Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

Was it only two years ago that Harriet Klausner was featured in Time Magazine, the Year of You? Because time moves swiftly in the interwebz. A concerted effort was made to devalue Klausner’s reviews and she is now fallen from No. 1 to No. 442.

Via Ed Rants. Thanks to Bookseller Chick for the link.

more cat pictures

I meant to post my Top Ten Things a Publisher Can Do to Help Readers Spend Money this week but over the weekend, an author began to engage readers over at Amazon in a fairly combative manner over a three star, or average, review. I think it serves as a good illustration of just what not to do. I give you the Top Ten Things Authors Should NOT Do at Amazon, the short version:

1. Suggest that the reader does not have good reading comprehension. Reader: It’s an average, historical read.
Author: but you mention a reason for your disappointment that would be historically inaccurate.

2. Suggest that a reader is only allowed to have a lukewarm opinion of a book if she has published a book. “Perhaps you would also like to show the rest of us how historical fiction should be WRITTEN! I look forward to reviewing your first novel, Lilly.”

3. Insult the readers by suggesting that their opinions are “knee jerk” and that they don’t have the good sense to appreciate work that the professionals do. …

In this political season, the candidates have received endorsements from people that they have had to “reject and denounce*”. The Good, The Bad, and the Unread, featured a promo for the September release of Double Enchantment by Kathleen Kennedy which is the second book in her Relics of Merlin series. Kennedy’s world is set in the Victorian era and has a unique way of assigning nobility according to the strength and type of magic one can perform. What I remember from the first book which I forgot to review, Enchanting the Lady, the shapeshifters were considered lower class individuals. (They are animals, after all).

Ms. MacGillivrey** showed up in the comments to provide this endorsement:
Kathryne’s books are indeed enchanting. She’s is one of the best new voices to debut in the past few years. I highly recommend her books.
This led Sybil, the blog owner, to ponder whether DAM was stupid or clueless and whether a recommendation by DAM was actually harmful to Ms. Kennedy. It’s unfortunate, but given DAM’s past behavior and the coterie of authors who assisted her in achieving her goals of review deletion***, a reader can …

National Book Critics Circle posted a summarization of the results of its Ethics in Book Reviewing survey. It’s okay to ignore self published authors and you shouldn’t review a book without reading the whole thing. There’s lots of other stuff, like whether it is more appropriate to eat m&m’s or hershey kisses while reviewing and whether you have to wear pants when you type since no one can see you, so go ahead and read the rest of the summarization.

(Yes, I made the latter two survey results up.)

Happy Thanksgiving Dear Author Readers. I came across a special tribute by one Patricia Cornwell to all her fans and had to share it.

I saw on David J. Montgomery’s website a message from Patricia Cornwell making a call to her fans to contact everyone they know and strong arm them into leaving her positive feedback on etailers like Amazon and Barnes and Noble because apparently she cannot believe that the people who have left negative reviews actually dislike her work.

Montgomery is a crime fiction reviewer/critiquer/commentator who has written for Chicago Sun-Times, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer and Boston Globe. He says that Cornwell’s latest effort, Book of the Dead, is “just dull, silly and pointless, with unappealing characters and run-of-the-mill lousy prose. Giving it a one-star review is generous.”

Apparently he is one of the cabal that is coordinated by “someone or a group of someones” to attack her through reviews.

We have reason to suspect that someone (or a group of someones) might be mobilizing people to attack me through Amazon and Barnes and Noble, etc., to hurt my sales and reputation.

Patricia Cornwell graciously provides instructions …