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

 Loading ...

Some people see a need for an aggregate review site for all books, particularly digital and POD titles. While this would be a great service to a reader, the question is who would edit and maintain such a site and how would the contributors be compensated?

more cat pictures

Last week we saw yet another author/reviewer contretemps in which an author, upset over a review, engages the reviewer in a comically bad mannered way. When we’ve witnessed this in the past, it almost always seems to be over a C review. An average review. A review that says this book is competent but it’s not for me. Often these reviews articulate carefully exactly the reason a book does not work for the reader.

After some head scratching, I’ve come to the conclusion that a C grade means a failure to many authors. I remember that Jamie Sobrato once wrote that she would rather evoke some strong reaction than a lukewarm reaction, even if the strong reaction was not positive. It might be stating the obvious since I am referencing a post written over two years ago, but Sobrato’s comments really stuck with me. I’ve never really understood it. I might be conflating lukewarm with average, but I don’t think so. Maybe the C review signals to an author that she’s failed to move the reader emotionally and thus is a failure overall.

While …

Karen Scott links to a post by Lee Goldberg who linked to a post here at Dear Author. Certainly that is some kind of circle jerk, but on an interesting and important topic.

Apparently Affaire de Coeur has a policy of providing positive reviews and articles to publishers based upon the amount of page space that is purchased. Additionally, and possibly more damning (I know! what could be more damning) is that according to Goldberg:
I’ve just discovered that their advertising director, Bonny Kirby, co-owns the disgraced Light Sword Publishing company with Linda Daly (a court recently fined Kirby and Daly thousands of dollars for defrauding authors). This explains why Light Sword titles consistently got positive reviews from Affaire De Coeur and why Daly was the subject of a cover story. No reputable magazine would review books published by their advertising director…or feature her partners on the cover. It’s a sleazy, unethical conflict-of-interest.
I’ve not ever read/purchased/seen an Affaire de Coeur magazine but I have seen them quoted multiple times in books and have been in business for over 26 years. It seems that the paid review is becoming more and more commonplace. I know that …

A company called Edson.financial.group has a books and music and other media ebay store. Over 200 products are reviewed, however, it has been discovered that many of those reviews are copied word for word from reviewers on Amazon. Jennifer Ray from Wild on Books Reviews has had three reviews copied and reposted under Edson.financial.group’s name.

Kiss of Fire review by Jennifer and the unauthorized copy at eBay.
Shifter review by Jennifer and the unauthorized copy at eBay.
WitchBlood a review by Jennifer and the unauthorized copy at eBay.

Jennifer has reported this entity to eBay but hasn’t received a response. Another reviewer noticed the same problem and turned to Amazon for help. As always, Amazon has a piss poor response:

Greetings from Amazon.com. I apologize that your review for an item on Amazon.com was posted on another web site. In this instance, please know that we did not give permission for this to happen. Unfortunately however, we are not able to take any actions to have the review removed as the review you are referencing is on a different web site than ours or one of our …

DJ Gallo posts a tongue in cheek article on yesterday’s ESPN Page 2. Page 2 for non ESPN visitors is generally a fluff piece (maybe a satire of the infamous Post Page Six. Page 2 is full of celebrity wankage, jock wankage, and generally mockery. Yesterday was the day to mock sports books, but I have to say that reviewing books based on title and author does little to ameliorate the dumb jock stereotype.”The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL” by Mark Bowden.
Best game ever? In 1958? Pfffft. This author guy needs to listen to
more sports talk radio. The best game ever was whatever last night’s
best game was.”The Greatest Game: The Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Playoff of ‘78” by Richard Bradley.
Wait a minute … I thought the Giants-Colts game in 1958 was the best
game ever? Author fight! Author fight! They’ll draw their laptops at
dawn at Starbucks.Via ShelfAwareness.

SB Sarah got a heads up from a Janet Evanovich fan that early reviews were disappearing from the Barnes and Noble site. Of course, the only deleted reviews were the negative ones. Google cache which preserves snapshots of past versions of a webpage showed at least two negative reviews that are nowhere to be found on the Barnes and Noble site.

It really does damage to consumer confidence when the reviews are so easily gamed at these corporate sites. While no reader is being stalked here, it still seems wrong and violative.

The question of whether there is a divide between authors and reader/blogger/reviewers has been discussed and debated here and elsewhere. To me it seems clear that it does, at least in some quarters. Some reader/blogger/reviewers, including some of my fellow bloggers here on Dear Author, have called out some authors for behaving badly. And some authors have called out reader/blogger/reviewers for being mean girls. Recently, Janet (Robin) blogged here about her own response to some authors’ reactions to the recent Cassie Edwards scandal, saying that “It felt to me (and still does) that there was a frighteningly easy shift into reader v. author discourse.”

But nowhere, perhaps, is the rift more evident than in the relative absence from the romance community of people who bridge the gap — those who are both writers or authors, as well as bloggers and reviewers.

I don’t mean to suggest that this hybrid is completely nonexistent in the romance genre. Authors HelenKay Dimon, Alison Kent and Stephanie Feagan all write reviews for Paperback Reader. Bam is a blogger and former reviewer who is now published. There have also been some unpublished …

On Running with Quills, Katherine Stone announced a new website to be launched November 1, 2007, called WritersareReaders.com (website currently not operational). The website will feature reviews written by authors. While Stone says that while negative reviews are acceptable, the only reviews she has received are the ones beloved by authors. While it would be fun to see what is on the keeper shelf of a favorite author, I wonder how much credibility will be retained if all the reviews are positive?

Plus, I read that contributor Jayne Ann Krentz would never appear on a site that gave negative reviews.

Our review grades are our own opinions, obviously, and therefore fraught with subjectivity. You may or may not agree with our opinions, our grades, or anything else. We’d love for you to comment on the reviews and tell us where we went wrong or what we got right. If you are wondering if there is any objectivity in a review, we can only provide you with the information below:

A: I loved it and would cry if someone took it from my library. I would need lots of chocolate to get over its loss.
B: It’s good and I would buy it again, given the chance.

C: Eh. Not bad but I probably would never read it again.

D: I want my money back.

F: I want my money back and repayment for the time wasted reading it.

DNF: does this really need an explanation?