Words of Confession, but not Words of Guilt

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.

You can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself

 (With affection and apologies to Rick Nelson.)

Part of this post was written almost a year ago, then tucked into the draft folder and more or less forgotten.  Since then, I've dipped into the drafts now and then, debating whether to post this essay or any of the others that have been simmering for various lengths of time.

What prompted me to finally resurrect this post and the whole Be Still, My Heart blog?  I'm not sure.  Maybe it's a bunch of different things.  Maybe it's frustration with the format over on Twitter, where so many conversations start, but they never develop because there's always another shiny object or fifty popping up in the timeline.  And we are all too easily distracted.

So this afternoon I decided it was time for a reactivation.  Maybe there will be other old drafts given another life.  Maybe there will be reviews -- yes, I know I said this wasn't going to be a review site, but times and minds change -- and maybe there will be how-to lessons.  Maybe I will repost some of the articles I wrote for the now moribund BookLikes.

When I began this blog some ten years ago, I designated myself a resurrected romance writer.  Now it's a resurrected romance blog.

I am in the middle of a huge decluttering project, which means I often fall down metaphorical rabbit holes when sorting through vast files of papers.  It happened again this morning, and the adventure prompted some serious reflection.

Back somewhere in the 1980s, I wrote a contemporary romance titled Mind Over Matter.  Though there were no overt psychic phenomena on stage in the book, research into "the unexplained" did play a major part in the conflict between the romantic leads.  When I shared the opening chapters with a critique partner, she returned it with severely negative comments.

She found the lead characters particularly unlikable.

The female main character is divorced, and the dissolution of her marriage was acrimonious. On the advice of her lawyer, she extracted as much compensation, if you will, as she could get from her very wealthy ex.  She used some of the settlement to pay for her education, eventually earning a PhD in her chosen field.  Without the divorce and the cash, she would not have been able to go to college.  My critique partner -- whose spouse had been married twice before -- wrote a lengthy condemnation of divorced women as romance heroines, especially if they had "profited" from the divorce.

The male main character was a computer specialist hired by the heroine.  He is quickly revealed, however, to have formerly been a dentist, a career he was forced into by his parents, who were Jewish refugees after the Second World War.  "I'm the youngest of their three offspring," he tells the heroine. "My sister is the doctor, my brother in the middle is the lawyer, so as the obedient son that I was, I became a successful Jewish dentist. But I hated it."

Did my critique partner find the stereotypes of Jewish lawyer and Jewish doctor (neither of which characters are ever even mentioned again in the book) offensive?  No, she had no problem with that.  She found just his being Jewish offensive.  She said she felt uncomfortable believing the heroine was Christian -- nothing to that extent is ever stated or even hinted at -- and falling in love with a Jew.

I could have changed it.  I could have had the heroine work her way through college never married, never divorced.  But the divorce had made her wary in a specific way related to the plot, and I didn't see any other set of circumstances that could have established that kind of vulnerability and caution.  Her financial security also gave her an independence that allowed her to make life decisions free of economic pressure, but she still knew from her own experience that not everyone has that liberty.

The hero didn't have to be a Jew.  He didn't have to be a former dentist.  But in those days of contemporary romance, Jews were almost never depicted at all.  (Outside of "inspirational" romances, neither were Christians, but that's another issue.) They just didn't exist in Romancelandia then.  As someone who grew up with Jewish relatives, I felt that was a serious lack.  I had encountered some minor anti-Semitism in high school, but I didn't identify as Jewish and I wasn't practicing, so my attempt to include a Jewish dentist turned computer programmer was intended as just a nice little gesture to my family.

Today, more than a generation later, no one would blink twice at a divorced heroine. 

But what about a non-practicing Jew?

Does he have to be a "real" Jew?  Would I have to write all about his Jewishness even if it's not part of who he is in the story?  As a non-practicing non-Jew would I even be allowed to do that?

Thirty years after I wrote Mind Over Matter, I read Kathryn Stockett's The Help.  I read all of it, but I didn't like it, or at least not as much as most of my friends, who raved about how wonderful it was.  I didn't find the maids' stories unbelievable; I imagined the truth was probably even worse for many Black domestic workers.  But I always got the sense that because the women were telling their stories to a white woman, they were holding back.  Yeah, even though it was fiction, they were real enough for me to imagine what went on when they weren't talking to Skeeter.  And because the novel-within-the-novel was written -- and published -- by that white woman, the story had to have been sanitized.  This wasn't Ann Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi, and yet I suspected even that book was cleaned up for public consumption.

The Help reached an enormous audience.  Mind Over Matter was never published.

I think it was at the 1989 RWA national conference in Boston that Walter Zacharius, then president of Kensington Publishing, aka Zebra Books, brought up his plans for a line of African-American romances.  How clear did he make it that he wanted authors of color to write the books?  I don't know; I don't remember.  What I do remember, however, is my making the comment out loud and in public that writers shouldn't be constrained.  If we can (sic) write about people in other times and other places, why not about people with different color skins?  This was the heyday, of course, of the "Indian" romance, often featuring a Native American "brave" and a white woman.  (Connie Mason, Georgina Gentry, Cassie Edwards, Janelle Taylor, Madeline Baker, et al wrote them by the dozens.  I didn't say they wrote good ones.)

I didn't understand then, and I will express great thanks to fellow book blogger John "Darkwriter" Green for taking the time and having the patience to explain "own voices" to me in a Facebook conversation, that it was a question of opening the door to those writers who did bring the personal experience to the arena.  That they -- and they alone -- could write their stories to their audience with authenticity and trust, not as exotica for a white readership, not as lessons in ethnicity for a white readership, but as stories of their humanity for all of us.

I can't write about the experiences of people of color.  I can't write about the experiences of LGBTQIA+ people.  I can't write about the experiences of disabled people.  At least not from the perspective of having lived those experiences. 

But I don't want to write just about and for an all-white audience.  I want to write about people who are inclusive.  I wrote a character in one of my books who expressed affection for and did not condemn another character who was homosexual. I couldn't write that character from my own experience, but I could write one who accepted him without reservation.

I wrote a hero in a historical romance who was half Mexican. the illegitimate son of a white Texas rancher and a Mexican servant.  He was a wagon train scout, skilled at what he did but not wealthy, not powerful.  He was also not exotic, or at least I didn't write him that way.  But he was a man who needed someone to believe in him and I gave him a heroine who would do that.  She saw him as a man, period.  Should I have made the heroine a racist who saw him as less than human but then learned to see him as a man?  I suppose I could have, but I preferred to have her not be a racist.  In the 1850s?  When she was born and raised as a pampered Creole belle in New Orleans?  Why not?

Maybe I didn't make him Mexican enough.  Maybe I was wrong to put opportunities in his path that a half-Mexican wagon train scout wouldn't have had in those days.  But I was writing romance, not a social history of the American working classes in the decade preceding the Civil War. 

I was writing a romance, and now I fear I did it all wrong.

I don't want to offend anyone.  I don't want to insult anyone.  I want to get it right.

But what if I don't?  What if someone somewhere says I screwed it up?

There's a line from the first episode of the 1975 BBC production of Poldark that maybe applies to how I feel about what I write.

Captain Ross Poldark has returned to England after the American war and is in a coach on his way back to his estate in Cornwall.  One of his fellow passengers asks Poldark about his experiences in America, and in particular what he thought of the native people.  "Except for the clothes," Captain Poldark said, "they're just like us."

Today, of course, we are confronting the unresolved issues of colonialism and racism, not just in the US but in the United Kingdom as well, and by extension Canada and Australia and then into China.  It's everywhere, it's everywhere.  Ross Poldark didn't go on to deliver a dissertation on the evils of British colonialism in America, the then-current and to-be-foreseen genocide of those folks who are "just like us."

But we also have in Romancelandia that monumental issue of the Thousand and One Dukes.  If we don't examine the issue of classism there, how is that different from not examining issues of racism?  On the other hand, what right do any of us -- readers, reviewers, authors -- have to criticize those who read and write and love every duke and marquess who ever lived on the pages of a novel?  Do we write it all off -- pun intended -- as guilty pleasures?  Do we insist that books, especially romance novels, must be politically correct, must have a message, must be feminist?

Not every romance novel is going to appeal to every romance reader.  The genre has expanded from what it was when I wrote Mind Over Matter almost forty years ago. There was a time when contemporary and historical were almost the only distinctions made between types of romance.  When Walter Zacharius proposed Zebra's African-American line of novels, the idea was almost revolutionary.  To have a whole line of romances that clearly defined was quite radical.  How many of us in that room would have predicted the eventual rise of paranormal romances, erotic romances, gay/lesbian romances, and the rest of the panorama of sub-genres that has blossomed since then?

I don't have a clear and precise answer, except for myself.  I'm going to write the books I want to write.  I'm going to write them the best I can.  And then, if and when I publish them, I will leave the rest up to the readers, those who like them as well as those who don't.

Word Perfection

No one is perfect.  Well, except Nadia Comaneci, and Torvill and Dean.

That doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't strive for perfection.

I take a great deal of pride in my grammar, spelling, and proofreading skills.  I know that mine are above average, but I also know that the results of refining those skills are attainable by nearly every writer who dreams of uploading a manuscript to Amazon. 


I finished the actual writing of The Looking-Glass Portrait on 11 July 2016.  Because it was written using Word Perfect, I had to convert the document to Microsoft Word before I could upload it.  There are certain conventions of the two softwares that are not 100% compatible, so I had to go through the entire manuscript and make manual corrections to things like em and en dashes, tabs and ellipses, double breaks and so on. This also gave me the opportunity to look in both versions for marked spelling errors and fix them. 

Spell check tools are wonderful.  They won't catch everything, but they catch a lot.  Anyone who doesn't take advantage of them is just plain foolish.  I've seen too many author-published works on Amazon that have clearly never been run through even the most rudimentary spell-checking program.  This is unforgivable.

After putting my MSWord document through the conversion to HTML and then to mobi, I uploaded it to Kindle Direct Publishing on 18 July.  Yes, just one week.  No one else had read it.  No one else had proofread it.  No one else had edited it.  I knew I was taking a huge risk that I might have missed something major, but I was willing to take that risk and trust at least to my own proofreading skills.

The uploading process contains its own spell check application.  I used it, too, because you never know what the other programs might have missed.  And they had in fact missed one typo that I was able to fix before uploading.  I hit the "publish" button.

By Word Perfect's count, the book is something over 138,000 words long.  After a few readers got back to me, we had identified a grand total of three -- three -- errors that escaped my eagle eyes:  a missing space between two words, a wrong word, and a missing word.  All were easily fixed so the corrected document can be uploaded to Amazon.

Am I bragging?  Yes, I am!  But I'm also saying that this can be done by anyone who is willing to learn the skills or learn to rely on others who have the skills.  Your readers should be able to sit down with your book and read it, not correct it.  Are three errors acceptable?  Well, not by me!  Would I throw a book against a wall for three errors in 400 pages?  No, of course not.  But I wouldn't read past the first page if I found three errors on it.

It's not enough to put your heart and soul, your blood, sweat, and tears into you book.  You have to put your skill into it, too.  Language is the absolutely essential tool you have with which to build your literary world, and if you don't learn to use it with consummate skill, you probably won't be able to tell a story people will be willing to pay good money for.

Getting the word out about getting the words out.

I'm going to indulge in a bit of shameless self promotion here and post the cover to my recently self-published romance novel, The Looking-Glass Portrait.  I am not comfortable doing this, but I also don't want some of the other images presented in this entry to show up when I post a link.

Anyone who has been following me much at all knows that I frequently make reference to the old days of traditional print publication.  I'm going to do that again in this post, so if you're sick and tired of that subject, you can skip this one.  ;-)

Anyone who has been following me much at all also knows I am terrible at self-promotion.  I love talking about writing, expressing my opinions about good and bad writing, chatting up weird crap that happens in my life whether related to writing or not, showing off some of my artsy fartsy crafting.  But even here on my own little blog, I have significant difficulty promoting my own books.  This is nothing new.  I've always been reticent about tooting my own horn.

Part of the reason is that when I began writing with the intention of getting my work published, I was ridiculed and discouraged.  For many, many years, I was told I had no chance to sell my work to a legitimate publisher and that I was foolish -- sometimes the operative word was "stupid" -- to try.  Considering that I began writing adult fiction at about the age of eleven and didn't sell my first novel until I was 36, that was a lot of ridicule and discouragement. At one point, I was fired from a job because my boss didn't believe I was really writing a book and therefore I must be lying and untrustworthy.

Had there been any countering support or encouragement, the outcome might have been different, but there was very, very little.  The overwhelming majority  of reaction was negative, and especially after losing a job over it, I learned the very difficult lesson and kept my mouth shut.

Even after selling that first novel, I didn't always get positive reaction.  In the early 1980s, historical romances were routinely dismissed as "bodice-rippers" or soft porn, and anything described as a romance was often just dismissed as "a Harlequin."  So even though I had achieved publication, the nature of my work did not attract anything like acceptance of success.

Along with the routine dismissal of romance fiction as a genre, there was also an expectation that writers all made lots of money.  Few non-writers understood that royalty rates for the newly published were often just four percent of the retail cover price.  When Legacy of Honor was published in 1985, that meant I earned 16 cents for each copy sold at $3.95.

In a saturated market like romance, certain authors hit it big, but many others didn't.  And it took a combination of many factors to reach the level of sales that allowed a writer to make a career at the craft.  One had to be reasonably prolific; Janet Dailey made a name for herself by writing a new book every month.  As an example of "nothing succeeds like success," Dailey was able to devote herself full-time to her career and leave everything else to her husband.

What few writers understood back in the heyday of romance publishing in the 1980s and 1990s was that publishing was a business and writing was an art.  The overwhelming majority of the writers were women, and the overwhelming majority of them had no experience with or knowledge about the publishing business.  Kathryn Falk's magazine Romantic Times and the organization Romance Writers of America, Inc, both founded in the early 1980s, promoted romance writing as a desirable and lucrative career for women, with Publication(sic) as the brass ring.

RT and RWA also promoted promotion.  Authors were (strongly) encouraged to buy advertising in RT and accompany the ads with personal profiles or articles further promoting their latest titles.  Again, success bred success, as those who either already had sufficient income to afford paid advertising or those who had achieved sufficient sales levels with previous books could buy additional advertising, get their books in front of the reading public, and sell more.

This was a huge departure from traditional publishing promotion, which had been handled by the publishers.  Whether they took out ads in newspapers and magazines, sent their top listed authors on paid book tours, or booked them onto television shows -- Janet Dailey, for instance, appeared on The Phil Donohue Show in 1981 -- the publishers arranged for and in many cases paid for the promotion of their authors and their books.

What happened as a result of RT and RWA was that for romance writers in particular, these new venues for promotion allowed publishers to deftly slide some of the responsibility -- and cost -- for promotion onto the authors.  Did this in turn prompt higher royalty rates?  Of course not!  What are you, crazy?

Indeed, publishers found more and more ways to cut royalties to romance writers.  Bulk sales and direct-mail subscription clubs paying two percent or less became popular ways to add to publisher revenue; these options were less viable for other genres simply because science fiction, mystery, and other types of novels didn't have the market share that romance did.

Do you begin to see how this played out?  Over a period of less than twenty years, much of the burden of promotion had shifted from the publisher to the romance writer while more and more of the profit had shifted from the writer to the publisher.  It was a very convenient spiral, and many of the writers who couldn't afford to pay to play just quit the game or stayed in the lower ranks of midlist and never achieved stardom.

By the time digital self-publishing became a truly viable option for writers, the shift to self-promotion had been fully established in the romance writing community.  To a slightly lesser extent, it had also become a feature in science fiction and fantasy, though through a different route.  Fan conventions had long been a tradition in the science fiction and fantasy community of writers and readers, thus providing various venues for authors as well as publishers to market and promote directly to readers.  Fan fiction was another tradition in sf/f writing and publishing, and as the two top-selling genres began crossing over into each other's turf -- primarily from romance taking on more and more sf/f elements -- the commercial aspects of romance publishing were becoming established for sf/f writers.

Whether the extent of self-promotion that became de rigeur for romance would ever have achieved the same status in sf/f is almost moot.  Digital self-publishing forced it on every writer in every genre, with few exceptions.

Digital self-publishing -- let's call it DSP for convenience -- cut out the commercial publishers entirely.  Writers no longer had to go through the arduous and often discouraging process of sending their manuscripts to publishers and agents who all too often sent the works back with form letter rejections.  Writers now needed only to upload their MSWord document files and presto! they were published authors, often literally overnight.  Instead of four percent or even eight percent royalties, these new DSP authors could brag about collecting 35% to 70% of the digital cover price.

That 16-cents-per-copy that I earned for Legacy of Honor as a $3.95 paperback in 1985 could become (roughly) 30-cents-per-copy for a 99-cent Kindle edition in 2013.

Of course DSP also means the writer has to provide all the services that used to be done by the publisher: editing, formatting, proofreading, cover art, and promotion.

Back in those old days of traditional print publication, the typical reader walked into a bookstore -- new or used doesn't matter -- or library and chose their preferred reading material from a fairly limited supply.  Virtually all of the titles had gone through the same reasonably professional production process from manuscript to printed book, and the reader could be reasonably confident that whatever book she took from the shelf would be readable.  It may not be great by whatever her personal standards might be, and it may not be to her personal taste, but it would be competently produced in terms of a commercial product.

And while the acquiring editors at any given publishing house might screw up and pass on the next best-seller, there was also a pretty good chance that few commercially viable manuscripts fell completely through the cracks.  In other words, to put it simply, if the book was any good, it would find a publisher.

With DSP, virtually everything about publishing changed, though some things changed more than others.

One thing that changed was the profit motive for publishers.  Traditional publishers knew enough about their markets that they chose products they firmly believed would sell and bring a reasonable return on the investment in editing, printing, and promotion.  They had to pay for their staff and overhead, and they also had to show a profit to the stockholders.  They couldn't afford to publish garbage, at least not on a routine basis.

DSP allowed writers to publish garbage and not answer to anyone at all.

DSP erased all the distinctions that used to protect readers from garbage.

While writers might be expected, even in the age of DSP, to have a working knowledge of how publishing used to work, most readers had no interest back then and still don't.  Whether they are browsing the shelves in a big Barnes and Noble media store, digging through the offerings on the Friends of the Library two-for-a-dollar sale table, or scrolling through the Amazon Kindle listings in order low price to high, the readers still see "published" as "published."  And all they really want to do is read good books.

Let me give you an example.


The link is to a novel titled Surrender Ma'Lady by one Willow Fae von Wicken.  I will leave it to you whether you want to look at the text of the book itself, but be warned that the quality of the writing is, well, it's probably best described as below standard.

The story is described, per the listing on Amazon as:

Victoria Whittenberg was shipwrecked and bound by shackles, trapped in the clutches of Enrico Rodriguez, her captor, the man who she witnessed shoot her fiancé. She was left with little choice but to approach a lone rider who had witnessed her demise, and without a word, he rode away, leaving her to the mercy of killers.

Although a publisher is listed, Dymond Publishing appears to be a front for the author-as-publisher.  That prospective readers are unaware of the realities of publishing is evidenced by the following, a review posted on Amazon for this book:

"Worst case of editing that I have ever seen."

Except that the author was (more than likely) the only "editor" the book ever saw.

And this is not a rare phenomenon.  Over the past several years, there have been countless cases of writers whose books have been negatively reviewed who have complained that they can't afford an editor, and/or are waiting until they make enough sales that they can afford an editor, at which time they will re-publish the book and all the readers who slogged through the unedited version can now read it again, edited.  As if they wished to.

Willow Fae von Wicken's book is perma-free at Amazon.  (I don't know how that works, only that it does.)  There are lots and lots of freebies in all genres, and many of them are DSP works that would never have seen print in the old days.  That's what the publishing industry has evolved into.  I'm not passing judgment here, though my loathing for traditional print publishers is no secret.  DSP has given many people opportunities for writing careers that they might never have had in the old days.

However, DSP has thrown readers into an unexpected chaos, and this is why I have tried to champion readers and their rights ahead of writers and their rights, at least in the marketplace.

Promotion is now the name of the game, not publishing.  Anyone can be published, but now it takes promotion to make a career. 

Writing a book and publishing it via DSP costs pretty much nothing.  Of course a writer can pay for professional editing and proofreading and cover art, but none of those expenditures are mandatory, and many unsophisticated writers -- those who turn out works of the quality of Surrender Ma'Lady or just slightly better -- consider such services unnecessary in terms of establishing their careers as authors.  Promotion, however, is another thing entirely.  Promotion that generates visibility for the work is essential, many writers believe, to garnering sales.  Promotion becomes not only the motivating force behind everything the writer does, but also justification for anything she does.

This includes, but is certainly not limited to, traditional promotional tools such as paid ads, distributing free copies of the book for reviews, soliciting endorsements from established writers with recognized followings.

Digital Self Publishing, however, is part of the whole digital universe, and social media in all its forms has become the billboard -- in the original sense of the word -- for the self-publishing author.  Promotion through social media, then, includes but is not limited to:

Spamming her book, its cover, its blurb everywhere she can think of. Every Facebook post, Instagram and Twitter several times a day. joining every discussion group on Goodreads whether it allows promotion or not.  The irresistible urge to spam was what led to Amazon restricting promotional posts to certain forums, because readers and participants in the other forums got sick of the spam.

Purchasing 5-star reviews from "gig" sites such as fiverr.com, to be posted to the book's Amazon and Goodreads' listings in violation of those sites' Terms of Use.  Also purchasing upvotes of favorable reviews (and downvotes of negative reviews), adding the book to Listopias and other promotional tools.  

These paid-for "reviews" are, of course, violations of U.S. Federal Trade Commission regulations, but the feds aren't going to go after either the paid reviewers or the writers.  The FTC  might, however, crackdown on the commercial sites such as Amazon if the level of violation reaches too high.  Regardless, the pressure to achieve visibility is enormous, and many writers will succumb to the temptation.

Sometimes the violation is less odious than buying the reviews.  Having family and friends -- with "friends" encompassing fellow writers who agree to do "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" quid pro quo favorable reviews -- pose as strangers to leave favorable reviews is another way to gain visibility, even though it's just as much in violation of FTC regulations and certain sites' TOUs as the paid reviews.

And sometimes the desperate need for visibility prompts writers to set themselves up as arbiters of moral standards, declaring that only certain kinds of reviews should be allowed, that only certain kinds of readers should be allowed to review, that reviewers have an obligation to the writer rather than to their fellow readers.

These are the writers who have forgotten -- if they ever knew in the first place -- that reviews are for the readers, not for the writers.  Reviews are the observations and comments and opinions of unbiased, independent readers to readers.  Does the foremost book retailer, Amazon.com, violate this standard with their "Top Reviewer" status, often conferred on people who love every book sent to them because that's how they continue to get free books?  Yeah, they do.  Do readers know and understand and qualify or disqualify those reviews?  I'm sure some do, but I'm also sure many don't.

I took a long vacation from the book community because I was sick and tired of the blatant gaming of the system.  I felt I was losing my perspective not only as to what was good writing and what wasn't, but also as to what was legitimate criticism and what wasn't.  Did the books of writers like Willow Fae von Wicken and Raani York, Sharon Desruisseaux and Victor Bertolaccini deserve the scathing reviews I left for them?  Had I made my criticisms too personal, even though I knew nothing about the writers?

I still don't know for sure.

What I do know, however, is that this drive for visibility, and especially for favorable, 5-star visibility, may lie behind the sudden uptick in successful authors drifting onto the dark side of questionable behavior.  Why else would a writer with over 9,000 followers on her Facebook page put out a plea that readers treat her books like her babies, with only the utmost kindness and consideration and no criticism?  Why else would a writer with over 90,000 followers on her Facebook page urge those followers to manipulate one of her negative reviews so she didn't have to see it any more.  

As author Jenny Trout has written about readers, 

They already gave your book the time it took to read it. Why on earth should we be asking for more? And it feels as though the question devalues that reader who doesn’t leave a review. “You don’t count,” we’re saying. “You read the book, but you didn’t leave a review, so you’re not as appreciated as my other readers.”

Sadly, Amazon sends out requests for reviews that the writer has no control over; that's the way Amazon operates, and the writer has to put up with the fallout if the reader gets ticked off.  (And yes, writers also have to put up with the disgruntled readers who leave low rated reviews over issues the writer has no control over.)  And yes, it's a reality that reviews generate visibility and all of us writers want visibility.

But to what level do we need to stoop to get it?  Urging random readers, who may know nothing about effective reviewing, to leave a comment like, "Great book, I loved it.  You should read it"?  Is that what happens when a writer lists her book for free and 4,000 people download it because it's free but only seventeen actually read it?

I probably wouldn't have given all of this much thought except for the fact that I was reading a DSP title the other day in which the author's front material included this:

Please remember to leave a review which greatly helps everyone.

(Heath, Tim. Cherry Picking . Tim Heath Books. Kindle Edition.)

 My thought was, well, I'm not sure it would help Tim Heath if I left a negative review.  It might help other readers who don't want their time wasted on poorly written books.  It certainly, however, would not help me to leave a negative review.  As an author  I am not allowed to leave negative reviews on Amazon, as it could be considered a conflict of interest.  As an author I am allowed to leave positive reviews, because . . . well, because no one considers that it might be a tit-for-tat review, or the author might be a friend of mine.  So the bottom line is, I'm not going to leave a review on Amazon under any circumstances.

But then we go back to the business of reviewers leaving reviews that are "helpful" to the author, meaning the review is critical but offers suggestions that will help the author improve the book in subsequent revisions or improve the next book.  As I have argued time and again, it is never the reader's job to help the writer do anything.  No reader should ever feel obligated to donate her time and expertise to help a writer make more money.  (Many authors do not react kindly to "helpful" reviews anyway, so there is some risk involved in volunteering.  Been there, done that.)

This is especially true, in my never humble opinion, if the reader is also another writer.  Why should any professional writer, one who has taken the time and effort to learn her craft, be pressured into helping her competition?  (Tim Heath is probably not my competition; I don't think we write the same type of novel or target the same audience, but who knows?)

The other side of that  same coin is that many readers may not know enough to provide accurate advice. If a writer's writing skills are substandard and she is looking for readers to help her out, she probably doesn't know enough to tell the difference between good advice and bad advice.

Another comment Jenny Trout made resonated with me because I had just posted about this issue on my own Facebook timeline:

So many writers will tell you that the reason they write is because they enjoy it. It’s too difficult a job to do if your heart isn’t in it. So, if what you need to enjoy it is reviews, and you’re not getting them and your heart is not in it, then maybe it’s time to rethink some priorities. But it’s your job to decide whether or not to continue. Don’t put that responsibility on readers.

I can't not write.  Even when I wasn't writing, I was writing.  Even during that twenty years between Touchstone and The Looking-Glass Portrait, I was writing.  I just wasn't finishing novels.  But I can't not write.  Would I like to be making more money at it?  Sure!  But the money isn't what makes me write.

As a writer, I understand exactly what Jenny Trout is writing about when she continues:

I know that it’s frustrating when you see people racking up fantastic review after fantastic review. I know you want your book to reach the widest possible audience and have two full pages of positive quotes to sell it.

But what no one seems to be saying is, "What if those fantastic reviews are lies?"

It's one thing to risk alienating your readers by begging for a review; I think it's another thing entirely to risk everyone else's readers by encouraging, buying, or posting fake reviews.  We know it has happened; I've posted enough analyses myself of the purchased reviews from fiverr.com.  But what is a DSP writer to do?

I know you're tired of reading all my blathering, and yes, I guess I sort of did take your question of "What time is it?" as an excuse to tell you how to build a clock, but that's the way I am. 

I hate self promotion.  I'm very bad at it.  I don't know how to do it.  And I think the shenanigans of writers like the two who have gone off the rails this week and all the others before and after them have made it more and more difficult for the rest of us.  They're applying pressure to us, the mid-listers and below, to jump into that game of racking up the reviews by fair means or foul.

I make it a practice not to read any reviews of my work.  Even when someone else re-posts them, I avoid reading them.  Reviews are for readers.  Period.  End of discussion.

I'm reasonably accessible online.  If a reader has something they really think I need to know about something they've found in one of my books, such as an error of fact or an internal inconsistency or a TSTL character, I'm not that difficult to contact.  Here on the blog, for instance.  Or on Facebook.  Or on Booklikes.  The worst I'll probably do to a stalker/harasser/troll is block them, unless of course they get really threatening, in which case I'll go to the police.

But if you want to leave a scathing review, be my guest.  I'll even help you.

Ten free Kindle copies of The Looking-Glass Portrait to the first ten people who request them.  I'll know you've read to the end of this atrociously long screed, because this is the only place I'll mention it.  I have the DRM-free mobi file to send via email, which you can then transfer to your Kindle or Kindle app.

Is a review required?  No, of course not, and because I never look, I'll never know anyway.

And then we'll see what happens.  Maybe nothing.  But that's okay.  I can't not write.

And another dangerous word

Honesty.

It does not pay to be honest.  It is not safe to be honest.  Honesty is a very dangerous commodity.

In the past, with my blogs and reviews and other writing, I have tried to be as honest as I can.  I believed very sincerely that that was what was needed.

Honesty may have been needed, but it was not wanted.  I learned that over a year ago when Goodreads instituted the infamous September 2013 Purge.  I learned it again last month when Goodreads permanently banned me. 

It doesn't make any difference.  I don't know how to be dishonest about these things.  I can lie about other things -- I assure you, I'm no saint -- but what point is there to lying in a book review?  Or in a discussion related to books and writing and reading?  What's the freaking point?

Authors need to get a clue.  I am amazed, yes truly amazed, that there is so much ignorance out there still, after all this time.  Maybe it's more willful ignorance than the innocent kind.  And yes, this is the kind of not-nice-but-honest comment that gets me into trouble.  No doubt I will get into trouble again before this post is finished.

Reviews are not commercials.  Reviewers are not there -- wherever there is -- to write ad copy for authors.  How difficult is this to understand?  Leaving out the semi-pro reviewers -- by which I mean those who have formal book blogs and regularly obtain advance copies for the explicit purpose of reviewing -- most reviewers are just readers.  They're consumers.  They bought the damn book, or obtained it free when the author was giving it away, or checked it out of the library, or whatever, and then they read it.  Where in that commercial transaction is it decreed that the reader owes the writer anything at all?  Where is the requirement that the reader help the author sell her book to other readers?  Or help the author become a better writer?  Or fix the mistakes in the present book?

That's right.  It's not there.  Readers do not have any obligation to review at all.  They don't have any obligation to rate a book on Goodreads, or shelve it on Leafmarks, or proofread it or anything else.  None. At. All.

And readers are most certainly not obligated to lie for you, the author of a terrible book.

You know who you are.  I don't have to put your name out here for everyone to see.  You know who you are.

I've read your books.  Or at least I've tried to.  And they're terrible.  And you just can't stand to have that truth held up in front of you.  You just can't stand it.

Truth is a very powerful thing.  It can be painful, very painful, but if it has the power to hurt, then it must indeed be very powerful.

You will hate me, if you don't already, but you cannot stop me from being honest.  You can, like someone else about whom I dared to tell the truth, take revenge against me.  I already know, however, because I am capable of at least a certain amount of honesty with myself, that I cannot be anything but honest with others, especially if they are being dishonest in a way that would hurt the innocent.  I know, because I do try to be as honest with myself as I am with others, that this makes me Not a Nice Person.  I know that people will dislike me because of it.  I know that I have almost no defense against them or that revenge, because my only defense is the same damn honesty that got me into the mess in the first place.

Your book is terrible.  Whether you're so ignorant that you can't see it for yourself, or you're in total emotional denial, or you know it but you've decided to just lie about it anyway, the fact remains:  Your book is terrible.  But you want me to lie about it so someone else will buy it?  Is that the name of your game?  You want me to try to get someone to believe that they will be sufficiently entertained by this piece of tripe you have written and published so that they will fork over $2.99 or $3.99 or whatever the asking price is?  The only way anyone will think this piece of garbage is readable is if people lie about it.  People like me.   Well, no, not exactly.   People like me won't do it.  We won't lie.

What will you do then?  You can, if you so choose, pay people to lie about it.  You will pay them to post online that they loved your book, that it's the greatest thing ever written, that it should be made into a movie starring George Clooney, Orlando Bloom, Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian.  Some people will believe those lies.  Most, however, won't.

Your writing stinks.  But you don't want anyone to point that out.  Rather than be honest and want honest "reviews" of your book, you want to silence the honest voices.  You throw up a litany of reasons why low ratings and negative reviews are by definition  invalid.  You think no one should read books they aren't enjoying, that they should not rate or review books they have not completely read, that they should think of the author's feelings and only review books they can give five stars to.  You declare only other authors are qualified to write negative reviews because they are the only ones who know how much blood, sweat, and agony goes into the writing of a book, any book.  And then you accuse any author who posts a negative review of being jealous and cruel and unsupportive of her "fellow authors."

By that standard, authors are only allowed to post positive reviews . . . or none at all.  And readers, who by that definition are disqualified from leaving negative reviews, can only post positive ones.

You want readers to lie by omission.  You want them to shut up and say nothing about your awful book, as though that will make your writing any better.  It won't.

Your book is indeed awful.  You can't write.  Your story is banal, your characters are wooden, your plot is implausible.  Your cover looks like something knocked together by a couple of 12-year-olds, and your formatting is an embarrassment to MSWord.  This product has no redeeming features whatsoever.

Yet if I say that, and if I provide evidence to substantiate my claims, you will call me a troll and a bully and a meanie.  You've done it in the past.  You will accuse me of jealousy, and I will laugh hysterically because there is no reason for someone who is reasonably competent with the English language to be jealous of you and this file of putrescent gibberish that you call a book.

You will tell me that I should think of your tender feelings, but I should not care at all about the potential readers to whom my silence is a lie of tacit approval.  Those readers are nothing to you, or at least nothing more than their credit card numbers on their one-click accounts.  To you they have no feelings worthy of respect, worthy of honesty.

You want me to be what I am not.  I am not a liar.  And I will not lie for you. 

A few people stood up with me when I took on Goodreads (which is well on its way to becoming nothing more than the advertising arm of Amazon if it isn't already) but most did not.  A few have spoken out since my banning, but most of gone back to their previous silence.  It is one thing to "take one for the team" by reading and then reviewing a terrible book, because of course that is done voluntarily and there are a lot of laughs to go around in the process.  And one really doesn't take any kind of risk when doing that.

I took one for the team over and over and over.  Under my real name.  The blog posts are still on Booklikes.  And here.  And there are screenshots of many of the now-erased posts on Goodreads.

I put my Goodreads account on the line in the name of honesty.  I am not one to blow my own horn when it comes to my books, but I will blow my horn 'til the cows come home over what I did on Goodreads:  I documented the dishonesty.  And that's what I was banned for.

The excuse that will probably be given, if there ever is one, is that I wasn't nice enough.  And that much is true.  I wasn't nice.  I was honest, but I wasn't nice.

When authors came onto Goodreads threads and asked whether or not they should buy reviews, I was honest:  I told them they shouldn't.  I told them those reviews might be removed.  I told them those reviews could be identified and then their books would be labeled as "This one is so bad the author has to pay people to pretend they read it."

Could I have been nicer?  Could I have written, "Oh, dear, I don't think that would be a very good idea.  What if people found out you bought those reviews?  What would they think of your book?  What would they think of you?"  Yes, I suppose I could have written it that way.  Would it have got the point across?  Maybe, or maybe not.  Would it have been me? 

No, it would not.

I understand the allure of reviews.  I recognize that they are repeatedly touted as the key to making sales.  One has only to read the posts of the frankly desperate authors who beg for reviews because reviews are, they believe, needed to generate sales.  They believe this as surely as they believe night follows day.  Except that night really does follow day; unfortunately, reviews do not generate sales.

Amazon, however, has a vested interest in fostering that belief. 

Amazon wants people to keep uploading books.  The cost to Amazon is negligible, since they do none of the actual work of publishing.  They do not edit, provide artwork, or market those author-published works.  They do, however, get a cut of each one that's purchased.

Though these are rough numbers and there are exceptions on all, these are the basic figures.  On a 99-cent Kindle book, the author's royalty rate is 35%.   Amazon keeps 65 cents off the top, the author gets 34 cents.  The same percentages hold up to $2.98.  At $2.99 and up, the author can elect a 70% royalty, which means Amazon's cut is 90 cents plus they charge a few cents to cover the cost of digital storage and delivery. 

Amazon is much better positioned to cover the minuscule costs of those thousands of free downloads than the authors are, even the perma-free titles.  Will that benefit someday disappear?  I expect it probably will, but that's another discussion.

So who benefits from the Kindle Direct Publishing platform the most?  Amazon.   And it doesn't matter how good or how bad the product is, Amazon still gets a cut.

Crappy books do not sell.  Not even hundreds of glowing 5-star reviews can push crappy books into best-seller status -- and profits for the authors.  Some of you who are reading this are very well aware of what you've done to rack up those reviews and ratings.

Have you given the books away free and then asked readers to leave a review?  Have you used social media to make friends with your readers, in Facebook groups or on Twitter, on Goodreads and Amazon and Booklikes, and then solicited just a short review from them, telling them how much it would help you?  Did you make them feel obligated to do so?  Of course you weren't really pressuring them.  You just sort of left the suggestion in their minds, and they of course being flattered were more than eager to do so.

Why is it then that the next book, the one you didn't give away free and didn't pressure readers to buy and read, didn't get hundreds of 5-star ratings on Amazon and Goodreads?  Why do you suppose that is?  Maybe because people didn't like it?  Maybe they lied in their reviews on the first book because they'd been flattered by your attention, but in reality they knew the book was garbage?

Amazon doesn't care why your second book didn't sell.  Or your third, fourth, or any of the subsequent titles.  Did it ever occur to you that maybe Amazon is using you as their loss leaders to put the competition out of business?  Probably not.  Probably not any more than it ever occurred to you to read the 1- and 2-star reviews that were left for your crappy books on Amazon and Goodreads, on Leafmarks and Booklikes.

Nor does Amazon care if you buy reviews.  Many of you do, of course.  Many of you have been caught red-handed on fiverr.com.  Many of those reviews have been removed from Goodreads and the reviewers' accounts have been terminated, but very few of you have lost your author status there, unless like Michael Beas and Cheryl Persons you were also selling reviews on Goodreads.  But do you remember how this paragraph started?  "Nor does Amazon care if you buy reviews."

Amazon doesn't care because they've got that wonderful "Verified Purchase" button.  It's supposed to imply that the accompanying review is a legitimate consumer opinion, the kind that's required under Federal Trade Commission guidelines.  There are probably a lot of genuine consumers who trust that label.  But you've figured out a way around that, which is exactly what Amazon wanted you to do.  So now when you buy your "reviews" from fiverr and the other shill outfits, you buy another "gig" so the reviewer can buy your book and get that "Verified Purchase" stamp.  And Amazon gets their cut and they're happy to turn a blind eye to the transaction. 

How's that working for you?  Two fiverr gigs are going to cost you $10.  On your $2.99 book you'll net roughly $2.00.  You'll get that back when the reviewer buys your book, and then you have to hope they don't return it and pocket the extra $2.99.  Even if they honor the agreement and don't ask for a refund, that review has to generate four more sales just for you to break even.

Amazon got 90-some cents for doing pretty much nothing.  That's why they don't care if you buy reviews that say your paranormal YA chicklit book is better than Tolkien and Herbert and Martin and Gabaldon and Rowling all wrapped up together even if anyone with more than twelve functioning brain cells can see it's absolute dreck.  Amazon has a vested interest in not caring about, well, about honesty or integrity or ethics or quality or any of that bullshit.  Honesty and integrity and ethics aren't profitable.  And Amazon, like all corporations, is all about profit.

None of the Amazon accounts identified as belonging to fiverr "reviewers" have been removed from Amazon by Amazon.  None of their reviews have been removed by Amazon.  Some of those individuals attempted to establish new Goodreads accounts but were quickly identified and quickly removed.  However, Amazon doesn't remove them.  Even though Amazon's review guidelines explicitly state that paid reviews are a violation, no amount of reporting "abuse" will get them removed.  I know this because I've reported them.  Repeatedly.  They're still there.

During the months that I routinely monitored Goodreads and Amazon reviews to connect them with fiverr "reviewers," I came to be very familiar with the names under which they posted their reviews.   They're still posting.  That means you're still buying. 

And yes, in case you're wondering, I'm still monitoring.  I'm still taking screen shots, though not as many as I did before.  And of course I'm not reporting to Goodreads.  Why should I?

I already took one for the team, a big one.  I did my part.  Now it's someone else's turn, if they care enough that it.  My guess is that they don't.

Does that mean you're in the clear?  Well, maybe it does and maybe it doesn't.  Maybe I'll get angry enough with you again and start posting more screenshots to Booklikes.   Because remember,  I'm not a nice person.  I have no reason to be nice any more.  My being nice or not nice really has nothing to do with it, does it?  No, the real issue is that I'm honest, and you just can't stand that.  You just can't stand it at all, can you.

Maybe you're one of those authors who self-righteously brags that you never bought a review and you didn't stoop so low as to give your books away to anyone.  You put time and effort into your books and you don't think you should let someone benefit from your effort without, by God, paying you for the right to read it. 

But when I look at your book on Amazon, I see more familiar names.  No, not fiverr shills but the names of other authors, other self-publishing authors, other self-publishing authors who have been desperately looking for people to buy and read and review their books and they'll do the same in return.  It's different, you insist, when you agree to swap honest reviews with each other. 

You and I both know those reviews aren't honest in the least.  You and the other author are going to stroke each other's egos because you're afraid that if you don't tell him his steaming pile of manure is the next Hunger Games, he'll retaliate and let the world know your book isn't the next Interview with a Vampire.  Both of you believe that 5-star reviews will generate sales, and that's what it's all about.  You're no different from Amazon in that respect (pun intended).  You don't care one fig about honesty.  You only care about sales.  You will lie, and you will ask someone else to lie, in the name of selling your terrible, terrible book.

The CJRR continues -- that nefarious group of self-publishing authors who rate each other's absolutely suckworthy spewings with unalloyed 5-star ratings and attack anyone who dares do otherwise.  The sockpuppet ratings continue unabated.  The fiverr shills haven't missed a beat.  It gets worse instead of better on Goodreads and Amazon, because that's the way Amazon wants it.

Readers may ask, "But why?  Why does Amazon want to promote crap?"

Because it sells.  If it doesn't sell itself, it at least sells advertising.  Every time a reader clicks on a free book, other items pop up.  Try it sometime.  Recommended.  Readers who bought this also bought.  And so on.  And Goodreads is just an advertising platform for Amazon.  So Goodreads doesn't really care either.

They cared a little bit for a little while.  They cared long enough to remove a few of the shadier accounts.  Michael Beas with more than 350 purchased reviews.  "Meghan" from Manila with almost 800.  The publicist and her sock puppet army who had over 2500 5-star reviews posted on Goodreads.  Did someone from Amazon come along and tell the Goodreads staff that they had to axe Linda Hilton's account because Linda Hilton wasn't being nice? 

Did Amazon not like it that I was posting screen shots that linked Amazon "Top Reviewers" to fiverr accounts? 

Were publicists like Kelsey McBride buying enough ads for their clients on Goodreads and Amazon that those websites took the cash over ethics to let those publicists, their employees, their sockpuppets, continue to post reviews in violation of FTC regulations and didn't want Linda Hilton to publicize (pun intended) that information?

Yes, I'm angry at you uploaders -- you're not really authors at all -- because you've fouled the nest we all need to live in.  I despise you, and I know the risk I'm taking even in posting this screed.  Amazon is big enough and powerful enough, and I am insignificant enough, that they could refuse to publish my books.  Believe me, the loss of my sales wouldn't hurt them financially.  (Actually, it probably wouldn't hurt me financially very much either.)  If they do that, you'll know and I'll know that what I've written here is important enough for them to want to silence me. 

They don't go out of their way to silence the insignificant.  Honesty is never insignificant.  It's too dangerous to be insignificant.

Words that fill unusual needs

Once again, I need to remind myself that I do not believe in omens.  Really and truly, I don't.

Coincidence?  Yes.  Even serendipity and luck.  But omens, with their implication of supernatural manipulation of human events?  No.  Just, no.

On the other hand. . . .

Several years ago, a rather unusual sequence of events put me in possession of a faceting machine.  Though I have played around with rocks and stones and gems for a very long time, I had never considered faceting.  The equipment was too expensive for my budget, for one thing, and I had no clue how to go about learning the craft.  But the machine was offered to me for free and would have ended up in a Dumpster otherwise.  So I took it.

I subsequently found out what it was worth and was more than a little astounded.  Flabbergasted is probably a better word.  I also learned that a few small and inexpensive but absolutely essential accessories were missing.  They were quickly and easily replaced and the machine was fully functional. 

As I wrote in Really Neat Rocks, faceting is one of the lapidary arts that requires significant investment.  The basic machine can cost several thousand dollars, but then there are the accessories -- laps and dops and transfer jigs and so on -- not to mention the rough rocks.  Facet-grade rough is a lot more expensive than the agates and jaspers that can be found out in the desert for free.  The machine I acquired came complete with all those expensive accessories and with a modest supply of rough as well. 

I should have been all set.

I wasn't.

The machine came with a little booklet of maybe 60 pages, Facet Cutter's Handbook, that purported to be all one needed to learn how to facet.  For me at least it was woefully inadequate.  I already had an old edition of John Sinkankas' Gem Cutting: A Lapidary Manual, which was likewise inadequate as well as out of date.  I needed a well-illustrated, step-by-step manual.  If I have that kind of guide, I can usually figure out how to do just about anything.

The books that might have filled that niche were, unfortunately, long out of print and subsequently priced way out of my budget.  I played with the machine a couple of times, and managed to achieve some results, but I didn't really know what I was doing.  So I quit.

But I did join an email discussion list sponsored by the U.S. Faceters Guild.  Almost every day I receive emails from the other participants, most of which comments are way above my head because I know so little about the craft.  There's never been a temptation to unsubscribe, however.  Though I delete most of the emails -- they're archived should I ever decide to revisit any of them -- I do read them all.  Now and then there's something that either adds to my store of knowledge about other aspects of lapidary or is something tucked away for an indistinct future when I will actually get to use the machine.

As I recorded yesterday, I gave notice two weeks ago to quit my day job.  Just a couple days after I made that rather scary decision,  one of the members of that USFG email list posted that he had published a book.  Two books actually, because two volumes were needed to contain all the information. 

I bought the books.  Immediately.  They arrived yesterday.  I've read the first chapter of the first book, and I'm very, very impressed.  Tom Herbst has done an excellent job, and if the rest of the books live up to the promise of the first chapter, they will fill a huge need.

He acknowledges right at the beginning that self-publishing is the way to go for this kind of specialty books.  Digital print-on-demand allows authors to create the special-interest volumes that just can't be commerically viable for a traditional publisher.   Are these POD editions lacking the glossy full-color photos that many of us in the arts-and-crafts fields are accustomed to?  Yes, they are.  Though Herbst's books are loaded with black and white drawings and photos, there are no color pictures.  Because I've researched it myself, I know that the cost of including color printing in a CreateSpace product shoves the cost into the stratosphere.  In a way, these new books are a step backward in terms of the illustrations.  They're more like Sinkankas' 1963 hardcover than James Mitchell's 2012 Gem Trails of Arizona.

But today we have the internet and the www and Google images and Flickr and if we need color images, we know where to get them.  We don't need the glossy color photos; we can get more and better pictures online.

Tom Herbst's books arrived, in more ways than one, just when I needed them.  A few weeks ago, I probably would have ordered them but maybe not.  A year ago the probably drops down to possibly, but not very likely.  But last week there was no question.  Everything came together at just the right time.  I have the equipment, I have the time, and now I have the books.

What does this have to do with writing romance novels?  Ah, I'm so glad you asked.  ;-)

We never know, as readers or as writers, how our words are going to impact other people's lives.   We never know, as writers, how our product is going to be received.   It behooves us, then, to make sure our product is the very best that it can be.  I'm not an expert faceter.  Hell, I'm not even a beginner yet!  So you can bet I'm going to be watching the reviews, even the informal ones, that show up on the USFG email list.  And I'm going to pay attention to what those people have to say.  Because they are the experts.  I've seen the kind of work they produce and I know they know what they're doing.  As reviewers, they may not have perfect grammar or spelling, but that's not the expertise they're utilizing.

And they won't hesitate to criticize if necessary. 

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.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions