You know someone who is about to have a book published. You are thrilled for this person; you want to share her or his excitement. The call goes out for obscure writers to review the new book. These writers get to see the book weeks before other people do, so their reviews can be in the papers, if possible, when the new book is displayed in the stores. You agree to be one. Happily sharing your friend's excitement, you watch the mail until the book arrives--or even agree to read it as an "e-book," which is basically a bad idea. You rush home and curl up with this book. It is not just another book. It is Tracy's book. It is "for you, from me." It is your chance to help the world discover what a wonderful person and writer Tracy is.
Not much can be said for the experience of reading an "e-book" unless the book itself happens to be great, so let's say that the publisher and author have invested the money to send you a real book, free of charge. The book probably cost ten or twenty dollars just to print, let alone start rewarding Tracy's work and the local booksellers' work, but for you it's a gift, because you are one of the obscure writers who will be boosting their own name recognition by writing clever, insightful things about Tracy's book.
So you savor this evening with Tracy's book, don't you? You sniff appreciatively at the paper and wonder whether to mention the scent of new books as one of life's pleasures. (Probably not in the version you plan to send to the literary magazine; for that audience it's a cliche.) You take time to admire the type font and any illustrations. Publishing crews need love too so, although there's no room for it on Amazon, in reviews that leave more room to ramble it's nice to warble about the beauty of a new book's design.
What kind of book is it, anyway? If it's the sort of "genre fiction" that sells steadily and well, detective stories or romantic comedies or Gothic horrors, probably the best way to read it is to dive in and read for the story alone. Genre readers want to know whether a novel delivers the kind of experience they like, so you want to note: "The plot kept me guessing." "I couldn't put it down." "I loved the heroine and I could just see the quaint little town she grows to love in the course of the story, too." You would not say these things if they weren't true. The fact that many people say them when they're not true does not, however, need to keep you from saying them when they are.
If it's a more challenging read, you might give it multiple readings to check for nuances and symbolism and other fun stuff. It's worth doing this even with what appears to be a romance that doesn't quite fit the pattern. When fictional romances don't fit their patterns there is a reason. Often that reason involves extra layers of meaning you can enjoy discovering.
How long do you normally take to read a book? For your first reading of Tracy's book, plan about twice that much time. You are not reading just to make sure that Jack and Jill resolve their differences. You want to savor the details that are now becoming part of your friendship with Tracy. Why did that sort of dog cross Jack's path? Why did Jill choose that color...
For about a week, anyway, Tracy's book is the guest of honor in your house. If you finish it in less than a week, see whether other family members can read it, too, and what they think of it.
Meanwhile, of course, you're writing those reviews. Knowing that each of the major review venues markets books in a different way to a different audience, you will probably write different ones. Amazon likes them short and pithy, enough to give buyers the information they need on a small computer screen. Goodreads is chattier and offers room to ramble and quote. Literary 'zines tend to like "long form" reviews, 1500 to 2000 words, with lots of quotes and some references to other books. Your own blog is whatever you've made it; your social media will of course need to be condensed--one good sentence from a review is ideal for Twitter. You want each review to be a gem of its kind, of course, but from the publisher's point of view what's really crucial is that you get'em up where people can see them before they walk into a bookstore and see the book.
Sometimes you might feel that haste hurts a book review. I consider my experience reviewing Wayland and Hiding Ezra, about a year ago. Hiding Ezra had been on my wish list for years but I hadn't bought and read it yet, and then suddenly a storekeeper wanted to throw a book party and wanted reviews of both books up, like yesterday. She thrust the books into my hands. "Read them! You'll not be disappointed! And review them in time for the party!" That was on a Tuesday; the party was on the Saturday. I got those books back to their owner and those reviews online in time for the party, all right. Every time I revisit those reviews I think the books deserved more thoughtful reviews that would have taken more time to write.
Publishers and booksellers do not share your concern about writing a flawed book review. They want a bulletin board covered with different reviews that put the author's name and title in front of prospective buyers. They like star ratings but mainly they like a lot of attention at the right time.
This is not to say that you can't get into interesting and review-enriching discussions of books with publishers. Daniel Yeo's Impermanence of Lilies is that sort of book. I like it, Jee Leong Koh liked it, Kendrick Loo liked it, but dang if any of us could say exactly why other people would like it. It's historical, but the history is scrambled. Its plot is basically a sweet romantic comedy, but in the course of that sweet romance the characters witness some of the great tragedies of history. It's whimsical and funny, except in a few spots where it may cause some readers to cry. It's an interesting book on many levels. Read it yourself and see.
Whatever you end up saying about a book, you must get those reviews of Tracy's book in front of readers in time. Anything less than that is STEALING. You got the book in exchange for those reviews, just as you get gas in exchange for money. Unless you can truthfully say that you were taken to the emergency room on the way back to the post office and never had a chance to read the book, there is no way you can pay the publisher for that book, now, other than writing reviews that will sell copies--to somebody, however different from you those somebodies may be. You will write those reviews. If the book disappointed you, you will read and reread until you come up with a plausible way of telling readers what their expectations of it ought to be, to avoid disappointment. You will get that information to those readers on the day appointed for each venue. Come flood come fire.
--That, at least, is my approach to reviewing e-friends' books. I had assumed it was everybody's. At least, the people who tweeted for review copies of Iris Yang's novels seemed to get reasonably good and timely reviews of them up...I'm still waiting to collect the money with which I've promised to buy the third book in the trilogy. I expect it to be a hard sell because, currently, China's ruling political party is about as popular in the United States as rabid skunks are, but people need and deserve to be reminded that China was our ally in the 1940s. But I will get that book and I will post those reviews. For those who've not read Yang's first two books, the two of them are good enough that you jollywell ought to pay for the third one.
But apparently writers further up the sales hierarchy than Iris Yang are encountering less ethical would-be reviewers. Hope Clark recently shared with everyone on her list that she sent out review copies of one of her detective novels to 44 e-friends, and of the 44, only 22 actually wrote reviews.
I read those words and wanted to take a few people by the collar and shake them. I personally do not happen to be a huge fan of detective stories, other than Dorothy Sayers', which are serious novels with plots like detective stories, and Rita Mae Brown's, which are deliberately laugh-out-loud goofy. Clark's novels seem to be selling steadily without my help. I'm pleased. I read and review detective stories but, as readers may have noticed, my reviews of them tend to be tepid. But a lot of people Out There like to "solve a mystery" (my husband was one) and they deserve to know when there's a new, good one that has the Carolina coast in it, and what other delights it contains besides the Carolina coast.
Some people who would never go into Wal-Mart, fill a cart, load the whole cart into their van, and drive away without paying for anything, did the moral equivalent of that to Clark.
I hit "reply." I hit the exclamation mark key, rather hard. I typed a hasty, harsh reply explaining that I don't do credit cards, so Amazon is out, and I'm not famous enough to get into the Washington Post Magazine, but if I say I'll write a review, at least on Goodreads, on Twitter, here, and in that Tuesday Revue newsletter I'm launching er um next week, I will write that review if I am alive.
Clark replied promptly, too, making excuses for her friends who just let other things crowd her book out of their consciousness...
You don't LET other things crowd your friend's book out of your consciousness when that review copy is the guest of honor in your home, dingbats!
She thought Amazon was now limiting reviews based on how much money people had spent there recently, rather than whether or not they used credit cards. Amazon doesn't work with Paypal so you might ask what other way anybody managed to spend money there. The answer is giftcards. I used to have recurring gigs that paid in Amazon giftcards, and this led to enough purchases to get some of my Amazon reviews live on Amazon, where several people voted them helpful. Then those reviews all disappeared, just when a deserving publisher was looking for some more of them, because we hadn't used the wretched credit cards. If Amazon has gone back to the only question that makes sense--"Do we know that this reviewer bought this particular book, or the publisher did?"--that would be good news. I've not heard that they have.
But the most interesting thing she had to tell me was why publishers do not drop the thieves from their lists of potential reviewers and reach out to more conscientious people. Amazon is the biggest venue, she said, therefore the one they consider first. If obscure writers don't do Amazon, they need to have large followings on Goodreads, the social media, and their blogs. "Thousands of daily page views" were required...
This web site determined, some time ago, that "It's All Right to Be Little-Bitty." We like high numbers of page views but we don't want to pursue them at the cost of anything else, and so, although some posts here get thousands of views, most get hundreds. Or dozens.
Well, if publishers don't want to bother with really obscure writers who are conscientious about writing reviews on time, and prefer to throw away money on (oh all right, if they're Clark's friends I'll say slackers, but if they had been claiming to be friends of mine I'd say thieves), that is their problem in a nutshell.
Meanwhile, Gentle Readers, I'm glad I started out at Associated Content because that site built in a system that encouraged writers to boost one another's signals. I'm always glad to boost anyone else's signal if they deserve it. So, I hope, are you. If you don't want to buy a bot army, the honest way to raise your page-view count is to get more views and referrals from your friends' friends, and their friends.
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