Reviews & The Hating Of Goodreads.

You know...as a writer, I understand the importance of reviews. I need them, not only as a marketing tool, but as a tool for growth as a writer. Constructive criticism has been invaluable in helping me improve my craft.

But here's the thing.

It seems to me that book reviewing has become a bloodsport, where the objective is not to review a book in good faith. Rather, it has become an exercise in grandstanding - of unloading with the snarkiest take downs, of maligning the writer with the slickest burns possible. It's been apparent on #Goodreads for a while - (Like, what the fuck is it with these *reviewers* and gifs??) It's also an emerging trend on Netgalley - (minus the gifs).

I generally turn around a title in 18 months to 2 years. I pour countless hours into it - honing character, setting, story into a cohesive whole. I work with an editor, a publisher, a marketer to refine the project & polish it into the best product it can be. I sweat over it. Experience sleepless nights. I run the gamut of all the highs and lows that a creative endeavor offers.

Then I, along with my publisher put it out there to garner advance appraisal, months before release. We hope for reviews because, as I said, they are important. They help to build an awareness for the product and, hopefully a positive buzz that will translate into readers.

Generally, I take a lot of notice of 3* reviews (even more than 5* or 4*) because these offer the most in terms of constructive criticism. I have yet to encounter a 1* or 2* review that offer anything of value.

Often, these reviews hide an underlying agenda and I've come to view them as the reviewer trying to build a brand of their own, which has very little to with the noble art of reviewing a book. 

Appraising an entire project, simply because a character "pissed you off" is not worth the keyboard strokes. Seriously! It just makes you look like an arsehole. Did you consider maybe that was the intention? And a 1* review that damns a project, simply because it's "Slow"?

Not every reading experience has to move like a freight train! Tell me why you thought it was slow. What was it about the structural elements of the story that failed to gel with you? Tell me why the character pissed you off.  Don't just drop these in my lap & walk away without fleshing out your reasoning. It does nothing!

There should be a commitment to learning the art of a review - & there is an art. If you're going to invest the time in crafting a review, at least work on making that review one that can help an author, rather than discourage them. If you can find nothing of value in a work, don't write a review at all. Keep your slick burns and your smart arsed gifs to yourself.

I am a writer. I believe I'm good at it - but I also believe I have more to learn.

Teach me.

DFA.

My Strange Addiction - Bad Reviews & Where To Find Them.

Bad reviews.

They're nothing new. They are part and parcel of being a published author and, if there is one thing I've learned after seven years of writing and being published, you are bound to get one - or two.

You know something?

They still hurt.

Even with all of the advice I've received about bad reviews and the knowledge that you can't please everyone all of the time, there are occasions when the bad review cuts - and cuts deep.

(image credit: Goodreads.)

Of course, one nexus where authors can almost be guaranteed of seeing bad reviews of their work is Goodreads. The Amazon owned, global hub of just about any book that has ever been published is either a blessing or a curse for the working author.

I still haven't decided which.

Sure, it's a platform that gives exposure to an author's work, allows discussion and interaction about that work and literature more broadly. 

In the past couple of weeks, some reviews have appeared on the Goodreads entry for The Recipient that are less than kind. In a word  - they suck. I won't relay the details of them for you here. You can visit the entry for yourself and check them out. Suffice to say, there are no positive take aways in them. There is nothing in them that I could use to apply to better myself as a writer. Over the course of several hundred words, their basic take-home is, 'This is shit. Move on.'

You maybe asking, why would you do this to yourself Dean? Why would you visit a site like Goodreads, if you know that the reviews may not all be good?

Well - because reviews matter. Reviews are still the pre-dominant indicator of an individuals decision to purchase or not to purchase. If the reviews are bad, and they come from a reviewer of influence, that is quite a powerful position to be in.

I've had plenty of advice, saying to avoid reviews - good and bad - and I know, intellectually, that is the right thing to do. 

But sometimes, I have moments of weakness. I've had a few moments of weakness recently.

I'm close to a stage of burn out. I've recently had two patients at my work pass who I were really close to and I think they affected me more than I am willing to admit. There has a constant pressure associated with the daily grind. Work, the school run, the weekend sports, juggling the house hold budget, my health. Not to mention the challenges of trying to remain creative and finish a story that I've committed quite a lot to emotionally over the past year.

I missed a pressure release valve somewhere along the way.

In those moments, I find myself indulging in a crazy little game of self flagellation. There is something about bad reviews that is strangely attractive. It's almost like, seeing a bad review acts as a sort of leveler. That, even after multiple titles, you're not actually top stuff at all. You're not even decent. You're a fraud.

(image credit: REUTERS/Mohammad Ismail.)

The best place, it seems, to do that is by visiting Goodreads and checking up on your reviews. Ignore the good reviews and go straight for bad ones and bask in them like some strung out drug addict. 

Feels good, don't it. 

I've endeavored to adhere to the idea that all reviews are valuable. All reviews offer something that an author can use to better themselves. Truth is, not all reviews are helpful. In fact, there are actually bad, bad reviews. 

And it still hurts.

DFA. 

The Involuntary Pause - Misadventures In Writing & Other Things.

I wasn't feeling it today.

Maybe it was because I'd indulged a little more than I'd planned to last night at the Pub when I was catching up with family. Maybe it was because it was such a lovely morning this morning and I found myself tending to my garden and lawns while listening to an ever enlightening episode of the Osher Günsberg podcast.

Whatever it was - I just couldn't engage my creative impulse today and, despite the eventual two hours I spent at my computer, my output wasn't good. I think I stared at my screen more than I did input anything of value. I'm struggling with the challenge of bringing two people together in a way that is gentle and convincing - and not soppy. So far, it has involved my protagonist, Hayden Luschcombe, helping my co-protagonist, Isabelle Sampi, with a blocked fuel line in her car and her showing him her bakehouse that she pretty much built herself. There's gotta be romance in there somewhere right.

It's a long story...

...And it's not easy.

Traditionally, I've been really hard on myself and overly criticized myself for not being productive. It's sonething that has caused me considerable distress - unnecessary distress. But I've slowly learned to accept that, sometimes, I'm simply not going to be able to tap into whatever it is that allows me to write freely and easily. When that happens, I've given myself permission to step away and disengage and it actually helps a lot. Of course, as with any learned behaviour - particularly those that have been learned over a long period of time - it's not easy to shake the anxiety and the tendency to be self critical. It takes effort to deprogram yourself and that can be pretty tiring. As I sit and I type this however, I'm okay...

...I think.

To contrast this with something completely opposite, something ratrathgroynd shaking has happened with The Recipient in the past couple of weeks. Back at the beginning of this month, my publisher wrote to advise me that The Recipient had been accepted for a Goodreads promotion that would see it be featured prominently at Goodreads as well as being included in a subscriber email mail-out.

Well, as the result of this promotion, The Recipient embarked on a rapid climb up the Amazon charts, peaking at a ranking of 735 a couple of weeks ago (out of several million titles) and it entered in the Top 100 across several fiction categories. It's since settled back into the mid 10,000 range as I write this but, it's selling at least a half dozen copies daily rather than say one or two copies a week. It's safe to say that I've never experienced anything like this and I'm kind of unsure how to see this. Further, I've just been informed that Amazon itself has selected The Recipient for its Kindle Monthly Deal mailout for November which has the potential to continue this run of high sales through its high visibility promotion. This includes prominent placement across the Amazon site as well as its social network.

In a word, I'm flabbergasted.

In the six years since my first novel, The Hambledown Dream, was published, I haven't had this level of exposure nor sales and it's a little hard to believe it's actually happening.

It's all a little bit of yin and yang today (is that right?)

Have you experienced something similar this past week? Let me know in the comments section below.

DFA.

Going Social (Or Losing One's Sanity Among Friends).

It used to be the case that I actively sought out every single social networking platform available if it had the potential for me to sell my books. When I was first published back in 2010, I took on this task enthusiastically, occupying every single space I could and I shouted – Oh Man Did I Shout – because I thought that was what you had to do in order to be successful. 

But I quickly learned that, aside from the fact that there are millions of others out there shouting just as loudly, having a presence everywhere was hard work. It was really hard work. It didn't sell my books. And it didn't make me happy. I soon began to resent it. 

Some will say that making as many connections as possible is key to growing your author brand and being successful. It's not. Others say that you have to maintain a frequent and active presence on social media in order to be successful. That's true...kind of. 

image credit: www.9gag.com

Some time ago, I reassessed my own platform and I quickly discovered why it was making me so unhappy – aside from the realization that “BUY MY BOOKS” wasn't working. I was in too many places at once. Trying to do to many things in those places without considering what those places could offer me that could streamline my workload. Eventually, I decided to jettison a lot of those platforms, bringing it back to a small number of interconnected ones. I also changed the way I present myself to the wider world. 

Central to my online platform is my author website. This is the core portal for everything related to my writing and it is here where I have information about myself, my books (including links to purchase those books), samples of my writing style in the form of short stories and unedited samples from my published works and links to media I have done – including interviews and podcast appearances. I maintain a blog here as well and I try (with the emphasis on “try”) to post once a week. That regimen is admittedly, hard to maintain particularly when I am heavily involved in a project. 

The next important portal is my Facebook Author Page. Here I post links to my blog posts when I post them. I'll also post links to interesting articles – usually related to writing or media – and you'll often find posts that promote the work of others, my friends who are writers or musicians whose work I like to support. Sometimes I'll post status updates that are just random, stream of consciousness type posts – things that I find funny and that I hope others will too. I have my Author Page linked to my Twitter account so that any time I post something on my Page, it'll immediately post to Twitter. I always try to come in under the 140 character limit dictated by Twitter so that my tweets won't get truncated and I always try to use hashtags – to enhance the potential of those posts being seen. 

image credit: two beans or not two beans.

I have a love/hate relationship with my Facebook Author Page. Facebook makes it hard for Page content to be seen without the Boost Your Post option – whereby you pay as much or as little as you want to promote your post - and they aren't transparent with their algorithms that they use to determine which posts get seen over others. There are a wealth of articles online that discuss this very issue and the conversations are quite complex. I have paid to boost posts in the past although I cannot attest to how successful they were. 

Twitter is the portal I tend to inhabit the most these days. This is the one place where I feel I made the most mistakes in how not to conduct oneself on a social network but it is the place where I have learned a lot. I use Twitter these days to converse and interact with people. I don't use Twitter to sell my books. A few years ago, it was the other way around. I will occasionally post a link to my work and “promote” myself but I find that the best way to use Twitter is to interact and participate in conversation, curate valuable content related to writing and I often get breaking news stories on Twitter before I get them anywhere else. I am also, not a proponent of following as many people as possible on Twitter. Some will argue that this is essential to maximizing your marketing potential, your brand but I don't agree. Twitter does not sell books.

image credit: CBS interactive.

Goodreads is a platform that I have largely automated so that content from my blog and my Twitter accounts are automatically posted to my Goodreads profile. I don't see a great level of interaction with my posts – occasionally I'll get a like or a comment but those are rare. What it does offer is a good profile space, it has all of my titles listed there along with reviews and it has links to purchase them. Of course, Goodreads is reader specific, so there is potential to engage with readers by way of the groups and communities there, however these can be time consuming and difficult to navigate.

Pinterest is a tool I have come to regard as increasingly valuable as a creative tool. For my upcoming novel The Recipient (Central Avenue Publishing), I created a board specifically for my research where I pinned imagery of settings that I wanted to for the novel, samples of architecture that would help me describe certain places, samples of furnishings that I wanted to put in those places. Even images of nightmares that would help me to describe the nightmares my protagonist, Casey Schillinge, experiences in the novel. Most importantly, I built up a catalog of people, faces both known and unknown that helped me to visualize the characters I wanted to portray in the novel. Again, I don't use Pinterest as a promotional tool however it does have a certain promotional value if readers and those who are familiar with my work want to step inside my creative mind to see what drives me. 

Instagram is a part of my platform that I use totally for fun and it represents the most personal side of myself. Here I tend to post random images and short videos, of things that inspire me, engage me and make me laugh. It also has the option of sharing content to both Facebook and Twitter and promotes the use of hashtags to add additional specificity to the descriptions of my content. Again, I don't use Instagram with promotion in mind but I will admit I have recently begun to structure promotional posts. I do these sparingly however as I don't want to piss people off.

I do have a presence on LinkedIn but I don't use it nearly as much. With it's corporate focus and limited functionality (in my opinion), LinkedIn is a curious platform that I have never been fully able to come to grips with. 

Google's G+ is another platform that I use but use sparingly. My blog posts, which are powered by Google's Blogger, are automatically shared to G+ but as a tool for engagement I find it frustratingly barren. I have tried many times to interact with my connections there but it is rare – if ever – that they reciprocate.

image credit: We Know Memes.

There are so many social networking portals out there on the web, with new ones being added every day. I used to subscribe to the maxim that, as an author, you have to be on as many platforms as possible to grow your brand. But that is simply untrue and it is a sure fire way to burn out quickly and start to resent your author brand. 

By having a small, interconnected “portfolio” of platforms, you can maintain your author brand efficiently while interacting with and enhancing your connections. You will actually enjoy yourself and most importantly, you will be able to invest more in the activity that brought you here in the first place. 

Writing.

DFA.