World, Writing, Wealth discussion
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What's your message to the world?
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message 151:
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PARESH
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May 13, 2017 07:32AM
In case of fiction, we can ask the author to write what events or incidents triggered the idea of writing it. You see everything begins with a purpose. Anything without a purpose is hard to digest. Let us take this discussion forward and take it to its logical conclusion. I have many more ideas as far as interaction between authors and readers are concerned and do not like commercial people who exploit this bond. Only authors should benefit more. For this, real community work has to be done to strengthen this bond. Goodreads is one such powerful platform which helps in creating a strong community feeling.
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It's very difficult to get real interaction between readers and authors and Goodreads is about as good as it gets. Unless one is a well established author with a long list of followers. I think what we are doing here is interacting with author to author. Other groups, like A Good Thriller, have more readers than authors and if we try to take any ideas forward it would be necessary to get their support - and other groups like them. But I don't see how we could assess a writer's motivation in a review and mark it.
I review quite a fair number of books a year (you can check me on Amazon of Goodreads) and I am against filling in a form. Once your reduce it to filling in a form, you tend more and more towards judging yourself. First, take non-fiction. If the reviewer is not an expert, how do you rate his review against that of someone else? Now, for fiction. The question then is, what is the author trying to do? Are you sure? Are you going to mark the grammar? If so, what qualifies you? Are we going to restrict reviews to the grammar police, or the typo pedant? If you try to reduce the procedure to a form, the reviews will be rare and you will have the lowest common denominator working. In my opinion, when you read a review, you can quickly tell whether that reviewer is likely to be helpful to you, so why change?
Is a form necessarily a reduction? Could just be a guide. With room for freely associated comments. Would that work?
Offering a guide is fine, but you must not ask everyone to answer a set of questions about it, because they may be totally inappropriate. How many times have you filled out a survey or form and wanted to put "Not applicable"?
Yes, Jeffery, you have it right. It would not be a form, it would be the basis on which to review a book. I believe that if you asked ten reviewers by what method did they make their review at least five of them would have no idea; they would be subjective from their own feelings and mood in which they read it. There is still the opportunity to sa, 'but despite all that, I did enjoy it'. Just take a cross-section of reviews about the same book here on GR, some will give a book two starts while others will give it four or five. There has to be a basic units from which to make those decisions.
Jeffery wrote: "Vance wrote: "Jeffery wrote: "If anyone knows anyone willing to review, send them my way. I'll see if belonging to GR leads to some reviews. Amazon demands 20. But if I don't get that many here, th..."Thanks. Then I'm in trouble, but not every book :-) Though to be honest I've never received an advert for any of my books from Amazon (I write in a pen name) except when Entrada ran a promotion through them.
Maybe the real bar is higher than 20, but that keeps us hopeful :-)
Reference cover art, P. K.
Rachel (publisher) spends a lot of time on the artwork for my books. She always reads the whole book before starting on the art or blurb and even changed one after publishing because it just didn't feel right. (Those rare people who bought the first one have a collector's item if Ferryl Shayde ever takes off).
I've only ever had one firm idea for the art, and Entrada's artist did a terrific job from my (very) rough sketch for The Forest and the Farm.
There may be a lot of downloading of standard cover art because many authors have no real idea what they want. Even if they pay someone, without the artist reading the actual book the result might still be generic.
If cover art catches the eye, then blurb has to be the bit that sells the product. That has to apply to ebooks as well, or maybe even more. We click, read a bit of the blurb, read more if it catches us, then maybe look at reviews. (unless that's just me :-)
Vance wrote: "Jeffery wrote: "Vance wrote: "Jeffery wrote: "If anyone knows anyone willing to review, send them my way. I'll see if belonging to GR leads to some reviews. Amazon demands 20. But if I don't get th..."I'm still not convinced that a cover makes a huge amount of difference, and certainly not with e-books. Does anyone think the cover makes them stop and stare and taste? But in a bookship, on any display counter or in a window, the cover can be a head-turner. It can make someone pick it up and read the blurb - and then, you are right Vance, the blurb helps sell it. But I think that only applies to hardbacks that can be displayed well. Does it apply to paperbacks in a pile on a bookshop table? And that sort of cover needs individual artwork, not downloaded pics with background tweets.
Any new messages to this tiny planet, intergalactic community or the entire expanding universe/ multiverse?
Nik wrote: "Any new messages to this tiny planet, intergalactic community or the entire expanding universe/ multiverse?"Yeah - read my books. I'm retiring soon and need the royalties.
New message? Not really. I have a number of old messages, but hardly anyone knows what they are (judging by book sales) so i can keep on trying to market them.
