, authors must make ideal book reviewers, am I right?
And yet I've noticed that when writers become published and their names begin to be recognised in the genre, they almost invariably end up posting regretful blog posts saying "I'm not sure I should be reviewing any more." Some will decide that they are only going to review books they liked from now on, and only the toughest and most committed tend to carry on giving bad reviews when they think they're merited.
Pretty much the reason for this is other writers. I say this as one who knows, but the emotions of writers are as unprotected as newly hatched baby birds. We are sensitive. We have the artistic temperament in spades. And we put all our hearts into our books, love and passion, obsession and a lot of hard work. We send our books out into the world as if they were our children, and for some of us it is as unbearable to see someone criticising our books as it is if they were bad-mouthing our children.
I understand the feeling. I get it myself. And I get the "OMG! Maybe I am a useless writer. Maybe she's right and my plots are all lame and my characters are limp and my writing style is rubbish and I just will never amount to anything. Maybe I'm doomed to be the laughing stock of the genre because everyone hates my books. Soon publishers will realize it and stop publishing me and then I'll be a total failure and I'll be crushed forever. So I should just stop right now and spare myself the misery." I feel like that a lot.
But I still don't think reviewers should stop being honest. I still don't think that reviewers should take the feelings of authors into account one way or another. Reviews are not for authors, they are for readers.
I have many caps on this hatstand. I'm an author and I've been a reviewer and I'm a reader. But when I review I take the author hat off and consider what I want as a reader. As a reader I want a review that will tell me what the reviewer really thought of a book. If they loathed it, I want to know, and I want to know why. I don't want to be misguided into buying a rubbish book because the reviewer was trying to avoid the wrath of angry authors or their fans.
This post was prompted in part by the comments on which is only the last of a long line of incidents of reviewers being attacked for telling it how they see it.
When the reviewer is another author, the tactics get nastier. The reviewed author and/or their fans claim that the reviewing author is only rubbishing the book because they want to eliminate their competition. (As though readers can't read a thousand times more books than a single author can write in a lifetime.) They hurl around charges of mean-spiritedness and elitism, and they talk to their writer friends and on their publishers' egroups about how that author is jealous/mean/out to get them.
All this generates a certain amount of bad buzz around the author who had the temerity to say what she actually thought about a book she was given to review. And – returning to my point at the beginning – this leads to authors slowly realizing that reviewing is too hot for them to handle and giving it up.
What to do about this? Well, I could admonish writers that frankly they just make themselves look ridiculous if they react badly to bad reviews. I could even say that reacting badly to bad reviews lets everyone know about the bad review, and so for your own self-interest you'd be better off not mentioning it at all. I could say "if you react badly to bad reviews, you will find it harder to get your books reviewed next time." But frankly I don't think that the problem is going to go away, because it's rooted in that primal feeling of "how dare you criticise my baby?!" which not everyone can successfully manage to suppress.
I could say that reviewers ought to toughen up and accept that a certain amount of bad press comes with the territory. And I have immense respect for anyone with the integrity and self belief to do that. But at the same time I don't think there will be many authors (see above about thin skins and sensitivity) with that kind of bravery.
It seems, for me at least, that the only option is for authors to give up reviewing. A reader who reviews cannot be accused of trying to increase their own book's chances at the expense of others. They don't need to worry about the potential damage to their professional network. They can still be accused of being horrible people, but they can't be accused of acting out of self-interest, and that should make things a bit easier.
So I guess that my conclusion is an appeal for readers out there to get involved with reviewing, because authors – however much they might want to review – are pressured either to be nice about everything or to stop saying anything at all. Most of them, being more interested in writing than reviewing, cave in to that pressure eventually.
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Damon wrote: "Couldn't agree more, on every count. And the anxiety you express is somethign I';m grappling with right now. In the past month, 3 websites asked me to join them as a guest reviewer based on a f..."
Thanks for the comment, Damon! I too would hope that once the genre becomes settled and professional, authors will also start behaving more professionally. We've been a bit of a hothouse flower so far, since it's such a small genre and we all know each other, but that must decrease as we grow larger.
But I agree too that reviewers who tell it how it is are absolutely vital to the health of a genre. I've felt, myself, the temptation to put something out that I'm less than happy with, just to meet the pressure to write fast. I never have, because I need to be able to feel proud of my work, but if I knew I could write anything at all and get rave reviews, it would make the temptation that much harder to resist.
Good luck with it! And you could always review under a pseudonym. That takes some of the pressure off.
Alex
I had thought about using a different name for reviews, but in a way it feels like an ostrich solution because people have a way of spotting "voice" in posts and blogs and such. I feel like the thing to do is stand up and take my lumps with everyone. I hope I don't regret that. LOL But integrity has never been the wrong option and the genre is growing up quickly. Time will tell! :)
That's true. People are almost bound to find out and then they'll accuse you of being dishonest, even when the entire purpose of taking a pseudonym was to free you from other people's expectations and pressures so that you could be honest. There aren't really any ways of avoiding the flak, so I will admire you for doing it despite that :)
I don't always find author reviews as helpful as reader reviews anyway. As a reader I don't want to know the ins and outs of the books technical capabilities to fit a certain criteria. Yes, I want to know if the characters were real, if the plot makes sense, if dialogue is stilted and if there's too much repetition but really what I want to hear is whether the book was entertaining and fun to read (or harrowing, gutwrenching, shiver-inducing depending on genre).
There's nothing worse as a reader, ploughing through the technical babbage of whether one author thinks another is sufficiently capable to hold the status of 'published'.
I'm a writer myself. I don't review as a writer, I review as a reader. Thankfully I haven't come across any nastiness on this site, but I have on others. I've also heard of other authors suffereing from the 'revenge review' after they were honest and much of what you've mentioned above.
As long as we review with openess and honesty rather than pomp and ego, we can at least remain happy with ourselves even if others aren't.
As writer's we should as at least be able to take stock of comments and see whether they can be used as tools for self-improvement (even when they hurt like a bitch), or whether the reviewer merely wanted the story to go in a different direction, even stay within their won comfort zones.
And of course, we can drown our sorrows and resist the temptation to delete everything in the WIP file.
In my mind at least, the last thing I'd do is attack a reviewer, even if it appears the comments have been made in spite. But I do know from experience with other situations that sometimes, those comments are out of your fingers and typed in the ether before you've really thought about what's going on... and an hour later the remorse sets in.
At the end of the day - there's nowt as strange as folk.
*g* That's right, and I can understand an author hitting the comment button in hot blood and regretting it later, just as I can understand a reviewer feeling a bit bitter that they'd had to waste however many hours of their life finishing a book that - had they not have been a reviewer - they would have normally just stopped reading in chapter two.Life would be better if we could all show each other a bit of tolerance and understanding, and remember that we're all here because we love books. But on the other hand, we're all only human, with the good and bad days that implies.
Casey wrote: "There's nothing worse as a reader, ploughing through the technical babbage of whether one author thinks another is sufficiently capable to hold the status of 'published'" I guess I understand what you're saying, Casey... except announcing "This sucked" or "Hot!" "I was bored" is meaningless unless the reaction is shored up with something concrete and specific. Examples and opinions about WHY something didn't work are useful for readers and writers. And a review without concrete specificity is worthless. Specific jargon and specific examples make for a useful review, full stop. Word choice is everything.
Specificity is the only way to keep reviews impersonal and useful. Providing specifics sometimes requires explanation which would (I suppose) veer into technical language and citation. If by "babbage" you mean jargon, I'd say that most readers use jargon these days because, on the main, they're highly educated about the genre they read. A review that didn't involve explanation would devolve into superlatives sloshed around, for good or ill, and prove pointless.
Actually, come to think of it, I don't know how you WOULD review only as a writer-not-reader because you can only review what you have read. If a book has a problem with headhopping or typos, readers comment the same way a writer would AS a reader. Every reviewer is articulating an opinon, and that is writing. Are you referring to authors who slam a book to damage an author they dislike? I don't know that I'd call that reviewing "as a writer" as much as reviewing as a bad-mannered child.
Recently there have been a lot of author hysterics ABOUT impersonal reviews that gave specific examples and used technical jargon correctly. In every (bizarre) case the author argued that it was "cruel" to quote examples and use terms supporting a criticism. Why is using words correctly and explaining your logic nasty? That seems demented to me, professionally and personally. But as you say, there's nowt as queer...
Anyways, I think we're all essentially agreeing, if not on terms then at least, in spirit. The industry is expanding. Its slash and fan-fic "hothouse" roots have given way to professionalism and craft. As Alex said we are growing and the expectations grow with us. That's true of what's on the page and how it's received.
My feeling with a preference either for or against 'technical' reviews is that that's pretty much a matter of taste. The best reviews (IMO) will do both - they'll show how much the reader enjoyed this or that bit and they'll be able to show why this other bit didn't work so well. (Which requires a certain amount of talk about plotting, or pace or characterization or whatever and - as you say, Damon - must inevitably look at technique.)
But everyone's going to have their own preference for the blend of emotion v explanation that they prefer. As a writer, I love getting both carefully thought out critiques and "OMG, I loved this book!" I even like getting "OMG, I thought this was going to be romance, but it was full of brutal violence, don't go near it!" reviews, because they show the book really engaged the reader's emotions. So with my writer hat on I love any style of review except the sort where the reviewer demonstrates that their problem is really with me, rather than with the book.
(For example, False Colors has a review on Amazon which slams it for being by 'one of these women who pretend to be men.' Given that the reviewer disapproves of me personally, I suspect the book could never have pleased him anyway.)
With my reader/reviewer hat on, I prefer reviews which support what they say with examples from the text. That's because I think, if you're going to criticise, it's only fair to back it up with evidence. Also, as a reader, the more information a review gives you, the easier it is to form your own opinion. If a review says "I disliked the way the author stopped the plot every chapter to shoehorn in a sex scene," a reader who loves their books on the spicy side might go "Oh, that sounds just my thing."
HmmI did say that I wanted to know the useful stuff about plot, dialogue and characterisation rather than a string of raves or insults. However, there is a difference between this happening in a general way and this happening in a 'look at me I could be the next great editor/publisher' or 'I'm a writer so I know what I'm talking about' way. It's the later I don't find useful.
Reviews that merely show the reviewers ability to disect the mechanics of a book serve only to boost the ego of said reviewer in their own self-impotance.
It is a balance. I don't know where the line is. As you've said Alex, it probably wanders based on personal taste, but I'm sure intent has a lot to do with it. By that I mean where we see ourselves in the dynamic that a review serves.
I don't have a problem with reviews that use quotes. It helps to know if a book is full of cheesy lines or gratuitous sex/violence that isn't expected. It's good to know why a character didn't work or if an author is tripping overthemselves to use overly flowered language or big words they haven't understood properly.
I guess what I was really saying is that it helps if a review is exactly that - a review of the book given in an honest and straightforward manner. There's no need for them to be point scoring cards, whether for author revenge or reviewer self-importance (I've seen both).
I don't know, I think there's a place for all different kinds of reviews. If a reviewer is showing off their erudition a bit, and that's what gets them through reviewing lots of books - which is quite a thankless task, on the whole - then I think they should go right ahead and enjoy themselves. People who like that kind of review will follow them and those who don't won't.For example, I would enjoy a review site that focussed on stories the way a writer focuses on them, because that's the way I focus on them. The reviewer will be telling me what I feel I need to know. That reviewer is likely to get more author followers than non-authors, but as long as they're happy with that, it's not a bad thing. Authors are readers too.
As long as there are other blogs out there where the reviewers are focussing on the stories the way non-authors would focus on them, then everyone's happy. I'm all for everyone doing it how they want so long as nobody is doing it with malice.
And that's it. Malice is the dealkiller. If people are reviewing honestly and specifically, then it cannot be done with malice. And vice versa.One of the great powers of the internet is the SPACE for every type of commentary. Everyone can flex their opinions as they wish and they will find whatever audience there is to be had for those opinions. That simple fact of access is changing the way intellectual property is produced and received. There is room for formal opinions and gushy puff pieces and everything in between.
These are exciting, maddening, empowering times for all artists. The tools are everywhere, but the fools are as well. FInding an audience is a greater challenge than ever, but it's also more of a conversation than ever.
I'm excited to see what the landscape looks like in 10 years.
Yes, it does upset me (why wouldn't it?) but it just makes me realise how important it is to review a book thoroughly and well, and to be honest about reasons for disliking (and liking!) aspects of the work. I believe the vital response as a reviewer is to remain calm and (if you can manage it) light-hearted and even self-deprecating. Exactly the same reaction that an author should have when receiving a bad review, I suppose!
Anne
xxx
Damon wrote: "And that's it. Malice is the dealkiller. If people are reviewing honestly and specifically, then it cannot be done with malice. And vice versa."I totally agree with you on all points there :)
Anne wrote: "Fascinating article! :) Actually I think this is the reason why, as an author, I'm still a very committed reviewer for Vulpes Libris - and in spite of the fact that over the last few months I've be..."*g* I bought myself a postcard of that "Keep Calm and Carry on" poster and have it on the wall behind my computer where I can see it all the time. I agree that as long as you know in yourself that your review was impartial and as well balanced as you can make it, then there is no reason for you to let an author's bad reaction get to you.
My problem is that - as you say - it's impossible not to get upset, and I have discovered that the upset takes days for me to process, and while I'm doing it I can't write. It's become for me a matter of emotional spoons - I've never had very many spoons, so I have to ration them carefully. (If you know what I mean.)
You put it very well, Alex. I'm afraid I'm one of the useless reviewers who just reviews what I like. I don't particularly write the reviews for the author, but for myself. I've been very lucky in that the bad reviews of my own stuff have been few and far between, but they made me feel as bad as if there had been a hundred. And as someone said above, we know each other or at least know of each other. I've given a few 4-stars but that's as low as I care to go. If I think it deserves less I just don't review it. A bad review might keep someone else from reading it and that reader might absolutely love it. I guess reviewing is kind of like writing sex scenes: if you like doing it and you're good at it, do it. If you don't, don't. So useless or not, I'll just potter ahead. If folks don't read them, that's ok.
Ruth wrote: "You put it very well, Alex. I'm afraid I'm one of the useless reviewers who just reviews what I like. I don't particularly write the reviews for the author, but for myself. I've been very lucky in..."I don't think that only reviewing the books you like is useless. Saying that you like ones that you don't is not on, but only talking about the ones you genuinely love is a good way to get around the pressure not to say anything negative. Every so often I will do that and review something I particularly liked. My problem comes from the fact that I'm extremely hard to please, so the number of books to which I'd happily give a glowing review are too low to ever sustain a regular reviewing habit.
And of course most review sites don't give you the option to not review a book that you truly hated. Even if you loathe it so much you're afraid of what you might say (I've done several of those), you don't get the option of saying nothing at all. It would be easier if you did!
>>And of course most review sites don't give you the option to not review a book that you truly hated.<<That's why I've never done it, though I was tempted a couple of times. I'm basically so butt-lazy I don't want to work as hard as it would take to read and review something I didn't like. Of course, I don't write that many reviews, which goes along with your statement "the number of books to which I'd happily give a glowing review are too low to ever sustain a regular reviewing habit."
The worst review I ever got on The Phoenix was from a professional reviewer in a gay print publication. Not that it was a bad rating; it was actually a good rating. But the review itself was very, very, very boring and I got the impression the book had not even been read (the ultimate insult!)The problem with the review was that the reviewer spent 3/4 of it using 4-syllable words to talk about himself and his credentials as a Victorian expert without ever mentioning the book! The review of the book itself was one short paragraph toward the end, also full of 4-syllable words, and the close was more self promotion by the reviewer. So is that another topic: when does a "good review" suck? Oh, well. It wasn't a total loss. I latched onto a few good phrases from the actual review.I didn't even send Counterpoint there for review because I figured it would be more of the same.
"Alex, I don't share your optimism in receiving reviews such as "OMG, I thought this was going to be romance, but it was full of brutal violence, don't go near it!" because other readers may follow the advice and stay away. One particular nasty-viewer didn't even finish my story before trashing it, saying she wanted to give it a zero out of 5 stars but one star was the lowest rating. There is no value in a review like that." My feeling is that this is the place where we have to take a deep breath and remember that reviews are not for authors. It's not a reviewer's job to sell my book for me, and they have every right to hate it, if they hate it, and to say so. I don't actually want to sell my book to people who would find it an unpleasant experience to read, so a review that says "gory, violent and not romantic at all" is a good thing because it will warn off all the people who would be shocked and dismayed by the violence.
Plus, of course, it will attract all the people who are reading it while saying to themselves "I hate these fluffy romances where everything's hearts and flowers all the time. I'd like something a bit more gritty." Those people are going to see that negative review and have their interest piqued.
In the end, I don't think reviewers have any duty at all to consider the feelings or profits of authors. A reviewer's duty (IMO) is simply to be honest about what they thought about the book, and to at least try to say why.
Ruth wrote: "The worst review I ever got on The Phoenix was from a professional reviewer in a gay print publication. Not that it was a bad rating; it was actually a good rating. But the review itself was very,..."*g* It doesn't sound like a great experience in terms of how much you could enjoy the review when you read it. But - if you look at it another way - the result of the review was that all the readers of that magazine got to hear about your book, and to know that that magazine officially considered it to be a good book (from the rating). That's got to be better than not being reviewed at all, surely?
In the past month, 3 websites asked me to join them as a guest reviewer based on a few reviews I've done here and on my own website. I've gotten myself in knots about keeping the peace and wanting to articulate what I see in books I read.
I DO plan to keep reviewing, but between hysterical backlash from authors who should know better and my newness in the genre I have a feeling I'm walking into a thorn hedge.
I guess I'd add to your appeal to readers above an appeal to authors to review mindfully. As our genre grows I feel like its creators have a duty to honor what's good and address what's feeble or facile. How else is M/M to evolve? And as more authors review, the crazed reactions will of necessity fall away because (frankly) freaking out over articulate, impersonal reviews is not going to help anyone's career.
Many thanks for expressing the above and for picking apart so many threads I'm wrestling with now. :)