Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
One challenge as an author is you want people to leave book reviews for you, but the general advice to authors is don’t review other people’s books. How do you help your friends and follow this advice?
Well, the obvious way is leave reviews only for good books.
Me, I don’t follow this very good advice. When I first SERIOUSLY started this journey of editing and writing, I decided to review every book I read. By pulling apart other people’s work, I could figure out what went right and what went wrong – why I liked a book and why I didn’t. And I wanted to go through the process of organizing the thoughts and writing them out, thereby keeping a journal of my learning process.
I broke 800 reviews this month on GoodReads.
And not all of them are “nice” reviews. But when I write one-star reviews, I write specifics and how I think that they could be fixed. I’m not nasty – I do my best to keep emotions out and state this is the problem with the Manuscript, not the author. If I can’t keep emotions out because the reaction creating the reason for the bad review was emotional, then I clearly state it is my emotions and someone else might react different.
Still giving low grades is a risk.
I really, really wish I could follow Misty Massey’s advice of “Saying Something Nice” at all times. Her advice back in 2011 is the easier path, and the generally accepted path for authors leaving book reviews.
Again, the blog – with quite a few comments – is on Magical Words 2/15/2011.
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