book reviews

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Reviewing the Reviews – and this author’s promise to readers

One piece of advice people give newbie authors is not to read their reviews. It is great advice I’m sure, but I’ve never taken it. I cannot resist seeing what readers have to say about what I write. Overall, it’s a good experience–my books get mostly 4 and 5 stars ratings with the occasional 3, 2 or even 1 to keep me humble. I often learn from a negative review, and they seldom make me feel bad. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and no one book suits every reader.

All reviews are positive reviews in the sense that:

  • they tell other readers what to expect–even a negative review, by saying what a reader doesn’t like, might help the book to appeal to another reader with different tastes
  • the sheer number of them acts on the bookseller’s algorithms to boost the book’s visibility.

Now and again, a review gets up my nose, usually by stridently insisting that I have not done my research, when I have, in fact, done my research and the reviewer has been taken in by The Tiffany Effect. I always want to go back and give them my references. But one can’t, of course. Arguing with reviewers is against etiquette.

The negative review one of my books received recently was more along the lines of “this is not the book for me” (and no, I’m not going to say which book or which reviewer, or even how many stars. Again, against etiquette). The reviewer didn’t want to read about what happened to the heroine, and shut the book at that point. Fair enough. Their taste, their call.

What irritated me a little was a remark about being disappointed in me, to which I wanted to say, “Look, sunshine, the blurb told you what to expect, and you chose to read it anyway.” But. Etiquette.

My promise to readers

I don’t promise that everything in my books is going to be palatable. My villains are often very bad people who do really nasty stuff, and if they can get their hands on the hero or the heroine, they’ll try to make victims of them, and sometimes succeed, at least temporarily. I do promise four things:

  1. My heroes and heroines will never stay victims.
  2. My blurb will usually hint at the issues and topics in the story. If something is likely to be triggering, I’ll spell it out in the blurb or even in a warning under the blurb.
  3. The key villain or villains will be beaten and the danger facing my main characters will be resolved.
  4. My hero and heroine will always have a happy ending.

So please, if you’ve read one of my books, take a few minutes to tell other readers what you liked, what you didn’t like, and how the book made you feel. This author thanks you.

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The art of reading reviews

Okay. I confess. I’ve been reading reviews of my books again. People are always advising authors not to do it, but I always do. My books tend to get good ratings, but not everyone loves them. I’m good with that. I write the books I like to read, which means a large cast of characters, lots of everyday life, convoluted plots, serious and dark complications, nasty villains, and nice heroes and heroines.

A good review is a great morale boost, especially on the days that the plot elves go on strike, the weather is lousy, I’ve eaten something that disagreed with me, I haven’t had enough sleep, I’ve taken a dislike to both my current protagonists, and I have a deadline looming and too much to do between now and then.

Good reviews are not just ones that say the book is marvelous; that’s nice, of course, but what I love to read is why the reader thought so. Even a low rating can be rewarding to read, if I come away thinking, ‘yes, I see where they’re coming from’. I can either learn from it or agree to disagree, but at least I know!

Mostly, reviews of any kind are one person’s opinion, and they’re entitled to it. We don’t all enjoy the same things. I’m okay with that. In fact, a review only upsets me for two reasons.

Reason one, I’ve done something stupid and now that it is pointed out to me it’s really obvious, even though no one in the whole development process–from my first readers, through the beta readers and editor, to the proofreader and ARC readers–has noticed. That has happened a couple of times, and I hate it. The mistake in the title of one of my key repeating characters. Aaaargh! I’ve had to come up with a complicated backstory to fix it.

Reason two, the reader castigates me for getting the research wrong when I didn’t. I hate that. I do try hard to get things right, and it rubs me the wrong way when a lofty reviewer informs other readers that my book is unbelievable because ‘a woman back then wouldn’t have [insert the independent action of your choice]’/’the writer should have done some basic research into [almost anything that the reviewer has a prejudice about–one review was a lecture on church tithing based on modern, but not Regency, practices]’.

But what can you do? The facts are the facts, but I can’t change people who base their facts on opinion.

I’m writing a couple of reviews at the moment. I don’t, usually, mostly because I don’t have time. I’m never tempted to spend that time writing a review of a book that I rate as three star or less, because I’m not about to spoil another writer’s day, and it is, after all, only my opinion.

I do, occasionally, write four and five star reviews. And when I do, I post them on my website as well as in the usual places. I like to do it, because reviews matter to authors, and I feel I should do my bit. When I can.

What do you think? Should authors review other authors’ books?

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Why book reviews matter

Book-review-imageWhen I published Candle’s Christmas Chair as a free Novella way back in the middle of December last year, I set myself a stretch target. 10,000 downloads by the beginning of April when Farewell to Kindness was published? Unlikely, I thought, but wouldn’t it be magical?

As readers of this blog know, my expectations have been blown out of the water by the actual figures. I was at 10,000 by halfway through January, and today’s download figures stand at just over 44,000. That’s a lot of books!

Now, Candle is a free book, and it’s impossible to know how many of those copies are languishing in a TBR dungeon on someone’s Kindle or iPad.  But let’s say that a quarter of the people who downloaded the novella have actually read it. Let’s say 13,000, just so my next piece of arithmetic is easy.

So how is it doing in the review stakes? Duplicates make it hard to get an exact figure, but between the various Amazon sites, Goodreads, and other book eretailers, Candle has around 130 to 140 reviews. (Hah! Now you know why I picked 13,000!)  It’s all very rough, of course, but I’m guesstimating that one reader in 100 has written a review.

How reviews help readers

Do you read reviews? Lots of people do. Finding out whether someone else liked or disliked a book (and, more importantly, why) can help you to choose between the huge array of books available. With over a million fiction ebooks on Amazon, some sort of filtering system is essential.

Here’s a comment from a reader I found when researching for this article:

As a reader, I tend to look at the range of ratings for a book, in the first instance. If they are wide-ranging, to me that says, ‘this could be a good book, but just doesn’t float everyone’s boat’. If they are all of a low-rating, then chances are the book might be missable! Difficult however, when there ARE only one or two reviews – it is good to see a number of reviews to get a feel for the book’s reception.  [Cathy Speight commenting on Book reviews: are they important)

How reviews help writers

Reviews offer writers a lot. Reviews (good, bad or indifferent) make a book easier to find by pushing it up through the rankings in google search and on the sites of eretailers. Good reviews encourage writers to keep writing. When someone in a review mentions something that shows they know what I was trying to do, the glow can last for days. For example, I loved the review that mentioned my favourite gift that Candle gave to Min, and said how romantic the reader found it. I thought it was romantic, too! I loved that bit. I’m so glad the reader did.

Bad reviews help writers too. I wrote about this in another blog, but suffice to say I can learn from valid criticisms, and simply accept that tastes differ and not everyone will like what I write. Bad reviews still count for search rankings, and a well written bad review that says why a reader didn’t like a book may even attract a reader who enjoys what the review writer didn’t.

How to write a review

So please, if you’ve read a book (not just mine, any book), write a review. Especially, write a review if you have strong feelings about the review. Here are some tips from Amazon on how:

  • Include the “why”: The best reviews include not only whether you liked or disliked a product, but also why. Feel free to talk about related products and how this item compares to them.
  • Be specific: Your review should focus on specific features of the product and your experience with it. For video reviews, we recommend that you write a brief introduction.
  • Not too short, not too long: The ideal length is 75 to 500 words. Video reviews have a 10-minute limit, but we recommend 2 to 5 minutes to keep your audience engaged.
  • Be sincere: We welcome your honest opinion about the product–positive or negative. We do not remove reviews because they are critical. We believe all helpful information can inform our customers’ buying decisions.