Comments on: Reviews, a Game of Give and Take

By: Catherine Hokin

Catherine Hokin — Sat, 09 Jan 2016 20:21:47 +0000

Excellent post – as a newbie author I shall keep reading this!

By: Terry Tyler

Terry Tyler — Mon, 20 Apr 2015 11:44:50 +0000

Good post. I have published 10 books and also review on my own blog and for another book review team. In the end, most reviews are only someone’s opinion; even with the most even, balanced one you can usually tell if the writer actually enjoyed the book or not. Book bloggers who don’t like a book but don’t want to say ‘boy, was I glad when I’d finished this one’ often just give a summary of the plot and a non-committal comment about what worked and what didn’t. Like Laura Lee, I think ‘this didn’t work for me’ is a useful phrase, too, because you can then go on to say why it didn’t. It’s a diplomatic way of saying ‘this bit was badly done’; some readers don’t notice the bits that are technically bad, or have lower expectations.

By: Rosalind Minett

Rosalind Minett — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 09:25:31 +0000

I agree. If a book is weak, I don’t review on Amazon but send a private line if the author has sought a review. Otherwise, I review with the reader in mind, showing what will please. The reviews I hate are ‘Brilliant. Can’t wait for …’ usually meaning the reviewer hasn’t read but seeks a favour.

I don’t put many reviews on my website, but when I do I really give them room. They have to have made a real impact on me. See two posts I did for an Australian writer (though I hardly even got thanked) Jarkata Three Ways is the title of my post.

This month I have a special offer for buyers of my Me-Time Tales: a full review of their book on Amazon and GR

By: W.R. Gingell

W.R. Gingell — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 23:30:12 +0000

In reply to Laura Lee. Agreed. It's a subjective thing, and not all readers are writers: they won't all have a grasp of the technicalities of writing. What they DO have is an enjoyment of the written word. What they don't enjoy, someone else will: and a review that gives few stars and not much enjoyment to the author, will quite often give immensely useful information to someone else who likes all the type of things the review did not.

By: Laura Lee

Laura Lee — Mon, 30 Mar 2015 11:38:01 +0000

I actually prefer it when reviewers do not express their opinions as objective fact because I don’t think there is such a thing as an objective reading of a text. We all bring a whole host of preferences and background to everything we read. There are certainly more analytical reviews and more practical ones. I do agree that a lot of reviewers these days are too focused on themselves and their reactions and that they often write about their own emotions and forget to actually talk about the technique and so on, but the only reviews that have really gotten under my skin were ones where someone stated a preference as though it were an objective fact and started to lecture on how the book should have been written. (Thus assuming that I had not made conscious literary choices they didn’t like, but that I do not have the skill to execute the book as it objectively should have been done.)

What one agent loves, another hates– always. What one editor loves, another hates– always and what one reviewer loves, another hates– always. So I actually prefer a “this didn’t work for me because” to a “this is what the author should have done.” It tells me what the reader likes and how my book differed. That can either be a weakness in the work or simply a bad fit between book and reader. I don’t mind that people don’t all like the kinds of books I write. It helps me understand how my book fits and how to describe it better so it gets into the hands of the people who want to read the kind of thing it is.

By: Nancy Janes (@nancy1janes)

Nancy Janes (@nancy1janes) — Sat, 28 Mar 2015 20:37:07 +0000

Excellent article.

By: Jenn

Jenn — Sat, 28 Mar 2015 18:58:11 +0000

Thanks so much for writing this! I recently started blogging about books, and I’ve been avoiding reviewing books I disliked because I’m nervous about it. This article had some really great advice about how to do it in (hopefully) a constructive and useful way; in particular, your note about “this didn’t work for me” is really valuable. I thought of that as a way to phrase your dislike of something that acknowledged your own subjectivity… and now I see what a totally useless statement it is!