I have a confession to make: I used to review books online under another name in order to hide my identity.
My confession is not complete, however. I won't tell you the name I reviewed under or where online I reviewed. All the books I reviewed were traditionally published romances, so all you self-publishing authors who think you know who I was on GoodReads or Amazon or anywhere else can quit hating on me now, because that wasn't me. I never reviewed self-published authors.
It all happened quite innocently, and somewhat desperately.
In the late 1990s I worked with a woman who had connections in the mystery publishing business. Review websites were still pretty new, and she was trying to establish a group of reviewers who could read books quickly and provide semi-professional quality reviews on a reliable basis. She received anywhere from fifteen to twenty books a week, sometimes more, directly from the publishers. They wanted quality reviews and they wanted them on a timely basis, generally within a week or two of the books' arrival. There was no compensation other than the free, usually hardcover books. The idea was that the books could then be sold -- this was before eBay so I'm not sure where they would have been sold -- and the proceeds provide income.
At the time I joined her stable of reviewers, she had half a dozen people lined up. She had me select three or four books from the stack on her living room coffee table, which I did. The reviews, she told me, were due back to her in a week, which would give her just enough time to reformat the email text for the website. I dutifully read the books, wrote my reviews, and emailed them back to her.
She was overjoyed. It wasn't that I had read the books and written the reviews and got them back to her in time.
"You actually know how to write a review!" she told me over the phone. "A review isn't a book report! How many more can you do?"
I think I did a total of ten or twelve for her in that first bunch, and one or two more similar batches before the whole operation collapsed. Her stable of reviewers proved unreliable and full of excuses. The local web person she hired couldn't maintain the website. Her husband lost his job and she had to find something more remunerative than the part-time retail work both of us were doing at the time. The publishers stopped sending her books.
Thus ended my second stint as a book reviewer, circa 1997.
But I wrote those reviews, as well as the ones I had done for Rave Reviews magazine in the late 1980s, under my own name. The pseudonymous reviews came later, in the very early 2000s.
I had given up on writing fiction and gone back to college in 1998, but after graduation, I was having difficulty finding a full-time job. One night while cruising online, I stumbled on a website devoted to romance novel reviews. All the reviews were gushing; nothing got less than four big red hearts. The Big Name Authors always got "I'd give this ten hearts if I could! It's wonderful!"
This bugged me, because I had read some of the books and thought they were, um, less than wonderful. I also noticed that authors who weren't household names usually got only a paragraph or two about their books, but the aforementioned BNAs always got a nice big long review. I went looking for other review sites.
This was entirely an exercise in curiosity. I had been away from the writing game for five or six years or more and had no intention of going back to it. I'd been away from RWA just as long. But I remembered that stint of reviewing mysteries and thought gee, maybe I could review books online again and make some money selling the hardcover copies. After all, now there was eBay!
I had reviewed science fiction and fantasy as well as non-fiction for Rave Reviews and mysteries for the now-defunct website of 1997, so I didn't limit my search to just romance. As luck would have it, however, I found a website devoted to romance novel reviews that actually advertised they were in need of reviewers. More books were being published each month than they could handle, and both authors and publishers were pushing them to review more.
I offered my services, but for a couple of reasons, I did so under a pseudonym.
The main reason was that of course I still had a history in the romance publishing world. I didn't want someone at Kensington or Leisure to complain that I only gave their author a bad review because I was still angry at the publisher. (I never had any bad feelings toward either house; Pocket Books was another matter entirely.)
Nor did I want the powers that be at the website to limit my choice of books based on my history as an author. So I sent them an email using a spare AOL address just to see what happened.
A few days later, I got a reply. They asked me to write a sample review of a readily available romance novel -- not some obscure thing that they couldn't check -- and they'd get back to me. I'm not sure, but I think I reviewed Judith Ivory's Black Silk as my audition. [I don't know her, have never met her, have never had any communication with her]. Regardless, about a week later I got a reply that yes, they would love to have me as a reviewer. I needed only to select three or four titles from the list provided and give them a mailing address to send the books to.
I expected, from the website's frequent comments about publishers applying pressure for timely reviews, that the books I ordered would arrive forthwith, but in fact it wasn't until several weeks later that the first batch of books arrived. They were a mix of historical, contemporary, paranormal, even chick lit. Once again, I dutifully read and reviewed them, and emailed back my reviews as quickly as I could.
The chick lit didn't get a very good review from me, and only 2- stars. I still have it, as a matter of fact, and just looked it up on GoodReads. It was published in 2002, so well before GR started, but it doesn't have great ratings there, and the few text reviews cite some of the same problems I had with it.
The other three titles in that first batch earned from 3- stars to a full 4.
Anyway, I continued to review for this website for a little over a year, sometimes as many as nine books a month but usually only four or five. I never ever reviewed books by authors who had been friends of mine during my active writing days, and only once did I review a book by an author I had met even casually. Not all my reviews were posted online, though the ratings were. Disagreements with my reviews were posted in comments, but for the most part my opinions were non-controversial and generated no heated arguments. As far as I know, not a single author contested any of my reviews.
The only serious complaint I received was from a publisher/editor who objected to my 2-star rating of a contemporary single-title romance. Without giving the title or identifying details here, I will just say that I defended my rating on the basis of the heroine having left one abusive relationship and jumping right into another; I had no quarrel with her starting the affair while still officially married, but the new guy was as much a jerk in his own way as the old one.
I had given a couple of 1-star reviews, but no one objected to those.
Almost all the books I received were paperbacks, not hardcovers like the mysteries. A few were bound ARCs/uncorrected proofs. Though I didn't sell any of the books for cash, I did trade some of them -- most of the contemps, chick lit, and paranormals -- at a local used book store. This was not a money-making proposition for me, but it was fun.
Until it stopped being fun.
The website was going through a major revamp. I had never received any requests or orders or anything else to get a review done more quickly, but suddenly these emails starting coming once a week. "Where's the review for X? The publisher wants it up tomorrow ahead of next week's release date." "Can you do a rush on Y? The author is taking out an ad."
I still got to choose the books I wanted to review, but what came in the mail often didn't match my requests. I stopped getting historicals altogether, and often there were lots of paranormal extras, despite my repeated notes that this was not my preferred genre. I continued to read all the books and write all the reviews, but it was becoming more like work than entertainment. Sometimes the emails expediting reviews referred to books I hadn't requested and which hadn't even been sent to me! [It was one of these "extras" that was by an author I had met during an RWA conference, and I felt very uncomfortable writing the review, but I did it and was as honest as I possibly could be.]
Then came the day I got The Really Terrible Book. I will only tell you that it was a vampire romance, chock full of graphic violence on page one, and incredibly poorly written. The author was fairly well known, the publisher well established.
It was the first book I couldn't finish. In fact, I couldn't even get past the first few pages. I tried. I really tried. It was terrible.
I am right now in the middle of reading a book that's very difficult for me to read, and for a lot of reasons. Eventually I'll finish it and write some kind of review, and I'll detail why it's so very unenjoyable. But it's not terrible.
The Really Terrible Book never got that far. I wrote an honest review based on what little I had read and emailed it with my apologies. Almost immediately, someone wrote back to me demanding I finish the book and write a "legitimate" review.
I never responded to that email because I just didn't know what to say. I finished reading all the other books, wrote all the other reviews, and promptly emailed them. I never heard from the administrator of the website again. About half those final reviews were posted, but not The Really Terrible Book. In fact, that book was never reviewed on that site as far as I know. I have no idea why. Did no one else like it enough to write a full, legitimate review? I don't know.
The website is still in operation, though it has changed its format considerably since I did my last reviews for them. I recognize a few of the reviewers' names from that time, but of course I have no idea if those are their real names or if someone else has come along and is posting under those pseudonyms.
So, what's the point of this post?
Two things.
First, even though I was honest in my reviews, and always stated (as required by the website) that I had received a free copy of the book for review, I always felt guilty not admitting that I was a published romance author. As far as I knew, none of the other reviewers on the site were either, and in a way I felt better not kind of lording it over them. Their opinion as readers was every bit as valid as mine. But I still felt I was deceiving the readers. That's a good part of the reason why, when I was reviewing on Goodreads and later on BookLikes, I always made clear that I was using my real name and that I was published in certain specific areas.
That would come into play all too often when a negative review prompted the response, "Yeah, well have you ever tried to write a book?" I at least could say yes, I had written a book. Several in fact. Not that it silenced the critics; they just turned it around to "Well then you should have more sympathy! You should be more supportive!"
In a way, you just can't win.
Second, revisiting this episode reminded me how important honest reviews are, especially the negative ones. Of course they're important for readers, because that's who they're supposed to be serving. But . . . .
A few days ago, one of my fellow writers on Twitter emailed me with a recommendation for a book to read, written by a mutual Twitter acquaintance. The email hinted -- or perhaps I just inferred -- that the book's author could use some positive reviews to boost sales. I wrote back that it wasn't a genre I particularly like, and since I don't review on Amazon or GR, what good would my reading it do anyway?
"You can review it to me," the return email said. "I won't even tell her it's from you."
But then it's not a review; it's a critique. That's what she -- the author, not the mutual who was emailing me -- really wanted. She wanted someone to read her book and tell her why it wasn't selling millions of copies. (I assumed it wasn't, anyway, based on its ranking on Amazon.)
After a few more of these emails, I gave in at least to the point of looking at the book in question. In a lot of ways, including genre, it reminded me of The Really Terrible Book I had refused to read so many years ago. That confirmed my refusal. I wrote back, "I don't do private critiques for authors for free. I got in enough trouble posting public reviews on GR for badly written books, and I'm still not entirely recovered. I won't lie to her and tell her it's good if it's not. [I hedged; it's not.] I don't need another butt hurt author attacking me online and stalking me all over the place just because I dared not to love love love love love their book."
That was from the last email I sent, late Thursday evening. As I write this now, it's Saturday evening, and I have received no reply. I assume the discussion is over, and I'm in the doghouse because I refused a request from a "friend" to help out another "friend."
If before today I still felt any lingering shred of guilt for those pseudonymous reviews from roughly 2002 to 2004, I no longer do. A review is an opinion, not a pass/fail grade that determines the author's career trajectory on the spot. Regardless who I was or what credentials I had at the time, my online reviews have always been my honest opinion. Whether I was reviewing mysteries as Linda Hilton before Amazon or anything else as Linda Hilton after Amazon/Goodreads/BookLikes, I only ever gave my honest opinion.
What bothers me, therefore, is that someone with whom I've interacted for several years on social media believed I could be persuaded to be dishonest.
I joke around a lot about having an "I hate everyone" day, but today I really do. Tempering it with "the usual exemptions" doesn't even seem adequate this time, because it's one of the usual exemptions who made me feel . . . used.
If you're an author looking for "feedback," start by reading the negative reviews of other books in your genre. Read a lot of them. Don't dismiss the criticisms as coming from jealous haters or people who have never written a book or ignorant assholes who don't understand the author's sublime perspective. But don't ask me for my opinion. No, not even with an open checkbook; I'm not for sale at any price.
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