Today, Dear Readers, is Saturday the 14th. You know what that means, right? Yesterday was Friday the 13th! I never said anything about it in my blog yesterday (or in my bog which is what I typed first, having only finished a sip of my first morning coffee—I suppose to say something like that in my bog I would have to build a hearty sign with one helluva sign post, but that’s mostly beside the point; the main point being that I own a bog). You know what else being Saturday the 14th means, don’t you?
IT’S. THE. WEEKEND.
I don’t have to worry so much about that anymore, but we don’t talk about that on this blog, not even in hushed tones (well, you all might talk about it amongst yourselves, but I can’t hear you, so you’d have to be all the way down to reverent tones, which are the kind the preacher can’t hear during his sermon, and with ears that can hear a church mouse fart, reverends have good hearing).
Drawing credit to Chirantha, Deviant Art.com
You get the feeling I don’t have a point here yet? Oh but I do! All right all you damned psycho wrestling fans, tell ’em! IT’S BLACK SATURDAY! That’s right, in 1984 the scoundrel Vince McMahon and his World Wrestling Federation (WWF) took over the Saturday night time slot on Superstation WTBS replacing Georgia Championship Wrestling (GCW)!!* No proud wrestling fan forgets a date that will live in infamy. Not even FDR, who coined the phrase (and he was dead when it happened).
*Wrestling info via this Wikipedia article—no, I am not a “Pro” wrestling fan. {To the cacophony of groans and the pitter-patter of lost readers’ feet scampering away}
Courtesy freebookmarkscalendars.com
And yet I am still not to the real reason I’m writing on Saturday the 14th. No, you wily Gregorians, it’s not because it’s the 195th day of the calendar year—just kidding, just kidding, geeze, you people have no sense of humor at all. It’s leap year, so this is actually the 196th day of the calendar year! {Rob’s Gregorian fans breath a sigh of relief that would make a church mouse fart and a preacher cringe}
I’m blogging this glorious Saturday the 14th because early this morning, unable to sleep for myriad reasons, I saw that I’d gotten my first honest review ever. Actually TWO! One for each of my first two books!
(Now those of you who’ve written reviews don’t fret—I know you were being honest, too. But this is a different kind of honesty. Come on, if you don’t know there are at least several different kinds of honesty, just ask your teenager. Or wait until your wife asks you if she looks fat in her jeans.)
I found the review for LOST first. A 3-star. It’s right here. Katy writes an honest, helpful, HONEST review. I know I said “honest” twice, but I wanted to really emphasize that fact.
Imagine my elation when in the LOST review she mentioned she had also reviewed Black Beast! I went right over and read that one, too, and—true to form–Katy had given Black Beast an honest 4-star review (docking me one star for a plot mistake in counting/matching the number of years, I think, which was true). I have a heck of a struggle with timeline exactness down to the day or year. Why? Because I am a pantser. I write by the seat of my pants, which I’m telling you makes for great reads because when the writer doesn’t know exactly when or how something is going to happen, I promise you the reader doesn’t! However, sometimes I say something happened in 1947 and then later I say something else and that means the 1947 event couldn’t have happened until at least 1948. Busted. I thought a whole star was a lot, but like I said the review was fair.
Here is her Black Beast review, by the way: http://bit.ly/SOZAEVA2
Now you regular readers, you know my second language is sarcasm. And you may be thinking I am about to blast poor Katy. Far from it. Please, read the reviews to which I linked. My marketing handlers have begged me for, uh, months not to say this in a public forum because, well, I have no idea why not, because I think honesty always makes the most sense (yes, even when your wife looks fat in her jeans—my wife TRUSTS me to tell her how she looks before she leaves the house because she knows I will be brutally honest if need be and she does not want to go out in public having her clothes make her look bad, as do none of the rest of us).
I hurried Black Beast and LOST out the door. I never used a beta reader, an editor, a proofreader (other than myself and my wife) for Black Beast. In fact, the first chapter of Black Beast had been sitting on my computer since 2001 when I found out about how you could digitally publish on Amazon (and then I Googled and found the same thing on Smashwords, of course). Then I read a blog interview with John Locke about his crazy idea to write tripe and sell it for 99 cents and get like six of the top ten slots on Amazon’s bestseller list and I just knew I had to have a piece of that pie. So I spent a few weeks turning Chapter One into a whole book (and even added a whole supernatural element because I knew how well vampires and zombies and everything else ghoulish were selling—which by the way was a total sell-out because I just wanted to write a detective thriller with a character everyone would love…a character I loved). I slammed Black Beast out there more or less as a first draft. The only corrections were the ones I made as I wrote (i.e. the backspace key).
And people loved it. They loved the “don’t spend fourteen pages telling me how the grass smelled, just get to the action baby” style of the book! So I cranked out the sequel (it was always going to be a series) only this time my rush was all my fault because I am a terrible procrastinator and my boss (me, since I’m self-published) set a reasonable deadline and I waited until the last minute (truth is my editor let me slide one week from a Christmas release to a New Year’s Day release).
Again, people loved the book. Many loved it more than Black Beast!
Then I realized a funny thing (I blogged about it once): everyone was giving me five stars. Five stars? I know they loved it but, uh, I have my own literary, detective story-writing heroes, so what are THEY? Come on, I’d be thrilled to be a 4-star writer right out of the gate (partially because I knew I had Dark Prairies, my new release this week, in my back pocket, having written, chiseled, and honed much of that for years)! My magnum opus, baby. My honest-to-Pete “first book”. The problem isn’t Katy or the rest of honest reviewers. In the mucked up world of Amazon reviews, where it looks like this:
Five Stars = Any book worth reading that was actually pretty decent
Four Stars = A book worth reading. Maybe.
Three Stars = Shit.
Two Stars = I am a douche who tries to destroy other writers but I think if I add an extra star, I’ll fool you.
One Star = I am a douche who tries to destroy other writers and never thought about the really cool “extra star” idea.
Things are quite distorted. It’s all more or less true (the distortion of the system), and I wish it wasn’t. I wish one star meant a book was shit, three meant it was really halfway decent (and worth the 99 cents to three bucks you spent on it) and where five stars meant, simply, WOW, how do ya top that?
But back to the honesty of Katy’s reviews. They matched exactly what I told my wife months ago I would have given my books. However, I said in the context of the rating system we all wish for. I said “three stars in the current Amazon rating system is a death sentence”. I don’t blame Katy for putting my book on death row. She did the right thing. She was an honest reviewer and I salute her for it. Swear to God.
And that, dearest readers, is how you treat a reviewer. Especially a rare one:
Honestly.
NOTED EXCEPTION: Never, however, respond to a trolling, flamethrowing, pants-wetting, Überdouche in the comments. You will only make yourself look bad. I know you want to. I want to. Especially when they tell outright lies (the complete opposite of honesty, by the way). But even they have a right to say what they want—what they feel—regardless of truth or motivation. Leave it alone. Walk away. Count to a thousand. Whatever it takes, Do. Not. Engage.
P.S. I know some 1-star reviews are honest and the reviewers who wrote them are honest folk, do not wet their pants, nor do they have any ulterior motives whatsoever. But beware the system; 1-star reviews should represent a book that is damn near unreadable. I know many people (most of them writers) that pride themselves in saying “I always read the 1-star reviews first; that’s where you find out the truth about a book”. Hmm. Yes, if there are a large number of them and, most importantly, if you read the review for IT’S coherency, unbiased tone, etc.
In summation, Dear Reader/Writer? Write on. It’s all you can do. Learn. Get better. I promised myself a while back to stop reading reviews. The book’s written, published, out there in the hands of the readers—the print version unchangeable unless you want to pay for it with greenbacks.
But you can see how well I’ve done not reading the reviews. I see an increment and I’m all over the reviews, finding the new one. I will get there. Reviewers are important, but in the end, they’re just giving their opinion. Do what I do and for God’s sake read the sample.
And seriously: thank you, Katy Sozaeva.
Thanks for being honest and for writing two cogent, well-thought, superb reviews.
Addendum: literally since finishing and posting this blog, I saw that Katy had read Dark Prairies and reviewed it. If you click on her name above, you’ll be able to read all three of her reviews of my three books.
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The blank page is dead…long live the blank page.
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Author known to use spontaneous satire, sarcasm, and unannounced injections of pith or witticisms which may not be suitable for humorless or otherwise jest-challenged individuals. (Witticisms not guaranteed to be witty, funny, comical, hilarious, clever, scintillating, whimsical, wise, endearing, keen, savvy, sagacious, penetrating, fanciful, or otherwise enjoyable. The Surgeon General has determined through laboratory testing that sarcasm can be dangerous, even in small amounts, and should not be ingested by those who are serious, somber, pensive, weighty, funereal, unsmiling, poker-faced, sober, or pregnant.)
This is truly a dilemma because there is no indication as to which standard to use, gold or silver. I’ve been grading works as if I were a teacher using a curve – indie relative to indie, since most indie writers are first timers are close to it at this point in time. But of course how would I rate a Nobel laureate? Rating systems represent short cuts and people likes short cuts as it is easier to work with numbers than words. We like easier and try to ignore all the distortions easier leaves us with. So in the end the star rating is essentially meaningless, as we each start from our own starting point. It’s a study in relativity that would daunt even Einstein.
Why do I think Einstein would agree with you wholeheartedly? (He’s the guy that makes the delicious bagels, right?)
In all seriousness, it really can be a conundrum and I’m not sure there’s a right or wrong answer. And I hate to cop out like that more than anyone.
Thank you for always being that beacon of calm reason in the market storm. Sincerely.
*laugh* Thanks, Rob. If you go to my Goodreads profile page, you’ll see my rating criteria, and I mostly stick to it. I’ve given a couple books I couldn’t finish 3-star reviews, because it wasn’t them, it was me … 😉 but usually if the book stinks so badly I can’t finish it, it’s a one-star. If it stinks but I manage to finish it, 2 stars. It’s in the 3 and 4-star area that it gets murky and the different rating will depend upon my personal feelings on the matter.
I wish everyone would follow my brilliant example *snicker* but unfortunately not everyone is as awesome as I am *unable to hold back gales of laughter at my own nonsense*
ATB, Rob, and I told you I’d get to ’em as soon as I could – sorry it wasn’t sooner for the first two, but I think it all worked out quite well. 🙂
I think your rating criteria pretty much match up with what I said or implied (not Amazon’s current “everyone that’s semi-readable or at least mostly grammatically unscathed deserves five stars” system. It’s funny the way I “discovered” your reviews this morning; I was up not able to sleep, so kind of out of it, and saw that LOST had incremented by one so read your 3-star. Of course then I saw that you’d reviewed Black Beast, almost threw up thinking what brutal honesty I’d find there, and was well-pleased with the 4-star. Still not remembering who you were, I wrote the blog, where a couple of times I referenced you (politely, but as you would someone of whose identity you were clueless).
Proofread the blog, posted it, and then found you on Goodreads, gears started clunking into place, read your 5-star of Dark Prairies (now fully awake and aware who you were), back to the blog to slice the parts that showed I clearly didn’t think I knew you and said you should really read Dark Prairies.
It was much more dramatic and terrifying as “me” this mornIng, trust me. So I ended up building a crescendo to your review of my treasured book. Your professional, no holds barred 5-stars made my day. (I’m glad you napped on it first {smiles sardonically} even
If it was just a couple of parts.) 😀
I think you’re right Rob, sarcasm is your second language. Great post though and I’m glad that though your marketing team said not to let this one out of the box that you did. At least now I know the people who left me five star ratings on Amazon really didn’t like my book all that much. Very good info to know. Haha, now excuse me while I go have one of those infamous writer temper tantrums. 😉
Thanks, Rihannon. My marketing team is second in overprotectiveness to a nonsensical levell only
to me (which is a bit of a ridiculous statement because 1) I AM my marketing team: lock, stock, Oxford comma, and smoking barrel and 2) I’m not all that overprotective—even though I did once give everything I had to a gentile homeless man in Savannah, GA just because he looked at me and smiled and his teeth looked better than mine—the surest sign of a conspiracy plot if ever there was one).
Now where was I? Oh, my marketing team—excellent group of individuals; well-liked, groomed immaculatly, agree wholeheartedly with me regarding the importance to national security of the serial comma, and they work for peanuts. Literally.
I think I’ll follow your lead and have one of those infamous but completely pointless author tantrums. Nothing makes me feel more like an author than one of those, I tell you. Yessir, indeed.
Nice post.
I responded to negative comments by a reviewer recently, but the comments weren’t actually about my story. The review was actually great. The comments were about stuff I’d written in my About the Authors and a note I included.
So I responded, explaining myself, and I’ve been mentioned in a couple of later posts about how to respond professionally to such things. It all worked out well for me in the end but I’ve had to restrain myself since when somebody accused me of using shills on Amazon.
Here’s a link to the original review and the comments below, if anyone’s interested… http://truejdk.com/2012/05/26/book-review-the-brightest-light-scott-j-robinson/
Thanks, Scott. I promise, I only dispense such advice having been tempted too many times to launch myself right down into the muck at the inappropriate level of provoking. (Besides, I find stalking to be a much more effective and entirely less legal solution!)
In all seriousness, thanks for again reading and for taking the time comment. 🙂
Amen, Katy and Rob! I wrote about this very thing on a Goodreads thread. I give honest reviews, too, and cushion any 3-stars with nice comments because I realize how so many reviewer and author brains have been warped. And yes, I’m tougher on big-house pubbed work because I expect top-of-the-line from “snobs.” It appears that what most readers mean by 5-stars is not the quality of writing, rather how well they enjoyed it – or wanted to enjoy it because it’s their friend’s book. And then there are those naughty authors who trade 5-star reviews. The most honest review of my book is 3-star, too, and I was happy to learn from it! (PS: found you via a Twitter RT)
Hi, Linda. Yes, if you are going to give a book any kind of star rating (especially a 3, in today’s wacky world) the better you write, described the whys, etc. the better becomes the review! Thanks much for the read and the comment. 🙂
I have never bought a book based on a review and don’t trust anyone who does. I buy books based on the author and the opening paragraph. The story hits me between the eyes like a pistol shot, or it goes awry. Someone else’s opinion is of no importance to me.
I wish they had a “Rotten Tomatoes” for book reviews (I would have kept that idea close to the vest but who am I kidding, I have to write books, not review ’em. But RT (which is for movies) samples 150-200 professional reviewers for a thumbs up or thumbs down (in their vernacular fresh or rotten) then anything that gets more than 60% fresh on average of all gets a “fresh” recommendation. I am a mathematician at heart (the black, cruel part of my heart my muse avoids until she needs a really nasty villain) and let me tell you, that system works better than ANY I’ve ever seen. They even have a scoring (same criteria) for the non-professional reviewers (e.g. blogger reviewers hoping to become the next Ebert) so you get two scores. Oh, AND they have a “Cream of the Crop” score which are just the elites, like Roger Ebert.
I laughed at the part about the math part of you. I wrote a very cute poem about correlation and causation. Not ALL math has to be dark and evil you know 😉
I was either going to be a Math major or pre-Law coming out of high school. I love math. Math is not dark and evil at all. Okay, maybe Linear Algebra. 😉
I’m a trained statistician. Actually, I have a master’s degree in biostatistics.
I haven’t published anything yet, but as a reader, I generally ignore reviews on books on Amazon (and other sites). People who take the time to write a review of a product either loved it, or hated it. Strong emotions won’t help me decide if I want to read the book, but they will make me agitated (and who needs that?).
That said, I do review books on my blog occasionally. I try to avoid using stars at all, because they mean different things to different people. Instead, I give an overall impression, a premise if necessary (e.g. zombie apocalypse is over), who I’d recommend it for (e.g. not young kids, people who like action, etc.), and then a list of what I liked and didn’t. I copy the overall into Goodreads now that I’m using it (although they push the star issue – I try to use their definition of the stars).
I do it that way because that’s what I’d like to know as a reader, and that’s what I’d also like to know as a writer.
For instance, the writing could be brilliant, but the story might not be my cup of tea. The story could be great, but written clumsily so you’d have to be able to overlook that. It could all be wonderful, except on part in chapter 4 where the book meanders for awhile, etc.
IMHO, the goal of a review (to the general public, not the industry) should be to help people decide if they’d like/appreciate/get something from a particular book. Since everyone wants different things at different times, it’s best to tell people what the book gives them, without spoiling it.
Thanks for posting this. I am glad to hear what others think about online reviews – especially from the receiving end.
BTW, I read LOST, but am not going to review it until I read Black Beast. I didn’t realize until I was partway in that it was the 2nd in a series. So, I have to read the first one to give a solid opinion 🙂
May I kindly hand you the coveted Rob on Writing award for “Best comment of the week”? (It’s invisible, so just ooh and ahh—some of the other recipients actually believe I handed them something (and that we’re all somehow in the same room and I am able to hand things to you). Seriously, though, you have summed up (for me anyway) exactly how reviews should be done. Bravo. I even blogged about it somewhere: ratings versus reviews. BRAVO. Thanks for the read, comment, and cogent breakdown of the perfect review style. 🙂
🙂
I’m glad you liked what I said. I guess I’ll keep going at it the way I have been. My book reviews don’t get a lot of views (yet), but I’m hoping once I get a bunch out there REAL people find them… and then find them useful.
Of course, you are welcome to take a look at them and let me know if I’m living up to my goal and intention. Saying it is one thing… doing it another.
I get angry emails all the time because my grading standard for books is so different than the Amazon grading scale which you spelled out perfectly.
5 stars is basically reserved for the best books I have ever read
4 stars is for quality books that are well above just being “good”
3 stars is for average books (most of what is written)
2 stars is for books that I regret reading and weren’t good at all.
1 star is for books that I cannot believe ever even were considered for publication.
Glad someone else is talking about this other than me.
Hi, Mathais…thanks for reading and for the great comment. Obviously I think your list is perfect…in the real world. The issue comes when your criteria is used on Amazon’s site. Don’t get me wrong, it’s no fault of yours, but the author with a really good book can get hosed. I don’t have a solution for it. I once asked for a 4-star review because everyone was giving me 5-stars. I wanted my reviews as a whole to have authenticity. It’s all messed up, in my opinion. That’s why I tell people to read a sample of the book. I have no idea what your or anyone else’s taste is in books. The best reviews factor that out, but that can be a crap shoot with the rules in Chinese, too. 🙂
I’m starting to think I should leave reviews on Amazon. Do they REQUIRE the star-system, or can I just leave commentary?
I used to like watching WWF but I get disappointed when I learned that the fight is actually scripted. Well, I was young back then though. My mind was just corrupted.
So, this conversation has sparked something. I’m now working on a site that will, among other things, deal with this (I hope). The idea is to have set requirements for reviews. The public can NOT just post them, but can submit them.
Since this will, obviously, make it take a lot longer to gather a good number of reviews or even cover a goodly number of books without just allowing anybody to write what they want, authors can submit samples/excerpts/book-jacket teasers to help readers find their works too.
The site will also offer full text short stories and poems so readers who like shorter content can find authors whose style/topics/etc they find enjoyable.
Once I get things set up, I might add a “request a review” feature, but that’s not certain yet.
Anyway, I thought you should all know since this discussion was part of why I got the idea in the first place.
When it goes live it’ll be FindStuff2Read.wordpress.com
Also followable on Facebook (facebook.com/FindStufftoRead)
Cheers!
Mathias nailed it. Perhaps you could start a trend on Amazon and post that “stars criteria” at the top of each review you submit.