Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Reviews

For awhile I was doing reviews on this blog. I received Egalleys and some ARCs from bigger publishers. Once How to Date an Alien was published I announced that I would be done posting reviews.

And then I started reading amazing Indie books and posted more reviews to GoodReads and Amazon. WTF?

Okay, so I have a new policy on reviews. I'm still not going to post them here, but I will only post positive reviews of books that I've actually enjoyed to Amazon and GoodReads.

Why?

Because as an author, I'm not going to go out and attack another author's work. No matter how much I didn't enjoy a book, it feels wrong to slam another author. I feel like I need to still report them. There was one ARC I received a few years ago, from a bix six publisher, and I loved the author but thought the book was terrible. I respectfully declined to review it because I loved the author and felt there was no need to just bring them and their work down.

So in a nutshell, you see me reading book, if I loved it, I'm not afraid to post and gush about it. If I didn't love it, I'm not going to go and attack someone else's work. I do understand that bad reviews aren't the end all be all, but I love my fellow authors too much to go out and attack them.

How to you feel about reviews? Do you post the bad ones?

5 comments:

  1. My perspective on reviewing books is this: Don't claim to be a book reviewer if you can't offer an honest review, even of the stuff you don't enjoy. Saying only positive things is an endorsement, not a review.

    So I respect your decision a ton. I'm the same way. I don't want to say bad things about other authors, particularly on my blog. (Goodreads is a touch different, because I'm a book consumer on that site who is talking to other book consumers.)

    I've read 'book review' blogs that offer very little critical analysis, and to me that's claiming to be a reviewer, not actually being one.

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  2. If you look up my old reviews I did the good and the bad of the book and that was good when I was a real book reviewer, but now I'm reading more for my enjoyment.

    There are a lot of people that really go all author bashy on some reviews and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

    I guess, yeah I'm kind of leaving an endorsement/review to authors that I love, but if I like a book enough I'm going to go out of my way and gush about it on Amazon. If I don't...meh... I'll just sit it back on the shelf.

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  3. I don't like bad reviews that sound like the author is really enjoying venting their spleen about just how bad the book is. I balk at doing that. If I find it really bad, I tend not to finish it - my time is limited, and reviews are work!

    I want to promote people, not bash them. If I would rate it lower than three stars I won't review it. A three star book would still have many good points.

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  4. Exactly how I feel, Nick. I really hate reviews that just attack the author, especially when they are really long. I wonder why the person kept reading over sent ao much time reviewing if they hated it so much.

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You should leave me a comment. It would probably make me smile and then I will probably comment back. Unless you are a spambot. Then I will probably just ignore you.