A sense of impending doom . . . .

Today -- Friday, 10 January 2020 -- has not been one of my better days.  Maybe that's why I'm back here, after a long and not entirely voluntary hiatus.

I wrote a long time ago that I wouldn't be doing book reviews here.  I thought about setting up a separate blog for reviews, and in fact so much time has passed that maybe I actually did that and have just forgotten about it.

The truth is, I don't write a lot of reviews of current fiction.  Most of the reviews I do write and post on BookLikes are of books I didn't like, didn't finish, didn't get past the first few pages.  There's a reason for that, and it's not a good reason.

My budget is severely limited.  More or less retired, I live on Social Security and some supplemental self-employment income from my writing and from the sale of various arts & crafts products I make.  My Social Security benefits are reduced because I elected to start them earlier than full retirement age.  The supplemental income is not reliable, and it has been made even less reliable by my inability to shake off various stressors.  Anxiety is not profitable, but it is pervasive.  I do not write as much as I should.  I do not make as much jewelry as I should.

I do not make as much money as I need.

Therefore, my reading material tends to fall into certain distinct classifications:

1. Physical books I already own, which number about 5,000.
2. Kindle books, mostly freebies and therefore many self-published
3. Non-fiction library books, whether physical copies or digital borrows.

It's that second category that ends up being "reviewed" on my BookLikes blog.  Sadly, many of those author-published books just aren't very well written.  But I did try them.  I really did.

My longer, more analytical reviews were saved for those favorite personal classics, books like Josephine Tey's Brat Farrar and Leslie Turner White's Lord Johnnie.  I loved these books when I first read them more than 50 years ago; rereading them for the purpose of close analysis was just as much fun.

The past few weeks have been filled with the drama surrounding Romance Writers of America, a scandal of sorts with its roots in racism, lack of diversity, and lack of transparency in dealing with those issues.  I'm not going to rehash any of that, or bring up my very tangential involvement, except to say that my fifteen or so years of active membership in RWA meant I made a lot of connections with other writers.  Friends? Um, not all of them, and only a tiny few of those connections have survived.  But it still means that reading a book by someone I knew back then brings in an automatic bias.  So I haven't posted reviews of many books by people I know or knew.

Let me be clear:  I would never, under any circumstances, direct an author to a review I had written of their work*.  Reviews are for readers.  But I don't have any way of knowing, unless they post it in front of me on Twitter or something, which authors routinely search for reviews of their books.  It's not likely that I'd post a really bad review of a book by someone I've had a positive personal relationship with -- whether in person or just through social media -- but even minor criticisms might be taken the wrong way.  I really do appreciate my online contacts, and I would rather not review a book written by a cyber-friend than risk that friendship.

(*I did recently inform an author with whom I've interacted on social media  that I reviewed one of their books 30+ years ago. I no longer have a copy of the review.)

But BookLikes has become more problematic today than it has been for a while.  I think I started to take it for granted again, but it's been down for 24 hours now with only a brief Facebook notification that they're working on it.

So, what to do?

Well, I have a website that I haven't even looked at for a year or more.  It's due to renew in February, and I actually thought this morning that I might let it all lapse.  Could I convert it to something more attuned to books and book blogging?  I don't know.  That's not my area of expertise; I wouldn't even know how to start.

But it's been six and a half years since the Great Purge at Goodreads, and so many of us have found a home at BookLikes.  We like the freedom, even if we don't like the spammers.  We like the platform, even if we don't like the silence from the operators.  Most of all, however, we like each other.

If the platform returns, I'll be backing up as much of my material as I can.  Some of it may end up here.  Comments may be lost, but at least the core will be saved.  Again, that's if the platform can be resuscitated.  And I'll add links to it for this post, too.  If it comes back.

I'm committed to doing what I can -- within the constraints of time and budget -- to keep the community alive, regardless.



 

When the words are big and fat and free . . . and good

Disclaimer:  I was never able to get into the Outlander gush.  There is a specific reason for this, and it's immaterial to this blog post.  I think I read about the first 50 pages and gave up.  I've never read any of the sequels, and don't have any desire to.

At any of the RWA national conferences I attended, one of the most exciting parts was the "goodie bag" handed out at registration.  These tote bags, usually with the conference logo blazoned on the front (along with some bookseller's ad copy) were crammed full with lots of freebies, especially books.  This was a good place for publishers to unload several hundred copies of remaindered paperbacks or new releases they were hyping.  The 1991 conference in New Orleans brought us all a big surprise, and I do mean big.  Ed Sullivan type really big.  A gorgeous, fat hard cover novel by an author none of us had ever heard of:  Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon.

There was no hype with it.  As far as I know, Gabaldon was not even a member of RWA at the time.  She did not speak at the conference, and her publisher provided no other advertising information.  We wondered what the heck was going on, that the publisher would hand out 1500 or so free copies of what looked to be a very expensive book.

A year or so later, many of us received free copies of the first sequel, Dragonfly in Amber.  Again, that was it, the book and nothing more.  By then my daughter had read Outlander and loved it, so I gave her both books.  She still has them to this day.

No one was asked to review the books, like them on Facebook, upvote them on Amazon, retweet their praises or downvote any trolls who didn't love them.  Obviously not, because there was no Facebook or Twitter.  "The web" was still four years in the future.

So how did the Outlander phenomenon develope without the aid of cyber hype? 

Very simply:  Gabaldon wrote a book, told a story, created characters that readers cared enough about to tell their trusted friends.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, sells a book like the book itself. 

As I wrote elsewhere and can't repeat often enough:

To parody the credit card commercial:

Review swap from fellow author? Free

5-star review on Goodreads? $5

Review and "Verified purchase" on Amazon? $10

Honest review from a genuine reader who tells her friends how wonderful your book is?

Priceless

You can buy all the Goodreads reviews and Facebook likes and Amazon upvotes and retweets and pins you want; you can't "buy" readers.

They aren't for sale at any price.

Write a book they love, however, and they'll pay you.

Words as a medium of exchange

In light of all the usual moaning and groaning and accusation-flinging about negative reviews -- on Amazon and elsewhere -- I thought this experience of mine was particularly telling.  It's not the negative reviews you should be suspicious of; it's the positive ones.



The transaction was, I thought, a simple and straightforward one.

A few weeks before Christmas, I ordered two items from an Amazon affiliated vendor, to be given as gifts to two different people.  The items were similar, but not identical, and the slight difference was important in determining which recipient received which item.

The order arrived in plenty of time for the holidays, in excellent condition and with a couple of bonus items that were a pleasant surprise.  Unfortunately, the two primary items were packed in identical, unmarked, sealed boxes, with no way to determine which was which.  This was annoying.

My only option was to wrap the gifts and hope that they went to the correct recipients.  If not, I would have to explain the problem and then the two individuals could either swap the gifts or, if the difference wasn't significant enough to them, they could keep them as is.   It turned out that I guessed correctly and there was no problem.   But I was still annoyed and planned to post a review to that effect after the holidays.  It would have been a simple matter, it seemed to me, for the vendor just to stamp the distinguishing feature on the otherwise unmarked boxes.

I was surprised, however, to discover a separate piece of paper included in the box with the merchandise and my Amazon invoice.

It read:

Thank you for your order.  We would like you to write a product review for our [insert product #1 name].  After you have written and submitted the review we will send you a second [insert product #1 name] for FREE to the address on your invoice.  Please allow 7-14 days for the package to arrive.

And then it is signed by the vendor.

After this text is an image of a typical Amazon order page, showing the buyer's account and orders, a description of the product, and the various feedback buttons:  Return or Replace Item; Leave Seller Feedback;  Leave Package/Delivery Feedback; Write a Product Review.  Then comes more text:

We would like you to write a product review!  Product reviews are fun and simple to complete.  Under your account select the "your orders" tab, find this order and then select the button that says "write a product review".

There is a big arrow pointing to the appropriate button on the image.

And then there's a big black line under all that, followed by more text:

If for any reason you are not satisfied with this order please let us know before you write your review.  We have a complete customer satisfaction policy and believe this is an excellent 5-star product!

The note closes with their email address and phone number.


When I went to the product's page and discovered it has well over 50 5-star ratings, I began to feel a niggle of suspicion.  Had all these 5-star ratings been purchased by the seller with a promise of a another free [insert product #1 name]?

I fired off a Seller Feedback note explaining only that I would love to leave a product review, but I couldn't follow their directions because the button wasn't active.  I wrote:

Packed in the box with my order was a note from you regarding product reviews.  I would like to leave a product review but can't because the "Write a Product Review" button doesn't show on the "My Order" page.

FYI -- I was very pleased with the products and with their prompt arrival, in plenty of time for the holidays.  I did have one minor complaint/suggestion, but you'll have to figure out how to allow me to leave a genuine product review.

Within a couple of hours -- on a Sunday afternoon! -- I received the following reply via email:

Linda:

What is your minor complaint/ suggestion?

Please advise.

Thanks,

 My scamdar was pinging wildly.  So I wrote back:

Excuse me, [vendor's name redacted], but my complaint/suggestion is intended for the review, not for private discussion. 

The note included with my order says: 

"Thank you for your order.  We would like you to write a product review for our [insert product #1 name].  After you have written and submitted the review we will send you a second [insert product #1 name] for FREE to the address on your invoice.  Please allow 7-14 days for the package to arrive."

It is then followed by a screen shot of a typical Amazon order page, with an arrow pointing to the "Write a Product Review" button. 

HOWEVER -- my order page does not have that button; instead it has "Contact Seller" and "Leave Seller Feedback" buttons, neither of which leads to the product review page.

Or am I required to submit my review to you for approval before it can be posted? 

Is it possible that this vendor is essentially buying 5-star reviews with a promise of free merchandise?  Is the vendor requiring that any product reviews be vetted by them in order to "qualify" for the free merchandise?  Is this practice potentially a violation of Federal Trade Commission regulations?  Did any of those reviewers state that they had received a free [insert product #1 name] in return for their review?

I wanted to leave an unbiased, honest review of this product.  Would my review -- which would probably have been at least a 4-star -- be buried under all those glowing 5-star reviews that no one will ever know might have been "bought" with free merchandise?

Recent events in the book review community have suggested that perhaps false positive reviews are much more readily ignored by those who have a vested interest in selling books (meaning, Amazon and now GoodReads as part of Amazon); and that sales-damaging negative reviews, even though they're scrupulously honest, may put the reviewer's account and reviewing career at risk.  Writers have inveighed against the negative reviews of their books even while establishing sock puppet accounts to 5-star their own or their friends' books.  (And, to be sure, they've often 1-starred their reviewers' books whenever possible.)

With the integration of Amazon and Goodreads, I think we really have to wonder which will win out:  The quest for sales, or the honest reviewer?  I'm afraid we probably all know the answer to that question already.


After I had written that, the issue continued to develop.  The latest update:

A few hours after I had sent my email to the vendor, I received a reply which stated:

Linda:

Thanks for ordering from us and bringing to our attention that you were not completely satisfied with your purchase. 

We have refunded you the full cost of this item with shipping. This should appear in your account in the next 24 hours.

Please continue to enjoy the [product] and we appreciate any honest and fair feedback you would like to provide.  We prefer that complaints/suggestions be discussed prior to leaving product feedback and reviews (as a reply to this message or by calling us).  In this way, we have a chance to correct or explain an issue or concern.  This will insure your feedback and/or review would include how we dealt with your complaint or suggestion. 

Links and buttons for feedback and reviews are only accessible to the buyer (you).  We do not review or edit feedback or reviews before you (the buyer) post.

Sincerely, 

At that point I didn't know if they were going to refund the purchase price of both items or only the one that was mentioned in the note requesting a review.  Either way, however, I felt very uncomfortable with this.  I felt as if my silence had been purchased.  How can you complain about something you got for free?  Ultimately, the refund was processed for just the one item, which was fine.  I guess.  I'm still not comfortable with it.

I'm even less comfortable because the issue should have been handled differently.  Apparently the reason I can't leave a product review directly from my order page is because the page is designed to give the vendor the chance to fix problems, and the vendor should have known that.  In looking at my ordering history, any order that is fulfilled by Amazon -- even if purchased from another vendor -- can be reviewed directly from the order page via the "Write a Product Review" button.  If the order is not fulfilled by Amazon, then there is only the "Leave Seller Feedback" option. 

Regardless how or why the process didn't work the way it was explained with my order, I'm left wondering how many of those reviews were left by people whose opinions might have been colored by the prospect of free merchandise they received in exchange for a review.  And I also have to wonder if the offer of free merchandise violates Federal Trade Commission Regulations.  Most customers know nothing about FTC rules, or believe that those rules don't apply to individuals.  But Amazon does, and GoodReads does, and the vendors ought to know, too.

And maybe the vendor shouldn't require reviews in order to get free merchandise.  Back in the 1950s we called it Payola, and it's illegal.

Are silent denials words of shame?

This is going to be a very short -- for me -- blog post.  I'll expand it later, but you'll have to come to the blog itself to see the rest.  And no, I'm not sure when it will be.

Here's my question:

If several self-publishing authors formally associate with each other, whether as an organized "group" on a readers-and-authors website or on their own collective blog or face to face or whatever, and if they proceed to rate and review each other's books without disclosing that they have agreed ahead of time to do so, are they engaging in deception for their own gain?  Why would they not identify themselves as friends or colleagues or associates or . . . whatever?  Are they ashamed of something?

Let me reiterate:  Are they ashamed of what they've done?

I have said all along that reviews by real people should be allowed.  Not reviews by 25 sock puppets of the author, 19 sock puppets of her mother, and 769 computer-generated sock puppets.  Authors are real people, and there's no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to post reviews of their friends' books if they want to.

But shouldn't they have enough integrity to identify themselves?  If not, what are they trying to hide?

Those of you who have been following me at all know that I generally include a disclaimer in my reviews.  Not only do I review under my own name, but I let the reader of the review know when and where and how I obtained the book; whether I've had any contact with the author and what kind of contact that is; and that I am an author of historical romances.  Personally, I feel that kind of honesty allows the reader to make an informed decision about the validity of my comments.

How is a reader to make that kind of decision when a book has five, or ten, or 20 5-star ratings but not one of the reviewers admits to being a member of an authors' review swapping group?

Again:  Are they ashamed of what they've done?  And if they're not ashamed of what they've done, why won't they admit it?

A few words to set your hearts at ease

Those of you who know who you are, that is.

This is a personal note to a few people who seem to have their knickers in a twist after they stalked me to a popular website and saw something they thought was bad behavior on my part.  I want to assure them that I was not doing what they thought I was doing.  I'm sure they will sleep better at night knowing this.

When I came to Goodreads something over a year ago, I began cataloguing my books.  I think it's absolutely wonderful that Goodreads has this fantastic database of books I have and would like to have.

The first phase of my personal cataloguing was to enter the books I already own.  I had a spreadsheet for most of them, or about 1700 titles.  I slowly, in my spare time, began entering those.

Next came the now over 2,000 Kindle titles, many of them new and not even in the Goodreads database.  Some I added myself to Goodreads; some I just waited for.

I also added specific titles to my "wish list" shelf, which is for books I know about and would like to acquire or read someday.  Many of these came as Goodreads recommendations, links from other books I'd listed, or from personal friends.  Some came from Amazon links.

As I worked my way through this agglomeration, I also added owned books that had not originally been on my spreadsheet or books I've acquired since creating the spreadsheet.  I'm still not finished with this listing.  There are two huge bookcases in the living room that haven't been inventoried yet.  I add those books as I think of them or find time.

I've also started listing the books that are out in my studio, which is not part of the house; I haven't even begun to tackle to 20+ boxes still in storage in the workshop. 

Yes, I have a lot of books.

But how was I going to keep track of the enormous bunches of books I wanted to explore?  How could I quickly put them into a separate category of books I wanted to find, books I hoped would appear on Kindle?

A few days ago, I set up a Goodreads shelf for these to-be-explored books, titled "new-new."  I found, however, that it was very tedious to go to the pages for the authors I was interested in checking out and adding those titles to my created shelf.  Nor did I want to add them to my "want to read" shelf via the UGB because in fact I was also adding new titles to that -- books I already had but hadn't entered.  I wanted a way to segregate these easily and quickly.

Here's what I did:

I started by going to the Bodice Ripper Readers Anonymous group, which was the first group I joined when I became a Goodreads member.  (It should go without saying that as a writer of historical romances, I also read a lot of them.)  I knew there was a list of Zebra books with links to the authors.  From that list I clicked on the authors, and added all the titles I didn't already have in my Goodreads library.  Anything I did have showed up on the buttons, so I simply clicked on the one-star, thus adding all those books to my standard Goodreads "read" shelf.

It was a simple matter to sort those books by date added and then batch-edit those books to move them to my "new-new" shelf.  While it's slightly more tedious to remove the one-star ratings, that task can be accomplished while I continue adding the books and authors I'm interested in.  And again, it can be conveniently -- if tediously -- done from that exclusive shelf.

So here's a word to those who have accused me doing something nasty: 

It's just not wise to ascribe nefarious motives to people you really don't know.  It can make you look like an utter fool.  Not to mention, a cyberstalker.

Meteoric words

Take from this what you will.

I don't know without digging into my records what the exact time frame was, but I'm pretty sure it was in the early 1990s.  Harlequin Enterprises had started gobbling up its competition and establishing itself as a near monopoly in category contemporary romance.  They'd bought the Silhouette operation from Simon & Schuster in about 1984 and proceeded to dominate until most of the other lines -- Rapture, Candlelight, Candlelight Ecstasy, Second Chance at Love -- had folded.  Bantam's Loveswept was ultimately the last to fall in about 1995.  Again, I'm not positive on the dates, but that should be pretty close.

There had been, for a number of years, a company called HCA, or Hosiery Corporation of America, which sold pantyhose by mail subscription.  You signed up, chose your color, style, size, etc., and every month they sent you four pair.  The price was extremely competitive and the quality was every bit as good as most and better than a lot of what you could buy in the store -- No Nonsense, L'eggs, etc.  I know this because I was a long-time customer of HCA and still have a bunch of their product.

Harlequin, and some other publishers, were cashing in on their own subscription services, and someone at HCA got the bright idea to go into the publishing business.  Their line of category contemporary romances was called "Meteor," and they were going to undersell the big brands.  They had a HUGE mailing list of women who were already buying things on a repeat monthly basis.

They sent editors to RWA conferences and they began buying manuscripts.  They didn't pay a lot in terms of advance against royalties, and I don't know right off the top of my head what their royalty rate was or what rights they bought -- I'd have to do more research than I have time at the moment to do -- but they were not a scam.  They published the books, sold them, and so on.  How successful were they?  I don't know.  I'm sure there's some information in the RWA "Rate the Publishers" surveys from that time, and I have those.  I'll look later on, if anyone is interested.

I suspect they were reasonably successful.  Yes, their authors were lower tier, and undoubtedly many of them had been rejected by the other, better paying houses.  The books were decently produced, though some of the cover art was kind of on the cheap side.  At least Meteor was successful enough that they represented some kind of threat.  After about a year of operation, they were bought out/shut down/silenced by Harlequin.

Despite assurances that any and all books already under contract would be published in some form or other, pretty much nothing happened.  Meteor disappeared, many of the authors disappeared, and of course there was no concern whatsoever about the readers.  I'm not even sure if RWA took much of a stand on it.

By about 1995, when the uproar over royalties on subscription sales was reaching a crescendo, I wrote, as the PAN "rabble rouser," an impassioned plea for someone, anyone, to step up and provide some competition to Harlequin.  That plea was quoted at length in Paul Grescoe's Merchants of Venus but ultimately nothing happened.  Loveswept folded, authors are still being screwed by Harlequin, and the only competition is from the small digital publishers and independent writers who are putting their work on Amazon and Smashwords and selling it for 99 cents or giving it away for free.

Harlequin didn't give a rat's ass about the writers at Meteor.  They didn't have to.  That entire operation stood in their way and all they saw was an obstacle.  They allowed the writers to vent and whine at RWA conferences, much the way Steve Zacharius allowed us to vent in the Zebra forum, but then they went ahead and continued to do what they intended to do all along.

As I recall, now that I'm thinking about it, Kate Duffy was the start-up editor for Meteor.  Kate's obituary in the New York Times a few years ago was one of the little omen-like events that prodded me toward resuming my writing career.  A couple years after that, the friend who showed me Kate's obituary showed me Walter Zacharius's.  I don't believe in omens, but that was kind of the reminding nudge that got me started again.

The point is, for those of you us who are complaining about The Powers That Be not listening to us, it's not because they are afraid of us or don't have answers.  It's because they never had any intention of answering.  They don't care.  They don't have any fucks left to give.

Neither do I.

A few words about cyberbullying

Goodreads doesn't allow it.

Period.

If you're reading horror stories about heinous threats on the website that hosts literally millions and millions of readers and thousands and thousands of authors, that's just what they are: stories.  Or, in words of one syllable, lies.  Just plain lies.

Goodreads is a wonderful place, full of fun and laughter and kindness and sarcasm and honesty (sometimes brutal honesty, but still honesty) and all kinds of different people with all kinds of different opinions.

I wish I had found Goodreads years ago, but I'm glad I've found it now.

Do I like everyone there?  No, I don't.  Do I agree with everyone there?  No, I don't.  You won't either.

Would you like the truth about what happened last week on Goodreads?  The truth as supported by actual evidence rather than shrieks and wails of people who adamantly claim they saw something but have no evidence to back up their claims?

Try going here to get some more information, complete with screen shots of what actually was posted on Goodreads.  Not satisfied?  Try this one. 

I'm one of the so-called "bullies" of Goodreads.  I'm a "bully" because I dare to tell the truth and some people just can't handle it.  The writing business isn't for sissies, and that hasn't changed since the days of the bone stylus on a tablet of soft clay. 

But the writing and reading business isn't for bullies either.  It's not for threats of physical harm, it's not for retaliating against people you don't agree with by publishing their private information, it's not for accusing people of crimes they never committed.  None of that is allowed on Goodreads, because that's really bullying.