The Mookse and the Gripes discussion
General Non-Book Discussions
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Café Quito: 'pub' thread for general discussions
The Waterstones and Amazing business models are very different. Waterstones cannot distinguish easily between customers - it has to try to sell as many books as possible (or make the maximum profit) from customers as a homogenous group. So they will put books that they expect to be popular in prominent displays, often requiring publishers to take a hit on price for the privilege. Their shelf space is finite, so books that don't sell are moved out quickly and replaced with new stock. Amazon, however, is able to track individual customers by their purchases and create targeted marketing - customers who bought A might like B. They have seemingly limitless shelf space, so they can keep titles in stock long after their release date. They do discount popular products but can stock and promote full price products too given their personalised marketing. Also, they have the e-book market which allows titles to be sold at very little cost to themselves as the retailer.
I wouldn’t attempt walking and reading outside. I walk in our nearly empty hallways at work. 20 times around the floor is a mile so it’s a long stretch of walking straight. I always carry a book so that I can read in line.
That’s my kind of date, Robert.
I hope to see this film of The Bookshop next weekhttps://youtu.be/bRPNUHOS6yE
I know of a couple other books into film, The Sisters Brothers for one.
Waterstones and Amazon/Goodreads are both brilliant in my view.
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I've usually browsed the US site because a lot of the interesting small publishers can be found in a couple of the catalogues, Consortium and Steerforth. (It seems to be almost impossible to search by publisher / imprint for these small publishers like Archipelago, Deep Vellum and so on. I have to find something by book title and get into the catalogue from there)
I'd like to find out what's on the UK version these days, but would rather not scroll through all 600-odd review copies to get an idea, so was wondering if anyone could say which publishers of interest to the group often listed ARCs on UK Edelweiss.
The small Download (i.e. no need to send request, like Netgalley Read Now) section has several Archipelagos, and some Pushkin Press books which aren't eligible for the MBI.
I have a question about NetGalley. I just signed up to it a week ago mostly out of curiosity. I requested one book that was in the "read now" group, so I got access to it right away. I requested another book that needed approval, and it showed up in my "shelf" section as pending approval until I was granted approval, then I was able to access it.But I have also requested a copy of another book that was listed as a "wish" or something like that. When I go back to that book's page it says, "Thanks! The publisher may grant wishes at any time, so check your dashboard." But I cannot find anywhere on my dashboard where it says I have requested this book, unlike the other one I requested. In my "Not active" section it says "Pending Requests (0)" and "Declined Requests (0)". Is that normal or am I missing something?
Thanks.
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Thanks, Ant. It seems odd to me that they would not have a place that tells me what books I have requested as a "wish" the way it did for the other request, but it's good to know that really is how they do it. Thanks again.
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Possibly the most annoying absent feature is that there isn't a way to cancel requests.
The other frustration with NetGalley is the poor performance of the “send to kindle” function. I now read NG books as PDF on the IPad. That said, it is a good source for books, so I am not really complaining.
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I've never had one fail to arrive, though occasionally they take a couple of goes.
I find the Send to Kindle option often very badly formatted and the send to iPad option simply does not work.
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In one case on quite a major book the words were not in the right order
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It’s not a NetGalley problem. It is a problem with Amazon converting PDF documents into Kindle format. It is very hit and miss, but mostly miss.
I can’t see NG pushing to fix it, though. The PDF version become unavailable on archive date meaning people who liked the book need to buy a copy. But the Kindle version is permanently available, so the publisher could lose sales if everyone who requested an advance copy just kept the Kindle version they got for free. That said, one publisher recently sent me a hardback copy of a book gratis just for reviewing it (positively, of course).
Are Edelweiss files better? Formatting is one of the reasons I stopped using NetGalley and I assumed E. would be the same so never gave it a try.
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I was trying to remember what this was called just now, because I quite fancied reading it, and I was sure it would have been out last year, but it's not published until July 2019!
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/po...
What on earth are publishers messing about with for all that time?
I saw a book recently added to NetGalley that was published 11 years ago. I looked the book up here on Goodreads and found that it has a 5.0 rating from 28 ratings. Of those, 26 were added just this month in a space of 5 days. Now, I suppose this could all be legit, but it looks very fishy. Are bot ratings common here? And why would a book that is 11 years old be suddenly promoted in this way?
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One possible but basically legit cause is that the author posted about a new edition of the book or something on their social media, and fans or friends and family piled on to GR to rate it. That wouldn't be allowed on Amazon, but if the people actually are genuine users who know the author, on GR that's okay.
A couple of years ago one of my old MBI lists was mobbed one day by fans and friends of an author who mistakenly thought it was related to the actual prize and gave her book massses of votes. (A number of them also rated her books at the same time.) Since then I always put a disclaimer on the lists that it has no bearing on the official prize.
Thanks for the info, Ant. I just checked the book's page again and clicked on a bunch of the names of people who rated the book. It seems almost all of them just joined Goodreads in September 2018, have rated between 30 and 50 books, given 5 stars to all of them, and written no reviews. It makes me think this is more likely to be a pay-for-5-star-reviews thing, however....I joined Goodreads back in February 2018 with the sole interest of participating in the Mookse Madness short story showdown. When I joined, I decided to post a bunch of ratings of books I had read recently. In the end, I rated 55 books with a 4.45 star average. I have still not posted any reviews. So anyone who looked at my user page back in February would see pretty much exactly the same thing I am seeing with each of the people rating this book. And I know I'm not a bot or being paid for the ratings I gave (No, really, folks, trust me ... not a bot!), so maybe they are all just like me. Maybe. One or two people seems believable, but a couple of dozen all at the same time? Seems a bit odd.
I think I'm going to decline to name the book. If, in fact, the ratings are all legit I'd rather not be the guy who started a rumour that it was a fix. And if they are bogus, well, I spotted that it looked fishy right away, so let the user beware! No one should be surprised that authors or publishers might sometimes artificially goose their ratings.
It seems most unfair to post a story and not offer the evidence to let us judge for ourselves. The book and its reviews are in the public domain, as are your comments. Why not let us join the dots?
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and select 'report spam/abuse'
David explained why he doesn't want to name it. That's good enough for me.
MisterHobgoblin wrote: "It seems most unfair to post a story and not offer the evidence to let us judge for ourselves. The book and its reviews are in the public domain, as are your comments. Why not let us join the dots?"Unfair to whom? By not naming the book I believe I am being fair to the author and publisher by not starting a rumour that their ratings might be bogus.
Antonomasia wrote: "Goodreads do investigate reports of this sort of thing. (Although they don't always find anything concrete.) You can report it using the form here: https://www.goodreads.com/about/conta...and se..."
Thanks for the information and the link.
Ang wrote: "David explained why he doesn't want to name it. That's good enough for me."I disagree - why tell us half a story? The question has been raised about the authenticity of reviewers so now let us see the evidence and judge for ourselves. Otherwise it's like these scare-mongering stories we get in the papers about unspecified corruption or ethnic gang violence...
No, it's not like that at all. I think it's time to drop the subject.
Why? Just because I disagree with you?
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I read David's original post as mentioning a phenomenon he hadn't noticed before, because he is relatively new to the site. I would have just reported the book because I have been on here for years, and seen these things, and reported them, plenty of times before.
You are expecting someone who AFAIK is relatively new to online discussions, and to Goodreads and certainly to the group to fit your standards of frankness and comfort, and pressing them about a matter they have already clearly declined to answer. It sounds potentially aggressive, is intolerant of a different posting style which otherwise fits well enough in the group, and creates an unwelcoming atmosphere for new posters. There are in any case other routes for dealing more directly with these concerns (i.e. reporting them).
Ang wrote: "No, it's not like that at all. I think it's time to drop the subject."Agreed.
When I first started using GR, I didn't really understand that anyone could vote on and add to a "List"--I started one called "Great Short Story Collections" or something like that. Then along came like a dozen fans of this author I'd never heard of and swamped the list with his works and votes for them.I couldn't delete the list either.
So I changed the title of the list to: Books I Probably Wouldn't Read.
:D
:-)Incidentally one can, if a librarian, delete books from a list even if others have voted. Although GR issues a dire warning before you do
Only delete books from the list that are totally miscategorized. Deleting books that aren't will result in a loss of librarian privileges, and possible deletion of account. We're super serious!
shall I delete the Cheever?
I had no idea you could add to other people's lists. I have added The Greek Seaman to this list just to see whether I could - I will remove it in a day or so if I remember.
Yes, delete the Cheever, please! Clearly it is a book I not only probably would read, but did.
Eek, and it seems the "remove book" function doesn't work for non-librarians. Please could you also delete The Greek Seaman?
See, those lists are tricky, right?!! :D
I think whoever creates a list SHOULD have librarian rights over it.... GR DENIED me a librarianship, so I can't edit the 'Man Booker Eligible' lists I've done the past two years, and have had to rely on Paul's kindness to delete the inappropriate titles people keep adding! :-({PS: the 2019 list has 'Freshwater; on it, and I believe that is ineligible, since there were UK editions prior to 10/1, and it WAS on last year's list ... hint, hint!]
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List votes don't appear in the newsfeed themselves any more, but you can put a list in a status update. And post about it in a group.
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And being by Roxane Gay this gets to be the top review, obviously, and spread misconceptions.
She gets one comeback in the comments but unfortunately it's by someone not very well known AFAIK trying to advertise his own book. Some translators and publishers (not ones who've already had arguments with her on Twitter!) really should be showing her examples of great translation. If they haven't already. (perhaps this all went off on Twitter months ago and she didn't amend the review.)
Antonomasia wrote: "From a GR review of Leila Slimani's Lullaby, by Roxane Gay: The translation is good but clunky at times. I suppose that is the nature of most translation." And being by Roxane Gay this gets to be..."
Antonomasia,
Do you follow or are you friends with Roxane Gay here on GR? I'm asking because that could explain why her review is at the top. When I look up the book, neither she, nor her review appear anywhere that I can see.
I don't follow her and she's the top result of any book she's reviewed, after the section of my friends' reviews.
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When I say top reviews in GR (and this is the context in which I have always seen other people using the term over the years) , I always mean top in the Community Reviews field. The vast majority of users - all the ones who aren't highly active and/or don't have lots of highly active friends who've added a given book - as well as non-members and logged out users, see top community reviews first, and these are the most influential overall.
Hers is second, not top, I got that wrong.
Yes it comes up second for me. (The ubiquitous Emily May is of course first).Antonomasia wrote: "She gets one comeback in the comments but unfortunately it's by someone not very well known AFAIK trying to advertise his own book"
Has to be said it is an interesting book at least to skim - and available free in digital form at http://catbirdpress.com/bookpages/tra...
Although he has strong views on translation, in particular that the author's wishes shouldn't come in to it. He is pretty much diametrically opposed to the Milan Kundera view and indeed one of the translators that Kundera fired for daring to change his punctuation (or similar) is a friend of his.
The Mookse and the Gripes
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I don't particularly worry Waterstones will change Foyles too much, but I do worry more about the increasing monopoly Waterstones have.
The Secret Bookseller blog, by an independent bookshop owner, tends to complain more about Waterstones than Amazon - see e.g. http://secretbookseller.com/2017/10/2....