Words That Go Bump in the Night: Does anyone even care about reviews?

 Full disclosure:  I obtained the Kindle edition of The Ghostly Grounds: Murder and Breakfast by Sophie Love on 8 May 2021 when it was offered free on Amazon.  I do not know the author nor have I ever communicated with her about this book or any other matter.  I am an author of historical romance, contemporary romantic suspense, and assorted non-fiction.

I have no way of knowing how many copies of any given author-published book are actually sold or at what price.  Whether Sophie Love made a profit on this book is her business. How much she paid FreeBooksy.com to promote it is also her business.  (That's where I got the link to the free Kindle edition.)  How many reviews the book got from that promotion and the ratings on Amazon, Goodreads, and other sites is also her business.

As of today, Monday, 28 June 2021, the book has 1450 ratings on Goodreads for an average of 4.0 stars.  The written reviews number 160.  The breakdown by ratings is as follows:

5-star -- 500

4-star -- 558

3-star -- 299

2-star -- 79

1-star -- 14

On Amazon, it has 2361 ratings for an average of 4.3 stars.

 

So here's my first mostly rhetorical question:

If 1357 people liked it -- that's three stars and above on GR -- why is the author still paying a promoter to give it away for free?

The obvious answer, of course, is that by giving away the first book in a six-book series, she will interest readers in buying the subsequent books.  They will love Book #1 so much that they will plunk out from $2.99 to $5.99 each for the sequels.  That answer may or may not be accurate.

 

Look at the huge drop-off in just the number of ratings for those sequels!  From 2361 Amazon ratings for the first book to just 180 for the second? The sixth book, Disaster and Dessert, has only been published for a few weeks -- 8 June 2021 -- and only has 21 ratings on Amazon (none of which contain reviews that passed Amazon's criteria to actually be shown) and 16 on Goodreads.  The only text review on GR is a 1-star, in which the reviewer cites continuing problems with typos.  One might wonder why the reader continues with the series if this is a situation that bothers her enough to include it in a review, but she's absolutely entitled to leave that review.

Which leads to the second mostly rhetorical question: Who pays more attention to reviews -- readers or self-publishing authors?

I learned a long time ago, long before Goodreads and Amazon and Kindle Direct Publishing, that reviews are always suspect. They were questionable back in the days of Romantic Times and Rave Reviews and I knew that from first-hand experience.  Fast-forward from those 1980s and 1990s print reviews to the system-gaming swap groups and fiverr shills of the 2010s, and the writing should have been on the wall that no review is to be trusted on its face.  There were too many verified examples of fake reviews.

Do readers continue to trust them?  I have my doubts.

I don't choose books based on reviews.  Not ever.  I may go by the recommendation of a friend whose opinion I trust, but not by strangers' reviews.  Am I typical?  Probably not.

When I read reviews, I almost always start with the one- and two-star opinions.  In fact, I can't remember when I've ever started with the five-stars. From my earliest experience with Amazon reviews in 2012 and then Goodreads, I knew the five-star reviews were far more likely to be bogus than the one- and two-star criticisms.  To this day, I can read one-star reviews that overtly state they don't know where all the great reviews come from because the book in question is lousy.

I suspect, therefore, that few readers actually rely on published reviews when deciding what books to read.  They may look at the number of reviews and maybe even the rating, but the text review is far less important than genre and price.  Yes, price, because free is attractive to the voracious reader.  I personally download anywhere from five to twelve free Kindle books every single day, thanks to FreeBooksy.com.  (Don't ask when I'll read them.  That's for another blog post.)  When Kindle books by established, traditionally-published genre authors cost $12.99 and up, all that free stuff is mighty attractive.

Often a four or five or nine book series is available for free.  Even if the writing is utter garbage, it's reading material.  And for the non-discriminating reader, the person who just lies on the beach or curls up on the couch to while away a few hours in another place and/or time, quality may not be a priority.

Do (traditional) publishers care about reviews?  Oh, maybe, as long as they're good reviews that promote the book and drive sales.  Publishers are less interested in quality and more interested in quantity; their only concern is the bottom line.  Publishers -- and of course this includes self-publishing authors and small press independents -- do not appear to care if the reviews are honest.  

Can a reviewer collect free books from NetGalley and post the exact same five-star review, not changing a single word, not indicating anything about the book, multiple times and get away with it?  Sure, as long as she has a 4.99 average rating on Goodreads over approximately 5000 titles.  No one cares if she actually read the books or liked them.  As long as she puts down at five-star rating, it's all good.  Three, four, five books a day, every day, five stars here, five stars there.  It's all good.

So then comes the third somewhat rhetorical question: Do the authors care?

Okay, that question goes beyond rhetorical and into facetious.

Authors, and particularly the self-publishing ones, only want five-star reviews.  They don't care how they get them, and they don't care if they're honest opinions or not.  They will buy them from fiverr and other shill outfits.  They will solicit them from friends and family.  They will establish sock puppet accounts on Goodreads -- less easily done on Amazon, but not impossible -- and rate their own books the best evah.  

They will insist that no one should ever rate a book -- especially their book -- negatively without reading the whole thing.  If the book is so bad the reader can't get past the second chapter, is the reader not allowed to say so? Apparently not.  Maybe it gets better in Chapter Five.  Or maybe not.  Regardless . . . .

No negative reviews.

They will insist that no one should ever post a one- or two-star review who hasn't also written a book, because only someone who knows the work that goes into writing can be justified in criticizing a fellow writer's work.  But they will also insist that no fellow writer should ever do anything but support a colleague.  So if you're a writer, you're only allowed to post positive, supportive reviews even if they're untrue.

No negative reviews.

Writers will say -- on Twitter, on Facebook, on Goodreads, on Amazon -- that they welcome constructive criticism.  Negative reviews are allowed (of other writers' work) if they contain suggestions for improvement.  Of course, the reviewer has no way of knowing if the author will pay attention to those suggestions.  And the writer has no idea if the reviewer is qualified to make those suggestions.  And then there are the readers: Do they want to take a chance that the author ignored the advice?  Do readers even know what's good writing advice and what isn't?

I know, I know, I know.  We've been down this road before.  At the end, we always come up against that great big huge gate where the reviewer is accused of being a gatekeeper -- or just a plain hater, or even a jealous hater -- and nothing is accomplished.  Turn around, go back the way you came, pick up another book that's got 1500 five-star ratings on Goodreads and hope for the best. If it's not the best, or not even good at all, don't say anything.  It's not allowed.

If you're one of those readers who has been discouraged from writing honest, critical reviews and who has increasingly turned to traditionally published books that tend to get more honest reviews or to old favorite comfort reads, do you ever wonder if there are new authors you might be missing?  Or do you weigh that loss against the risk of finding just another piece of crap?

Okay, that's not a rhetorical question.  It's legit.  Even though the odds against finding something good are rather high, there is always the slim chance of finding a good freebie.

But even less rhetorical is the question to the authors who aren't being read.  The authors who are being pressured to give away twenty thousand free copies of their books in the hope that someone will read them and give a good review and prompt other people to buy the book.  That question is, How do you feel when you see all the freebies going out and the five-star reviews coming in and you know the books are crap?

Which gets us back to the book mentioned in the opening disclosure.

I forced myself to read just about half of Sophie Love's The Ghostly Grounds: Murder and Breakfast before I gave up in disgust.  The first two chapters were lively and interesting, and introduced the main character Marie, who is 39 going on 12.  Marie is locked in a dead-end job -- the book's description paints her as a successful dog groomer in Boston, but she's a down-trodden employee of the groomer -- and in a dead-end relationship. All the dead-endedness comes to a head, and Marie quits both job and boyfriend and takes off for Maine.  She inherits a seaside mansion from her great-aunt and decides to turn it into a bed and breakfast.  Three weeks later, she's up and running.  Sort of.

Marie has no clue what she's doing. Though she claims to have had this dream of running a B&B since childhood, she's never apparently done any research on how to do it. She sets up a website in half an afternoon or so and expects reservations to come pouring in immediately.

How is she taking payments?  What laws govern B&Bs in Maine?  Does she have insurance to cover liability if her guests get hurt?  What is she going to do for money?

Most readers won't notice any of this and won't care.

I noticed and I cared.

She starts major renovations on the house almost immediately; where is the money coming from? Her savings?  She had savings working as a dog groomer?  

Her contractor quits, or just fails to keep showing up, and Marie does nothing for several days until finally his assistant just starts doing the rest of the work.  The renovations in question are not one- or two-day jobs, yet she's planning to have guests in less than a month.

Oh, there's also a dog.  Named Boo.  Halfway through the book I don't know if he's a ghost ("Canine Casper") or not.

Halfway through the book, there's no murder, no breakfast. 

Halfway through the book, Marie gets her first paying customer and he does something to upset her to the point that she runs out of the house and heads for town, leaving this guy alone in her B&B.  I'm not sure if she runs to town or drives -- she has an ancient but reliable Saab (they stopped production in 2014) -- but she gushes out her tale of woe to her friend and no one suggests she go back to her business and, you know, take care of business.

It's not just Marie who is, well, TSTL.  Her paying guest, Brendan Peck, is just as bad.  

“I’m a photojournalist on assignment to sort of… well… hold on. Let me start again. Because I only tell people I’m a photojournalist when I don’t want to embarrass myself.”

“So then what are you?”

Brendan sighed and said, “I’m a paranormal investigator. I’m on assignment for a television network

Love, Sophie. The Ghostly Grounds: Murder and Breakfast (A Canine Casper Cozy Mystery—Book 1) (pp. 80-81). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition. 

He's on assignment.  He's some kind of professional.  He has some kind of experience.  Or at least that's what I thought.

But then he gets video footage of something paranormal inside the B&B and he posts the video to Twitter.

“I know, I’m so sorry. I should have gotten your permission first.”

“You really should have,” she said. She wasn’t angry… not yet. She was more disappointed than anything else. “Did you post where it was taken?”

He frowned, his eyes still on the ghost on his laptop. “Yes. But I can delete it! No harm, right?”

Love, Sophie. The Ghostly Grounds: Murder and Breakfast (A Canine Casper Cozy Mystery—Book 1) (p. 85). UNKNOWN. Kindle Edition. 

Of course, it's all going to work out in the end, isn't it?  None of his 31K followers will have seen it, other than the 26 or 27 who liked or retweeted it . . . .

That's when Marie runs out and leaves him there.  She runs into town -- I don't know how far it is and I'm not interested in looking it up -- to have lunch with her friend.  While they're eating, the reservations come pouring in.  Brendan's tweet has saved Marie's business!  The one she doesn't know how to operate!  The one she just literally ran away from!

That's when I gave up.

Those are the structural issues, and they're serious.  The stylistic issues are less serious, but they're not inconsequential.  At one point Marie reminisces about sliding down the balcony in the house when she was a child visiting her great-aunt who lived there.  No, one slides down a banister.  Marie constantly refers to the house as a "manor." Well, maybe it is, but there are other words, too, and just using manor over and over and over makes it stand out.  

These are fine details a good critique partner probably would have caught and fixed.  Or a good editor.  It's pretty obvious to this reader that Sophie Love had neither.

I can't leave a negative review on Amazon because I'm an author of romantic suspense/gothic romance.  I can't leave a review on Goodreads because I'm banned there -- for writing honest but negative reviews.

Mostly I write reviews for readers, because I believe readers deserve honesty.  They also deserve to know there are better books out there and they don't have to settle for crap.  Sometimes that means writing a review based on one page, which invokes all kinds of anger from the self-publishing authors.  The writing problems manifested on page one are almost never resolved later in the book.  Writing problems that manifest on page one are problems with the writer, and the writer doesn't change.

But now I'm also reviewing for writers.  For those writers who really do want to improve, who don't want to be relegated to giving away boxed sets of a dozen full-length novels or selling them for $0.99 on Amazon.  Maybe they're making a lot of money via page views on Kindle Unlimited, but if so, why are they giving the books away for virtually nothing?

The Ghostly Grounds: Murder and Breakfast might actually have potential. I got notice that there's been an update just since I downloaded it six weeks ago, but of course I have no way of comparing the two versions because Amazon will erase the old one when it downloads the new one.

I'll continue to write reviews like this.  Read and follow them if you like.  Respond if you care to.  I won't tolerate abuse, and I won't edit for free.

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.

Words in Review: Reviews for Writers

 Full disclosure:  Unless otherwise noted, I obtained Kindle copies of these books when they were offered free on Amazon.  I do not know the authors nor have I ever communicated with them in any way about their books or any other subject.  I am a traditionally published author of historical romances, and self-published in contemporary romantic suspense and miscellaneous non-fiction.

Yes, as of this date, 18 April 2021, Be Still, My Heart will be publishing reviews.  

But not just any old reviews.  You folks have Goodreads and Amazon for those.  Those reviews are, as I myself have said repeatedly over the past ten years or so, for readers.  For years and years, reviewers have been burdened with the claim that they owe writers feedback, that their reviews carry an inherent obligation to either promote the books for the writers' profit or provide constructive criticism for the writers' improvement.

Be careful what you ask for. 

Words on Deaf Eyes

I started the draft of this blog post in the summer of 2013, continued to add to it through the whole Goodreads purge plus the fiverr reviewer debacle, then abandoned it in the Great Well of Drafts.  Prior to today (14 April 2021), the last edits I made were in December 2014.  I held off on publishing because I wasn't sure there was really any purpose to it then.  Maybe now the audience has changed.  Or maybe not.  At any rate, I've taken the draft, expanded and revised it, fixed a few things and updated others. 

More than likely, the intended audience for this will never read it.  If they do at least read it, they will more than likely believe it doesn't apply to them.  Even if they believe it does apply to them, they will more than likely insist that it's wrong.  They will offer excuses, or claim that their situation is different.  In the end, however, they won't pay any attention and will go on as before.

That's their choice.  I can only put the information out there; I can't make anyone do anything.

So why do I do it?  Why keep  this draft around for well over six years and then resurrect it?

I honestly don't know.  But I do, and I did.

Every night I do my best to keep a promise to myself of squeezing in at least one half hour of reading before falling asleep.  My Kindle is great for comfortable reading in bed, so when I can't keep my eyes open a second longer, all I have to do is slide the Kindle into its pouch, turn off the light, and give myself up to dreams.  The Kindle's drawback is that I can't easily embed detailed notes, but I can highlight and always have paper and pencil handy if something really important comes up.  Yes, paper and pencil in bed.

One night's reading back in 2013 was full of really important somethings, but unfortunately I was too tired even to reach for pencil and paper.  The best I could do was highlight some areas before I gave up reading and went to sleep, hoping I'd remember the purpose of those highlights in the morning.

I did.  That's how this draft began.

The book in question won't be identified, not because this wasn't a review blog in 2013-14 -- and at the moment it still isn't, not really -- but because the issue goes across many books over the intervening years, far too many to be cited here.  In fact, I've changed the details so that most of the examples can't be identified.

What became apparent very quickly, both while I was reading the book that night and while I was scribbling down the notes the following morning before they could evaporate from my brain and right up until I re-read it today to verify some details, was that the story had enormous potential.  The genre is outside my historical romance comfort zone and so I wasn't sure if all my observations were entirely valid.  Some, however, involved issues virtually universal to all genres of popular fiction.

To start with, the formatting was flawed.   

Real books have indented paragraphs.  

Look at a few.  Look at the best sellers on the Amazon Kindle list.  They all have indented paragraphs.  All of them.  When I see an author-published book formatted in block paragraphs -- or even worse, indented block paragraphs --  I know instantly that the author is not a reader, does not even know what real books are supposed to look like.

Block paragraphs, however, were only one problem with this particular 2013 digital edition.  Several paragraphs were split in the middle of sentences, probably where the writer had hit a hard return while composing rather than a space, and the publishing software created a new paragraph, complete with blank line.  Had this happened only once or even twice, I might have overlooked it, but combined with block paragraphs, these additional breaks were frequent enough to be distracting in the first dozen or so Kindle pages.

Had the author not even looked at the finished product to make sure it had the basic appearance of professionalism?  Did she even know what a book was supposed to look like?

She's not the only one.  This is a not infrequent complaint: Even though paragraphing glitches are easily spotted on a careful proofreading pass, they're common in a lot of author-published digital books.

Punctuation errors abounded, particularly with dialogue.  The most common and most annoying involved commas and periods outside the quotation marks:   "Mary is such a sweet child"! my aunt often told us.  "You should strive to be more like her".  This was not a case of different conventions for American and British usage; the errors were inconsistent, indicating either lack of care or lack of knowledge.

Again, this is not uncommon.  Punctuation helps the reader make sense of the words.  "Let's eat Grandma" means something very different from "Let's eat, Grandma."  Far too many self-publishing writers make far too many mistakes.  If called on it, they shrug and say, "Well, you know what I meant."

Maybe.  Maybe not.

Returning to that 2013 book:  Words and phrases, especially those referring to people, were frequently repeated to such an extent that they became glaring.  The point of view is first person, and the narrator begins with an account of her childhood.  In one scene she describes a tragic accident that happened while she and several young relatives -- siblings, cousins, etc. -- were playing a game they'd been strictly forbidden because it was dangerous.  One of the children, younger than the narrator, is referred to as "our little cousin."  Though identified earlier with a given name, she is never called by name in this particular scene.  "Our little cousin" warns of the danger, but "our little cousin" goes along with the older children anyway.  "Our little cousin" resists joining in with the risky play, but "our little cousin" is eventually persuaded to participate.  "Our little cousin" proves to be most adept at the game, and "our little cousin" is roundly applauded for her skill, to the point that "our little cousin" becomes more and more daring.  "Our little cousin" forgets her earlier caution, until the other children begin repeating "our little cousin's" earlier warnings back to her.  "Our little cousin" ignores those warnings, and of course tragedy becomes inevitable.

At that point I realized how desperately this book needed editing.  I was on page twelve.  The only note I posted on the Kindle was "This would never have got through our critique group."

In the years since, I've seen these and similar problems dozens of times.  Sometimes I never make it through twelve pages.  So many basic issues with a book could have been fixed before the author hit the "publish" button if only she had had a competent critique partner . . . and listened to their advice.

These aren't plot problems or research errors or character inconsistencies; they're basic fiction writing skills the lack of which can ruin the best story.  Many readers won't even be aware of them as they're reading, but some will.  And if you're going to put in the time and effort just to type all those thousands of words, doesn't it make sense to put in a little more effort and make them the best thousands of words possible?

Another book that may or may not have had a great story buried under the words opened with a long  paragraph in which every single sentence began with a participial phrase.  Wiping bitter tears from  my eyes . . . Climbing the dark stairs . . . Arriving at last at the door to my mother's room . . . Knocking tentatively . . . . Praying there would be an answer . . . Turning away and swallowing the lump in my throat . . . . . .

Once again, this would never have got through a competent critique group.

It's not just the repetitiveness of the phrasing.  It's also the heightened risk of a misplaced or dangling modifier.  Turning away and swallowing the lump in my throat, a low growl came from beyond the door.

Another book I read more recently began with the main character pushing her way through a crowd.  In the very next sentence she pushed her way through a door.  Before the first page ended, she pushed her way through a noisy party.  And before the second page ended, she pushed her way through another door . . . into another crowd.

Is it possible this was a deliberate stylistic choice meant to convey the character's frame of mind?  Perhaps, but if so, it wasn't a good one.  Nor was it the only instance of repetition. Remember "our little cousin" from the book that started all this?  The "pushing through" book also referred to the woman throwing this party as "the elegant hostess," "the Senator's elegant wife," and "the elegant woman," all within those first two pages.

I didn't read any further.

Although I still put Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey at the very top of the list of books every writer should read, Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft contains some of the best insights on the actual writing process, word after word, sentence after sentence, page after page.  While King does get into the "rules" of writing a little bit, the grammar and stuff, he seems to be more into how to use these tools -- he even calls it the toolbox -- in a hands-on way rather than theoretical.  

Most of what we get in school is theory, applied only to class assignments and then in rigidly defined form: book reports, essays on current events, research papers, and so on.  The same tools still apply in writing fiction, but they can serve far more functions than our teachers allowed us to practice.

One of King's most trenchant observations, which he himself considers perhaps controversial, stuck with me.  After describing what he calls the four levels of writer -- bad, competent, good, and great -- he posits limitations.

. . .[W]hile it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.

King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft (Kindle Locations 1605-1607). Scribner. Kindle Edition.

For most of us, our teachers aimed to make us competent.  They gave us the rules as tools to use constructing our assignments and that was all they cared about.  There was no effort on their part to make any of us good writers, and no concept of turning any of us who might naturally be good writers into great ones.  (I tend to agree with the notion that truly great writers are born, and their greatness has nothing to do with how many copies they've sold or how big their movie deals are.)

The question then becomes how many of the writers of these badly written books are bad writers beyond any realistic hope of significant improvement, and which (if any) are competent writers who just haven't yet been turned into good ones?

Are readers expected to know the difference?  Are readers expected to alert the writers? Are readers expected to alert other readers?  Or are all of us just supposed to accept whatever is thrown at us?

The more I look at books like those described above but that still garner hundreds and sometimes thousands of five-star reviews, I wonder if anyone cares.  Nora Roberts is still going to sell millions of books.  Stephen King is still going to sell millions of books.  The rest of us will be lost in the maelstrom of swirling garbage, bad writers, competent writers, good writers, all thrown together.

The reviewers certainly aren't helping when they throw around five-star reviews like Mardi Gras doubloons.

Reviewers have the right to review as they choose.  I know there are accounts on Goodreads that have literally hundreds of reviews/ratings and perfect 5.0 GPAs.  (Goodreads Promotional Average.)  If they've ever met a book they didn't love, they've never written a word about it.  

In doing some research for this post, I found a Goodreads account that has over 9,000 reviews.  The account has been active since 2011, so approximately ten years.  That's 3653 days or so, and if in fact the reader actually read all those books since opening the account, that's roughly three books a day, every day, for ten years.  Her GPA was a modest 4.86.  Do I think she read them all?  I don't know.  Do I think she was being honest about her ratings?  I don't know.  

Do I think the ratings for a lot of books are inflated by reviewers such as she who almost never give anything lower than five stars?

Yes, I do.

I spent a lot of time in 2014 and 2015 documenting the literally thousands of purchased reviews posted on Goodreads and Amazon, reviews paid for by the authors and written by "gig" writers on various sites but  primarily fiverr.  The belief was then, and perhaps still is, that if an author-published or small independent press published book got enough five star ratings and reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, the algorithms would push those books onto readers' recommendations, readers would buy, and the authors would become instantly rich and famous.

The key to success, according to this philosophy, was that promotion and reviews were far more important than good writing or good storytelling.  In fact, skill and talent were unimportant!  Throw together any old crap, buy a bunch of five-star ratings on fiverr, and you've got it made.

For the most part, it didn't happen.  The review writers probably made more money than the book authors.  Many thousands of reviews were removed from both sites, many dozens of reviewer accounts were terminated.  (Many reviews and reviewers returned under new accounts, but that's another issue.)  And for all I know, it's still going on.  I did what I could to keep Goodreads and Amazon reviews honest, but they apparently weren't having it. 

So the avalanche of five-star reviews rolls on.  And reviewers who don't give all five to every book run the risk of being insulted by the authors, doxxed, and threatened with bodily harm.  (See author Lauren Hough's release day explosion of name calling on 13 April 2021, literally while I was in the midst of assembling this.)

The forces are arrayed against honest critical reviews.

Furthermore, I think the failure -- regardless of the reason -- of reviewers to give critical reviews encourages readers to accept bad writing uncritically because they themselves don't know any better.  It's a vicious circle, and far too few people -- readers, reviewers, other writers -- are willing to speak out to break that circle.

 Who benefits?  The established writers.  The traditional publishers.  The agents.  The unscrupulous freelance editors.

But maybe the bad writers benefit, too, because they get to believe their writing is good, that people legitimately love their books, that they don't have to work to improve.

So in the end, does it really matter?

I don't know.  I honestly don't know.

Words on Writing, Part 1: The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, by Christopher Vogler

 If I were asked to recommend the single most essential book for writers of popular fiction, I would not hesitate to name The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler.

 If your budget only has room for one book, get this one.  I know other teachers and bloggers and mentors will recommend others, but you asked me, so there's my answer.

I currently have two copies, the first edition from 1992, which is subtitled "Mythic Structure for Storytellers and Screenwriters," and the third edition published in 2007, with the subtitle as above.  There is also a 25th Anniversary Edition which was released in 2020.  Even though I have two of the earlier editions, I just ordered the new one.  It's that important.

So, why this book?  Why not Strunk and White's Elements of Style?  Or Stephen King's On Writing?  Or Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird?

Because. 

I've never liked Elements of Style.  While it may be a good resource for grammar and syntax, its emphasis on brevity doesn't work as well for fiction as it does for non-fiction.  Grammar, spelling, and writing style are important facets of skill no matter what you write, but fiction requires something way beyond that.

King's book is half memoir, half how-to, and while his personal history is interesting and gives insight into his writing, that very intimacy relegates the how-to half more to a "How I do it," as though what Stephen King does will work for everyone.

I've never read  Bird by Bird.  I never felt the need to.

I didn't discover The Writer's Journey until 1997, right before a writer's conference at which Christopher Vogler was going to be one of the featured speakers.  I bought the book a week or so before the conference and devoured it.  Vogler's presentation was supposed to last an hour; it stretched into almost three.  He was far and away the best speaker I've ever heard.

That still doesn't answer your question.  I'm getting to that.

Writing fiction, and in particular book-length popular genre fiction (as opposed to literary fiction, whatever that is), requires two skills: the ability to write and the ability to create stories.  Most of us can be taught the basics of how to write. We learn the rudiments in school, even if we forget most of them and/or never use them after they're no longer required for graduation.  Creating stories, on the other hand, isn't so easy to learn or to teach.  It's more a process of recognizing whether or not you have that skill and then putting it into practice if in fact you do have it.  If you don't, well . . . .

That may not be a popular opinion.  No one who really wants to  be a writer wants to be told they don't have the requisite story-telling talent.  And in this age of digital self-publishing, even being told that isn't a barrier to publishing.  It remains a sad fact, however, that there are many, many, many author-published books out there that just aren't very good.

For many of them, the author didn't have sufficient writing skill; even if there were a decent story in there, the writer couldn't bring it to life.  For many others, the writing is passable, but the story isn't.

If the story is there, the writing can be fixed.  If there's no story, no amount of fixing the writing will help.

The Writer's Journey explains what "story" is, how it's constructed of various parts, how those parts work together to complete the whole.  Perhaps most important, Vogler explains how and why this structure is virtually universal, over time and across genres and through various media, by giving numerous examples.  

"But but but, my story is different!"

No, my dear, it almost certainly is not.

Think about it.  What makes us keep reading, keep turning the pages, even if they're only digital pages on electronic screens.  "I need to know what happens next.  Will they be eaten by the monster?  Will she find her lost sister?  Is the grandmother the killer?  Will the volcano erupt?  Who changed the nuclear codes?"

"I need to know what happens next."

That's the essence of story structure: How each element logically, naturally, and emotionally satisfyingly leads to the next.   

Vogler's analysis is based on the works of Joseph Campbell and C.G. Jung, but being familiar with them is not at all necessary to understanding The Writer's Journey.  While Campbell analyzed myth as a historical -- and universal -- form of narrative, Vogler applies the form to the process of contemporary storytelling.  Campbell explains the hero's journey; Vogler shows you, the writer, how to create your own hero's journey and then make the journey with them.

As Shelly Lowenkopf pointed out in his 1982 article in The Writer magazine, "Creating a Rejection-Resistant Novel," you have to hook the reader at the beginning. Back then, the first person who read your (laboriously typed) manuscript on its journey to publication (or, more likely, rejection) might give you as many as three double-spaced pages to set that hook.  Lowenkopf knew even then that many beginning writers are shocked to learn editors, agents, and the other gatekeepers of the traditional publishing business don't routinely read the whole book. 

"But but but, mine is different!"

No, it probably isn't, and if it is, you still have to prove it.  And you have to prove it in the first three pages.  Or less.

As Josh Olson has written, 

It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you're in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you're dealing with someone who can't.

(By the way, here's a simple way to find out if you're a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you're not a writer.  Because, you see, writers are also readers.)

Josh Olson, "I will not read your fucking script," Village Voice, Sept 9, 2009.

There's an even older adage that goes, "Write chapter one, write chapter two, throw away chapter one."  In other words, you've probably put too much "stuff" in the first chapter that really doesn't need to be there.  Get to the effing story already.  The reader wants to know what's happening.

And that means starting your characters, your hero, on the journey.  Where they will go, what adventures they will have, what problems they will encounter, what defeats and victories they will experience, all are part of that journey.  

If you're not already a voracious reader, you probably won't be successful as a writer, but don't take just Josh Olson's word for it.  Throughout The Writer's Journey Chris Vogler gives example after example of movies and books that follow the same mythic structure. You can read the books, you can watch the movies.  The structure is there.

Vogler states clearly that it's not a "format."  You can't just plug your individual characters and setting into a template and walk away with a successful, satisfying novel, regardless of genre.  It's more of a palimpsest, an older, almost erased document of which parts remain and on which newer tales have been superimposed.  

When I write, that structure is always at the back of my creative mind, the blueprint on which an entire novel will be built.  It's also at the front of my mind when I'm writing a review.  Is it there when I'm reading?  I hope not!  I want to read for enjoyment; I want the words on the page to disappear so completely that I'm immersed in the scene, the action, the emotions of the book.  If I'm not, then the writer has done something wrong.

If you're a writer, do something right.  Read at least one edition of The Writer's Journey.  And if your budget allows it, buy a copy that you can have on hand to reference whenever necessary.  You'll be tested on it later.

 

 

Words on Words: Changing Directions

 I know, I know, I know.  I said at the very beginning that this blog wouldn't be for reviews.  Ten years ago, that was my intention.  There were other outlets for reviews where I believed they rightly belonged.  The world didn't need yet another book review blog.

Has that really changed?  Well yes, and no.  Amazon's reviews now have lots of requirements and caveats they didn't have then, but they're still often just as questionable as they were when I was busting the fiverr reviews.  Over the past couple of years, BookLikes has more or less gone defunct.  Goodreads, still the major review site, continues risky under the huge thumb of Amazon.

And there are a lot of bloggers who have left the business.  Sometimes it's just general burn-out.  Sometimes it's in response to harassment from thin-skinned authors and/or their "street teams" who demand only five-star reviews and no criticism.  Review blogs, in their view, should serve only to promote and sell books.

I could, if I had the discipline or desire, research some of the existing book review blogs to see how many of them limit reviews to "four stars and above, only" and similar high-rating requirements.  I have neither the desire nor the discipline.  What those reviewers do is their business.

So what can I do to set myself apart?

Well . . . .

It's been almost five years since I picked up the figurative romance writing pen and wrote The Looking-Glass Portrait.  I haven't done as much writing since then as I would have liked, and there are a lot of reasons for that.  One is that I tend to write more when I read more.  Reading serves to prime the pump, and I just haven't had much motivation to read. 

And there have been personal reasons, too.  Now I'm trying to get back to reading in order to get back to writing.

The Looking-Glass Portrait is a contemporary gothic romantic suspense.  There are real ghosts in it, a real murder, a real romance.  I had enormous fun writing it, and I realized in the process that this is one of my favorite romance sub-genres.  It had gone out of favor in the 1970s when my historical romance writing career got its real start, but I always enjoyed reading the older gothics and those few that were still being written by authors like Phyllis A. Whitney and Barbara Michaels and Daphne duMaurier.

 

 

Now I'm ramping up the writing of another contemporary gothic romance, and I need to prime the pump again, so to speak.  I have plenty of old paperback gothics to read, and I'll be treating you to reviews of some of those in the weeks and months to come.  But the books written and published in the 1950s and 1960s aren't always reflective of the current market.  I knew reading books being published today was essential.

As a retired person an a limited income, I rely a lot on the public library and free Kindle books to keep me in reading material that isn't tattered, often taped-together paperbacks.

 

 

If I had an unlimited book budget, I'd buy zillions of digital books because otherwise I'd be run out of house and home by stacks of paperbacks.  I don't have that unlimited budget, so I acquire my collection via sales and . . . Kindle freebies.

Kindle freebies are, of course, mostly published by the authors ("SPAs" self-publishing authors) or small, independent publishers ("Indies").  In the past dozen years or so since I've been reading digital books, I've learned that there is often -- not always, but often -- a sharp divide between the traditionally published and the author/indie published books in terms of quality.

Maybe readers don't care.  Maybe readers read without noticing the plot holes and the character inconsistencies, the errors of fact and the misspellings.  Maybe the writers don't care either.

But I do care.

My thought today, then, is that maybe it's time to put some reviews on this blog, particularly of the indie/SPA digital books as compared to the traditionally published, with a fond focus on the gothic and romantic suspense sub-genres, as they were then and as they are now.

Not all the traditionally published gothic romances are five-star quality, despite their reputations or even semi-classic status.  Over the past several years, I've done detailed analyses of some of those "classic" gothics, and the books have proven to be less than stellar, pun intended.  I plan to put some of those analyses on here as well because they illustrate how even the traditional authors, editors, and publishers get it wrong.

Normally, I consider reviews are for readers, and in a way the reviews that will appear here are no different: they'll be meant to alert readers to books that in my opinion are great or terrible or something in between, so that they can choose their reading material accordingly.  Reviews aren't for authors; they're supposed to get their critiques before they publish.

But the reviews I'm going to do are deconstructions, taking the story and the writing and even the presentation apart bit by bit to show what works and what doesn't and why.  In that sense, these are reviews for writers as much as for readers.  I want the books I read, whether Kindle freebies or library digital loans or any other format, to be well written and well structured, so I can lose myself in the words.  That's what it's all about.