April 26, 2016
Reviews, Reviewers, and Reviewing –
Part 3
As much as you try, you’re probably not going to get as many
reviews as you’d like to get. Once you get above 30 reviews on Amazon, you’re
likely to get contacted by various individuals with deals to help publicize that book. I rarely check on these. The
one’s I have checked on are very similar. They don’t offer much more than I’m
already doing.
Of course, you’d like to get all 4-Star or 5-Star reviews. If your
book gets only 5-Star reviews, I’m not sure that’s a good thing. The
implication is that EVERYONE who read the book loved it. That’s not true. There
are readers who won’t publish their review if it’s not 5-Stars because they
don’t want to hurt the book or the author. But, a mix of review levels is more
realistic. I think you have a better chance to attract readers with an average
rating of 4-5-Stars than with a 5-Star rating with 100% 5-Star reviews.
Now, it’s time to get really
real.
You’re going to get bad reviews. Hopefully not too many, but you
will get them. What do you do with them?
My first novel, Traveler's HOT L - The Time Traveler's Resort, was awarded
In late summer of 2014, Publishers
Weekly began offering reviews of books from Indie publishers. I submitted Traveler’s HOT L. In all honesty, I was
looking to get one or two sentences or phrases I could use in publicity. I
didn’t get a single word that I would be able to use.
Few people I know have seen the
review. I did not put it up anywhere. I’ve decided to print it in its entirety
below. Commentary I wrote soon after receiving the review follows. It is based
on the highlighting colors. This post resumes this blog after that commentary.
Booklife Review: 10/1/14
A rundown hotel hides a HOT L (Harmonious Overlap of Time Location), a nexus for time travel, in
a series of stories that lack the execution to deliver on the premise.
Debut
novelist Downing’s conceptual framework is ambitious, sending readers into a
medieval historical, two crime stories, and the book’s own alternate-universe
sequel, but there’s nothing new in these familiar settings. PI Phil Mamba tries
to catch a murderous politician in his past and inevitably ends up altering the future; no one
believes the boy who says that his dolls can speak when, of course, they can.
By the time Jesus is referred
to as a temporal anomaly, it’s all too much, especially given how often
explanations of theory and verbose descriptions (“he spoke with tenderness
tinged with resignation”) slow the narrative. The recurring characters who direct the HOT L lack
personality, limited to droll remarks and clichés such as “smooth the
now-wrinkled time fabric.” Nearly every opportunity to treat these concepts originally has been
missed. (BookLife)
My first reaction was
disappointment. I can’t imagine anyone not being disappointed after receiving
what is, essentially, a dismissal of a project of theirs.
Everyone is entitled to her/his
opinion. This individual clearly does not like my style of writing. That’s
fair—it is, after all, an opinion.
However, I am now somewhere between
perplexed with and angry at some of what is written—because some of it is
wrong.
Points.
No
one in this book goes back and does anything to change the future. Both Mamba and
Michael restore the original timelines. This is
more than a technicality. No future is altered. This is a point of angriness for me by misrepresentation of the book's content.
In
Battle, three individuals are described as having disappeared from the timeline
before Rose goes missing. Jesus disappears from the timeline. He’s never
referred to as a temporal anomaly. It is the
Ascension that is referenced. His presence on Earth is never questioned. A
second point of angriness for me by misrepresentation of the book's content.
I think this is wrong. Most readers comment
on the originality of the ideas.
Specifically missing from the statement in the review is
any mention of what I can defend as original ideas about time travel:
- The method of travel. Ripples, DNA stimulus,
- The fact that only specific items travel. No artifacts in either direction, consequences for taking artifacts.
- The fact that travelers return to original timeline with a real time lapse for the time they miss in nearly all cases.
- The fact that they don’t know how this all began. The premise of DNA Trek.
Collectively,
these comprise my third point of angriness. This makes me suspect that the reviewer was not a science fiction aficionado and wonder why (s)he was assigned this book to review.
I
disagaree. Each character has a unique personality that is reinforced in every
story. Chronos is a bit of a tease. Eternity is a literalist. Epoch is a
legalist. Tempus is learning how to co-exist with humanity.
However, this is now my opinion. It
is a point of perplexity.
I guess the bottom line is still
disappointment. But now, my disappointment is in the lack of content
integrity of the review. Much of what is written is a misrepresentation of the
book.
Blog
Post (Continued)
I
don’t read this review often. I do, however, read it on occasion for a number
of reasons. It reminds me that
- when I do a review, I need to be fair. I also need to be very certain that what I write does not present any opinion of the book being reviewed based on only my like or dislike of either the genre or the book itself.
- life is not fair. At least life doesn’t always follow my definition of fairness.
- I take a chance every time I send a book out for review.
- to review my work looking for what I might do to make my ideas as original as I can.
- all characters need to be multidimensional.
Since
this review, I’ve written other books. The book I have out now for pre-review
and copy-editing is the best I’ve ever done. While much of that improvement is
the result of a hard-working publicist whose goal is to help authors to be the best they can be, (http://www.frazierpublicrelations.com/),
a reasonable share is because I never want to read a review like this again for
one of my books.
Bottom Lines For This
Series on Reviews, Reviewers, Reviewing
- Authors need to help other authors by reviewing other author’s books.
- Reviews should be honest and reflect the content and characteristics of the book more than the personal preferences of the reviewer.
- Believing only what’s said in good reviews is stupid.
- Turn a bad review into a learning experience. Profit from what was pointed out by working to avoid those problems in future works.
Next
blog: Lessons Learned from Young Writers
e-mail:
crd.author@gmail.com
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