If you read Joe Konrath (I still lurk there, even though I’m against his exclusive by-invitation-only policy for his book borrowing effort), or you’ve just experienced it en carne propia (Spanish for “in your own flesh,” meaning personally), you’ll have heard that Amazon’s bots search for links between reviewer and author and erase the review if they find them.  What?  Authors can’t be reviewers?  I read a lot, and I review a lot of books.  My reviews tend to be longer than most Amazon reviews—even on Amazon—but maybe Amazon only cares about those star assignments and is perfectly content with one- or two-liner reviews?  Are they just trying to stop review exchanges?  I don’t support those either, but how do they know?  At any rate, I won’t be posting reviews on Amazon anymore, except for Bookpleasures reviews I repost there because the author requests it (we do that, but I won’t do that anymore either if Amazon forces me to pare down the review to 500 words, something they often also do).

All that said, these are Amazon’s problems, not mine, so let me just say they need a new book review paradigm that makes book reviews something more than voting on American Idol.  But I think I can generalize that comment to book reviews in general.  A new paradigm is needed to add some seriousness into the reviewing process again.  Book reviews nowadays follow Sturgeon’s Law.  I realize that there are many authors, publicists, and publishers seeking reviews.  Publishers often pay for them, so indie writers and their publicists are also asked to pay (Kirkus is the most common pay-for-review source, but many online review sites also ask for payment).  Like gushing blurbs from famous authors (yesterday I reviewed an ebook praised by James Rollins, for example—the book didn’t satisfy, to say the least), paid reviews are useless to readers (probably the gushing blurbs are about all Big Five authors are willing to write—they’re usually not reviewers).

When I see an ebook with more than twenty reviews, I think beyond the idea about whether there’s any more to be said about the book.  I think of the TV shows American Idol or Dancing with the Stars.  In those shows, the professional judges (the real reviewers) become irrelevant and the participants are judged in the court of public opinion (sort of like Bill Cosby, Target T-shirts, and that McKinney cop—all modern versions of lynch mobs).  The whole thing reduces to a popularity contest where often the person who web-screams the loudest generates a steamroller effect (in the social media cases I’ve mentioned, I happen to think public opinion came up with a correct appraisal, but that doesn’t make the process right or legit).  And that’s exactly what’s wrong with the present paradigm.  Just look at any ebook on Amazon with more than twenty reviews.  Friends, family, and other people just jumping on the bandwagon have written what I can only call trivial reviews—in so many words, just “atta-boys” or “atta-girls” or “this sucks!”  Why any reader would pay attention to these reviews is beyond me.

In early web times, blogs were discovered, and bookbloggers flocked like flies to spilled ice cream, scavenging free books from authors and publishers in exchange for “honest reviews.”  Instead of a publisher’s slush pile for manuscripts, indie writers now are faced with bookblogger slush piles.  Today bookblog backlogs (that sounds poetic for some reason) AKA slush piles are so large that bookbloggers tend to close down at least temporarily because they’re drowning in books to review.  I’m tempted to start my counter-Simon Royale list of bloggers as a result.  I’ve observed that a large percentage (maybe not as large as Sturgeon’s) of those listed on Simon Royale’s famous list of bookbloggers willing to review books by indie writers are no longer accepting book review requests.  With the release of More than Human: The Mensa Contagion, for example, I queried every sci-fi blogger appearing on Royale’s list—I’ve received only one response so far, and that was a formalized “Get lost!”

I’m not going to call that false advertising because of the slush pile phenomenon.  But even when a reviewer tells me that s/he won’t take more books for the next six months, that reviewer is useless for my purposes.  (Part of this is due to a lack of focus.  In Simon’s list, for their genre preferences, many reviewers list “all.”  This might be appropriate for a review site where many reviewers hang out, but it’s not appropriate for a single blogger!)

Some review sites are particularly egregious.  Readers’ Favorite, for example, won’t accept free review requests now because they’re working through their contest entries, but they’ll accept requests for paid reviews!  I won’t pay for reviews.  It galls me to even send a free ebook in exchange for an honest review.  Too many times, the reviewer doesn’t write that review (that assumes the reviewer even bothered to respond to my query, of course)—that means the blogger didn’t keep her/his part of the bargain.  No writer should ever pay for reviews beyond this SOP, and I get a max 10% return from the free ebooks I send out (Sturgeon’s Law again?).  (Yes, I keep stats.)

Bookbloggers for the most part are avid readers, interesting people, and honestly try to manage the backlog (many times created by not being genre-specific).  They’re not the problem—it’s the paradigm.  While I’ve found a few online reviewers who range from conceited asses to sociopathic pariahs, most want to do a good job, but they all expect authors and publicists to come begging.  The old paradigm lends itself to that.  While it doesn’t cost me any money to go begging (ok, a free ebook), it takes time and wounds my pride a bit.

The latter is similar to giving away free ebooks in general, as many internet sites, including Amazon, encourage.  I don’t do that.  I value my work.  While my goal is to entertain, I expect readers to value my work too.  If all indies stopped writing, the future for new and entertaining books would be bleak.  Some readers, not just bookbloggers, think that writers owe them something, when it’s really the other way around.  Every time I finish a good book, I mentally thank the writer for writing it (and do so formally if I review her/his book)—s/he has brought joy and entertainment to my geeky life, something far better than mindless TV shows or video games.

Here’s my solution to these problems: bookblogging and other review sites should function more or less like Bookpleasures.  A monitor or monitors should work with a staff of reviewers.  The monitor sends out a new list of book review queries every so often and asks if any reviewer is interested.  S/he or he emails the author, publisher’s rep, or publicist, requesting the book for review.  There’s no slush pile—if a book isn’t snatched up by a reviewer in a certain amount of time (TBD—I’d suggest two weeks), it’s removed from consideration (that doesn’t mean the author can’t query later with the same book or a new one).

For indie review sites, I would add the requirement that the reviewer pay for the book if it’s less than $5 (or TBD).  For many reviews on this site, the ones I don’t do in my official reviewing capacity at Bookpleasures, I pay for the books—they’re books that I’ve chosen to read for entertainment.  That eliminates the pernicious effect of bookbloggers and other reviewers just reviewing in order to get free books, and it helps indie writers financially as well because they find reviewers who are really interested in the book instead of just going through the motions.  This would also keep those slush piles limited.

Of course Amazon won’t support such a paradigm change.  And bookbloggers and other reviewers won’t either because their source of free books would dry up.  (Oh yes, there’s NetGalley—reviewers won’t find many indie ebooks there, though.)  As a result, I’m not hopeful for any change.  I won’t be using Simon Royale’s list for future releases, not even to update my own secret list of blacklisted reviewers (yes, I keep tabs).  For the time being, I’ll continue to send an interested reviewer a free ebook in exchange for an honest review, but the reviewer will have to make the request.  Other writers are forewarned: I’ll only look at queries submitted through Bookpleasures.  Other reviews I write will be of books I buy for my own entertainment—they won’t appear on Amazon.  And I will not participate in review exchanges—that’s almost as bad as paying for a review!

Am I sounding like a bitter old curmudgeon?  Maybe.  Write and tell me your opinion.  My usual SOP is to publish your comment after screening for foul language—this is a PG-13 site after all, but you can say I’m wrong without using expletives.  So comment away.  Because I’m a reader and reviewer as well as an author, I have strong opinions on this subject.  Yours might be different, so let the debate begin!

[Waiting for sci-fi?  More than Human: The Mensa Contagion is now available on Amazon, Smashwords, and other online retailers.  Kindle Countdown Deals: Soldiers of God will go on sale for $1.99, reduced from $2.99; Aristocrats and Assassins will go on sale for $0.99, reduced from $2.99.  Both sales run from July 31 through August 4 (note date correction).]

In elibris libertas….

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2015 at 4:00 am and is filed under Book Reviews, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.