SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion
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Images or gifs in reviews?
I'm not a huge fan of images or gifs on goodreads. I've run across some discussion threads that are like going to an old geocities page- you really have to hunt past the shiny flashy things to find some actual words. They seem a little odd, especially on a book site, where people are theoretically comfortable with the written word. If the book made you happy, say that it made you happy, rather than posting a page filling smiley face.
And I agree with you about 'casting threads'...I understand that it can be a fun game to play, but it's always kind of amusing that it's generally the top 20 stars/starlets of the moment who are picked as character representations, every single time. Much as I like Jennifer Lawrence, she probably isn't representative of every female character between 15 and 40.
I don't use animated gifs in reviews, but a couple of times I have used gifs and jpegs to illustrate a graphic novel review.For example: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Trike wrote: "I don't use animated gifs in reviews, but a couple of times I have used gifs and jpegs to illustrate a graphic novel review.For example: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/..."
I think that's different since graphic novels are, well, graphic :P
I don't want to discourage people who do use gifs or images in their reviews from commenting! I'd really like to hear why you like to use them, where you find them, how much time it adds to writing a review and anything else you want to add.
Usually I conceive of a post or review with pictures in mind. I tend not to spend too much time looking for pictures, though, because that cuts into naptime.I look around and find one that approximates what I want and go, "Yeah, good enough."
(view spoiler)
Sometimes, though, I nail it and think, "Job well done, old son."
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Finding one that fits perfectly is like
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I don't mind pics in reviews, though I don't use them often. Mostly 'cause I just don't tend to think to, and partially 'cause they've limited my net time at work, which is when I tend to write my reviews, so I've been writing them in Notepad and doing a quick copy and paste. ;)I do prefer when people use one or two pics, though, and not an entire page of them.
Personally I don't use them in my reviews. That being said they can be very effective when someone uses one that fits the context well. Of course they need to be used in moderation and not as a substitute for an actual written review.If every review uses them or if someone uses loads they can get irritating very quickly.
Maybe there are people who like graphic novels as reviews. Maybe I'm old fashioned. But I don't want to listen to reviews, I don't look at video reviews. I read them.Looking at Trike's post, I simply find it annoying now that I write this text. That dancing truck drives me to tears and I get problems concentrating.
I hate graphics in the text and would give something to be able to shut them off.
I''m guessing that trike meant that as a joke. Hopefully.
As with anything, I think presentation is the key. So for me, it all depends on how well the reviewer conveys their thoughts. I've seen some reviews that go overboard with gifs and images, but then others, are just perfect. It's a form of expression and creation and I really like a well thought out review, whether it is written or supplemented with pictures.
Generally I prefer reviews to be just text. It slows my iPad greatly. With my hearing problems video reviews are beyond me. But those are personal preferences.
I don't mind some reviews that have pictures but it has to be a well written review and the pictures have to make sense and fit.I can't stand animated gifs in reviews though.
I used to hate them, but then I saw them being used in some nice ways. Jeffrey Keeten and Nataliya both use images (not animated) in their reviews and I usually love the way they use them. Jefferey often reviews more historically-set pieces, some fiction, some non, and the pictures he uses are fascinating. Really adds something when its paragraphs and paragraphs of review.Since I am reading and reviewing over 100 books a year, I decided to give them a shot. Finding the right image is extremely time consuming when I tried it for a Walter Mosley review. http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Once in a while, I use animated gifs. Rarely. They are often visually distracting, I agree. Once in awhile they sum up a book.
Jen wrote: "I''m guessing that trike meant that as a joke. Hopefully."I was.
I fixed it so as not to offend those with sensitive dispositions.
I have to agree that a well placed image can be very effective in a review and I have to give Nataliya props for doing it particularly well. I wonder if I'd still think so if her reviews weren't great though. I think this has clarified that I don't like gifs since I find them distracting, but images I can live with as long as they're surrounded by a well written review.
Carol, I thought it was probably very time consuming to find the right image. I find Goodreads time consuming enough so I can't imagine where people find the time.
Penny wrote: "I have to agree that a well placed image can be very effective in a review and I have to give Nataliya props for doing it particularly well. I wonder if I'd still think so if her reviews weren't great though. "I think, if it's done well and fits your review and your style then it can be a helpful enhancement of the review experience.
And you are right. Nataliya is some sort of review goddess, who handles this particular form of presentation really well, up to a point where the review becomes its own piece of art.
I personally don't use images in my reviews, cause they don't fit into my style of reviewing, but I can appreciate them, when they're used skillfully.
I've occasionally used an image or two in a review, but never animated and always directly related to the work being reviewed. IE no memes.
Fine, some dedicated, well placed images might do something good to a review. But it is time-consuming to find them.Is this time well invested or wouldn't it be better to contribute in another way to the community?
I'd prefer the latter.
I don't think they add anything necessary to a review, but they don't offend me (at least not that I've seen so far).
I only use them when writing negative, humorous reviews:My Ringworld Review
I try to avoid having images/gifs actually replace text. Rather, I use them to illustrate something I have already written (and attempt to caption them appropriately).
I usually read GR on my Droid using their app, and most times images get filtered out. So if you say something like, "I really like this:" followed by an image of the book cover, please realize that many of us have no idea to which book you are referring, and therefore skip your review altogether.
Baelor wrote: "I only use them when writing negative, humorous reviews:My Ringworld Review
"
I really like your Ringworld review. The animated gif with that crazy guy was so deviating that I really had problems following the last third of the text.
What was worse: I've been having breakfast while reading it (you know: a nice smoothie and scrambled eggs) and the first thing that I saw was a picture of shit. That didn't help me enjoying that breakfast. You see: Sometimes, messages are received in a different context than you thought of.
That's why it is so difficult selecting pictures. That's why people in general shouldn't do it.
In a review, I don't think a picture says a thousand words....
We have to be in the minority on this topic. When I look at the "Top 50 best reviews" all I see are images and gifs. I was hoping to find out why in this thread, but either this group is not a fair representation of GR (which does seem likely) or my original post was anti enough to make people unwilling to share their reasons behind putting images and gifs in reviews.
Penny wrote: "We have to be in the minority on this topic. When I look at the "Top 50 best reviews" all I see are images and gifs. I was hoping to find out why in this thread, but either this group is not a fair..."The top reviews are just a popularity contest. Animated GIFs and Memes are popular. Personally I looked at a few of those reviews once and got bored and stopped.
There are a ton of people on GR who don't actually seem to read books. Or at least they don't mark read/ rate books. It wouldn't surprised me if they do click on crap to uprank it though.
People in this club are much more likely to actually read/care about reviews. I know I don't click "like" on every review I read.
Penny wrote: "We have to be in the minority on this topic. When I look at the "Top 50 best reviews" all I see are images and gifs. I was hoping to find out why in this thread...I actually think there are two components.
First, in the work environment and somtimes even at university, presentation seems to be more important than the actual content.
I was always amazed, when I delivered some stats and an interpretation for them to one of my bosses, that he spend like 10 minutes with me, but then hovered 2 hours over the guy's desk that made the power point presentation for my data.
There is a huge emphasis in the work environment on presentation and I guess this mindset translates to other parts of live as well.
The other thing is the brevity of all creation on the internet.
There are a lot of people that don't read larger post and tl;dr and wall of text are common phrases used against people, who really dig into the matter of something.
And that also leads to people using images or gifs to catch the reader's interest.
It's kind of sad, but I guess a huge amount of people prefers a huge pic with a thumb down to an actual explanation of why it's down.
Cause then they can go on and watch more other pics. With the amount of information delivered to us everyday, many feel that brevity in presenting this information might be necessary.
I don't know if a Harold Bloom review could compete with the popularity of a kitty picture on the Internet....
"There are a lot of people that don't read larger post and tl;dr and wall of text are common phrases used against people, who really dig into the matter of something."The problem is that there are many walls of text that are not deep but only long. Those are boring. Furthermore, even deep reviews can be stultifying because they are dry, obscure, or simply verbose. No good either!
Brevity is underrated. Or is brachylogy something which most writers, however pedestrian or orotund they may be in their written discourse, eschew needlessly when the aforementioned individuals should be racing to it like so many horses in a chariot race, the finish line of which is nearing?
Unfortunately, long reviews tend to be more like sentence 2 rather than sentence 1, especially among those with over-inflated senses of their own analytical prowess. No wonder people prefer succinct and interesting reviews, even at the expense of substance. Only when tedious but insightful reviewers learn that good reviews have a coincidence of good content and good style (which is engaging, clear, and poetic, whether through brevity or not) will the trend change.
I take it you mean images that are something other than just pictures of the book? Pictures of the book are the only images I would use and even that's unnecessary unless I'm posting the review somewhere that's not a book site, like on Tumblr.
Baelor wrote: " Only when tedious but insightful reviewers learn that good reviews have a coincidence of good content and good style (which is engaging, clear, and poetic, whether through brevity or not) will the trend change."I'd say, the same should be true the other way around.
Top 5 issue lists don't include solutions, Power Point decreases the amount of information someone actually gets from a presentation and the ideal review seems to look like this:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
Brevity, from my personal experience at least, is way overrated in our society.
Everything has to fit in a newsflash, a tweet or into an SMS. Attention trumps content.
Mpauli wrote: "Baelor wrote: " Only when tedious but insightful reviewers learn that good reviews have a coincidence of good content and good style (which is engaging, clear, and poetic, whether through brevity o..."I acknowledge the predominance of brevity in the country today, but I would suggest that such instances are generally devoid of any content whatsoever.
I guess I am influenced by my background in academic humanities (with some truly awful secondary scholarship).
I mostly find gifs annoying, because they distract from the text (there's some science behind that, in general adults find animated images distracting, while children find them engrossing), and the text is generally the point of posting a review in the first place. I'm okay with still images, as long as they make sense and there's a reasonable text to image ratio.
I usually don't like them, and find them distracting. Though I'll admit that every once in a while there's a hilarious one that's used to good effect. Mostly, though, I don't care for them. As for using them in my own reviews, I don't have time to go hunting them up and inserting them. Some of those gif and image-heavy reviews must take hours to put together.
They make me stop and read the review, I guess that's the point. I don't know if I like them though. I tend to like the ones used in unfavorable reviews more than favorable ones... I guess I'm not a very nice person. The ones that bug me the most are the reviews for romances (or pnr) that show nothing but good looking male models. Sure they're nice to look at but it tells me nothing about the book.
As long as there is actually a review to go along with the pictures... sure go ahead and use them.
Personally, I find myself quickly clicking onto the next review unless the gif or picture is particularly informative. I must admit that there are times (e.g., when I'm very tired) when it is difficult to fight the allure of shiny objects/memes.
There are definitely ones that are overused that I am tired of... *cough* Supernatural. Memes I hate. Okay, hate is a strong word... no... I hate them. I scream (on the inside) everytime I see Sean Bean from LotR with his fingers forming a circle. Shudder.
I am personally very tired of gifs. I don't mind some image or just the occasional gif too much but when it's overdone, it's annoying. I feel it mostly depends on the use. Lately, a lot of reviews are not really reviews but more like a sloppy summary with a gif after every sentence to show how the review felt. For me that shows inability to write and express apart from laziness and bad sense of humor. My biggest peeve though is that unfortunately those reviews gather a huge amount of likes and they end up first on the review list. I think it's totally unfair for the people who spend time and effort writing a proper review having theirs undermined by some silly and weak review with a bunch of moving images. Ok... end of rant. I'll take my pills now!
animated gifs do serve one useful purpose - they show me that the reviewer in question has tastes so different from mine that I should not bother using my energy to read their review as it will be of little value to me. Otherwise they are just annoying and a bit tacky. Reviewing books with animations makes no sense to me.As for pictures - sometimes they work really well. On a website they can help break up the text and there are times when they can express an idea more clearly and succinctly but there is a big difference between an apt image and something got from 3 clicks on Google images ...and they tend to be overused. However they do also help with the reviewer taste/ is it worth reading what they think short cut.
I think one of the main problems with gifs and pictures is that quite often people use them as a substitute for words rather than as a complement to words. A wisely chosen picture and, dare I say it, a wisely chosen gif can add quite a lot to a review if they draw attention to the text and clarify what is being written. When they are used simply as padding or to grab attention, it's no wonder they don't often work well.It's kind of like animations in a business or educational presentation. They can help, but spamming them just makes it impossible for people to understand what you're doing. Personally, I don't put any in my reviews.
I know I'm might sound like a grumpy jealous self-centered ass but "reviews" like this is one of the reasons I dislike gifs so much. That one sentence with 2 gifs has gathered 14 likes and appears 3rd of the review list (higher than many other useful and properly written reviews) and the guy hasn't even read the book!!! Why? WHY?
A picture can be worth a thousand words but it must relevant and well thought out for this to be the case.So I dont mind pics in reviews and certainly they can be very eye catching especially on the Internet which is not long for its long attention span .
I find them highly annoying. I don't expect people to sugar coat a review, but show some respect and be constructive.
I agree, gifs often annoy. It surprises me to see that some people who are so enthusiastic about books lack for words when describing their reaction, but I guess that is part of the difference between being a reader and being a person who enjoys writing as well.My solution is simple: I don't follow those reviewers. The ones I follow or am friends with tend to use them well. Personally, I suspect their days on GR are numbered, given copyright issues and, more importantly, display issues on Kindle.
Harrison, while you are certainly free to be annoyed by gifs as well, I would suggest not connecting the use of them to your personal works. One of the reasons the GR has fractured so heavily in the past two months is that authors insist that reviews be about the book, some authors going to far to insist that the reviews be constructive. As a reader, I'm not required to teach the author their craft. In fact, I am under no obligation to the author at all, just like when I go to an art show, a movie or a concert. My feeling, as well as many others (just see the 7000 post "Important Announcement Regarding Reviews" thread in the Feedback Group) is that is my little space to detail a reaction to the author or the book. Authorial or editorial attempts to control my reactions to and communications about a book will be met with firm decision not to read.
Harrison wrote: "Well there's an every day reaction and just plain rude...there is no need to be rude"But that's not the issue. The issue is that a reader has the right to their reaction. I would clarify, and state that the reader doesn't have a right to verbally threaten, attack or libel the author, but other than that, their reaction is their own. 'Rude' is a term that is a highly subjective behavior judgement and is by no means universally agreed upon. And their reaction is their own--don't read it. Period.
Sigh. I hate gifs. Ignore those reviews entirely. Gifs do absolutely nothing to help me decide whether or not to read a book. I don't like 'em in ads, I don't like them in reviews. I don't like them Sam I am. Warning: Ranting ahead
I read reviews to decide if I should read a book. Therefore, I write reviews to help others decide if they wish to read a book. I do not write reviews to pump up OR deflate an author's ego. In fact, I'm perfectly happy if the author never reads my review. I certainly do NOT write reviews in order to be 'constructive' to the author. That is what editors are for. I don't get paid to help an author improve his/her craft. Even if I receive a book for free for an 'honest review' that is all I promise in return. An honest review. My reviews typically discuss how books make me feel - because that is what is important to me.
I also read reviews to see if the book contains anything that pushes my particular buttons, so I try to address these issues. I never intend to offend an author but offense isn't always the fault of the offender - much of the time it is how the offendee responded to something.
Harrison wrote: "I disagree, any action verbal or physical that causes harm to another is not acceptable."Agree. But this is a false equivalency fallacy. Rudeness — personally perceived rudeness — does not equal to harm.
Harrison wrote: "I have no issue with an individual opinion, but it has to be based on fact and truth."
o·pin·ion
əˈpinyən/
noun
1.
a view or judgment formed about something, not necessarily based on fact or knowledge
Harrison wrote: "Nice to see 4 members of this group liked the inappropriate review."Harrison wrote: " I am human. A person with feelings. Show some respect.
My concern has always been that there is no justification for the manner in which the review was written. Did that person consider how the author would feel? No, if they had stated any good or bad points succinctly as others have done then I can learn and improve. I can't learn from that when the majority of what was written is a fallacy and does not reflect other opinions.
It doesn't hurt to be polite and respectful and still show others what you didn't like. "
Show some respect? For what? You published a book, which anyone can do thanks to self-publishing. Still, considering that you're an author now, I'd hope that you'd have more respect for the actual meaning of words than trying to redefine "opinion" to suit your ego. You'd earn my respect by respecting reviewers, rather than trying to police and sanitize their reviews.
It's not a reviewer's job to teach you anything. The review space here asks "What did you think?" not "What can you teach the author to help them improve?".
It's also not the reviewer's job to protect your fragile feelings. If you don't like or can't handle criticism, don't read reviews of your books. No, we don't think about how you'll feel. You put out a product for mass consumption, and there are going to be people who don't like it and who say so in whatever manner they see fit, even if it means using not-nice wordies that may hurt your feels.
The review was fair. Nothing was said about you as a person, everything was about the quality of your book for that particular reader. What exactly is "inappropriate" about that?
I just read the review you're talking about, Harrison, and there's nothing "inappropriate" about it. That word intimates that the reviewer wrote a personal attack or used socially unacceptable words. The review had nothing like that in it, so using that word in response is alarmist and... not appropriate. (Calling something inappropriate when it isn't inappropriate must surely be an inappropriate response.)The review seems a forthright and, quite honestly, helpful response. You should reflect on what that reviewer said. It contains advice about how to portray characters (specifically, the advice "Don't SAY it, DISPLAY it!" that summarizes the standard way of formulating a character in fiction--the reviewer even went on to detail the problems) and points out that you may require some editing in future works. Based on my reading of your profile and posts in this thread, I would have to agree, and would suggest a review of your use of commas, sentence fragments and run-on sentences.
Just to stay on topic, when it comes to the use of the graphic in that review... I'm not a fan of that technique. However, if someone is going to do that sort of thing, that review is an example of how it might be done in a way that makes some sort of sense to what the reviewer is writing. The graphic wasn't random or based on some meme. It ripped off a Disney cartoon, but given the theme of the book such a reference is actually topical.
Best of luck.
I'm not a particular fan of images in reviews. They're usually used to either express the feeling of the reader or to show the best approximation of what the reader thought the world or certain characters in the book looked like. In the first instance I think words suffice, and in the second I'd rather leave that to my own imagination.
As a reviewer I'd guess that finding the perfect image takes a lot of time and I wonder how long people must spend on that aspect of their reviews.
I find gifs very distracting as they endlessly loop the same short scene over and over again. If I can I scroll so that they're not on the page and I can read the text without my eyes wanting to jump to where the motion is. This may well just be me, I'm curious to know if anyone else finds the gifs distracting when they read? I don't only notice it in reviews, but ads on the side of websites too.
I'm sure this topic has been discussed at length on Goodreads, but I've never had this conversation before and I'm interested to know what other people think.