Good Reads and early reviews
With three weeks to go now until Fire in the Sea hits the shops, reviews are starting to pop up online. It's a strange and stressful time really. Having spent the last year secretly working on the book with my editor, it feels very odd that other people will soon get to have opinions about how good it is. Obviously, I've already had a taste of this with my podcast novels. Then, it was genuinely exciting when a new comment or review would pop up. The support of the podcasting community made the stress of writing, recording and podcasting those early novels an exhilarating experience. The good reviews gave me the confidence I needed to believe I actually could write books (writers are in constant need of confidence boosts), while the bad ones... well, they'd clearly missed the point. You can't please everyone.
It's true, of course, that you tend to remember the bad reviews more easily than the good. I still remember one that complained that the characters seemed to spend all their time smoking and drinking. Which was true. Salmon and Dusk probably should have come with a health warning. But I always felt able to shrug off those reviews. As consumers, we all have opinions that are utterly valid, but are (generally) informed by a narrow range of interests. I've drunk a lot of wine in my time, for example, but it's not really my area of expertise. I'm not a fan of white wine or sparkling. I prefer a heavy red. If someone asked me to recommend a good white or pink or bubbly, I'm not going to be much help. As such, I have lots of opinions on wine but I'm never going to be a wine critic. (I've sat at tables with wine critics and been at once impressed, appalled and bemused. Strange people.)
These days, it's my day job to be a critic. I've reviewed films and music for over a decade now and, while I have my own preferences and obsessions, I'm aware that Myke the critic has to take a wider view than Myke the consumer. Criticism is about cultural context, I think, and about considering the wide and diverse tastes of your audience when reviewing an artwork. It's about analysing what a work is trying to do, how successful it is and where it belongs in its genre/canon/artform, rather than just saying "I liked it."
Obviously, I still have my own preferences as a critic. I'll cut something a lot of slack if it's fun. If something is setting out to be an entertainment, and succeeds at that, then I'll avert my eyes from the cracks. Similarly, if something is setting out to do something genuinely different or over-reaching itself, then I'll avert my eyes.
What all this means, of course, is that I'm more than a little nervous that Fire In The Sea is currently in the hands of critics. These are people who will be trying to find a place for it in a wide body of literature. These are people who will decide how the book is approached, how it will be remembered and, crucially, how many copies it will sell!
Which isn't to say that I value their opinions any more highly than I do those comments on the podcasts. Not at all. I have been absolutely delighted with the first couple of reviews that have popped up on Good Reads. Each good review there means as much to me as a few hundred words in a newspaper. Absolutely. I do a little happy dance each time a new one shows up. But this time around, more so than the podcasts, I'm aware that the criteria for success and failure are sharply defined. If the book sells, there will be more. Good reviews from critics will help it sell. Without them, we've got an uphill struggle.
Of course, critical thumbs up aren't the "be all and end all" these days. Sites like Good Reads can be just as effective in helping a book succeed. Word of mouth and groundswell support can be just as effective. If you read the book and you like the book, please post a review on Good Reads, update Facebook with a few good words, tweet 140 characters of praise! Fire in the Sea is my first book to arrive in paperback by traditional means. I've got plenty more stories to tell and I'd like the chance to share them. I'm hoping you (and those critic folks) enjoy the book enough to keep reading.
Fire in the Sea on Good Reads
