Goodreads Authors/Readers discussion

God had Moses as his amanuensis. As ever, some of the blame might lie with the transcriptor rather than the creator. Plus there were translations of the OT from aramaic and greek into English, plenty of scope for mutations there

The thread is huge and I don't intend to answer everyone's points, simply that of the original poster. As a new self-pub author who will be entering the fray, I think I can add some perspective.

I can't think of many things more time consuming than creating a professional quality novel on your own. When you are done with your umpteenth draft, sorting out issues your critique partners uncovered, answering concerns of your beta readers, tracking down the issues pointed out by your editor(s), managing the schedule for the cover art, production, promotional materials you then have to market, market and market more. All this happens while writing your NEXT book.

My speculation is that any self-published or even traditionally published folks who have time to attack and insult readers, have WAY too much time on their hands and are thus most likely producing subpar work anyway.

Good authors have diligently trained themselves not to respond to negative reviews. You need to take them into account as a whole of course, but you never get into an internet flame war with a hater. Sometimes that criticism is valid and will help you improve your work, other times, people are simply being trolls.

On that same point, I don't see myself going out of my way to take on authors who are making poor choices in how they interact with their potential readers. That's their problem and I'm absolutely positive it will result in them no longer selling books and being able to call themselves authors, so chastising them isn't worth the word count - I need that for my press releases, interviews, the next book, etc. etc.

Thanks all, now back to writing...

I just wonder why you (the reviewer) can't tell which SPA's works are likely to be good and which are likely to be garbage honestly. I've read a lot of posts on here to the efect of "Hey dudes! Check out my new novel and review!" And those sorts of uber-casual posts always make me cringe. I certainly never offer to review them. Now the occasional looneies will always get through I suppose, but is it really that difficult beforehand to detect the wannabes?

I guess my test is if an author can't compose a half-way decent query to get you to read and review their work in the first place, how can they be expected to construct an entire novel that is halfway decent? I would submit that it is probably a bad idea to agree to review the work of any author who just shoots you a one-line request along the lines of "Sup! I got this gr8 book out about vamps? wanna review it?" I think reviewers can cut through an awful lot of crap if they just require all authors, SP or otherwise, to submit a query letter containing a formal proposal of review, the synopsis, and author links. If a writer can't write, isn't professional, and doesn't care to put enough time into their writing to have a half-way decent social media platform - that will come through in the query and warn the reviewer to say thanks but no thanks.

Or am I just being foolishly naive?

Dina wrote: "R.F.G. wrote: "Dina, EJ,

No matter how many readers and editors you have, rest assured there will be some aspect in any book you may write that someone somewhere will find to call a mistake, a typ..."

It's funny though. I just read "Hatchet" with some of my students this semester by Gary Paulsen. It's a formally published book by a major publishing house and has been out since 1989, but we still found several mispellings/typos/missing words, etc.

Davidm wrote: "I just wonder why you (the reviewer) can't tell which SPA's works are likely to be good and which are likely to be garbage honestly. I've read a lot of posts on here to the efect of "Hey dudes! Che..."

No, I don't think you're being naive. There's usually some clue as to whether it's worth checking out someone's worth or not. If someone puts themselves over badly, or their book is obviously going to be full of typos, it's less likely to be worth reading.

That said, there are exceptions - especially books by people who are writing about an extraordinary experience, or something about which they feel deeply.

Marc wrote: "Jack wrote: "Michael wrote: "A book of mine (HELL'S GATE) had two, five star reviews written up by two readers I had no connection with. They made me feel on top of the world. There were no more re..."

I just saw this exact thing on a top 100 book.... the people did not like the topic of the book... and someone wrote a "3 star review" to be fair, and was planning on reading the book... HELLO... read the book, plus the 3 star just dropped the rating down.

There are reasons to not like books, and not liking the author has nothing to do with it--- or better yet... choosing a political book on a certain topic, then giving a bad review because you didnt like the topic. that is stupid

Victoria wrote: "There's no reason why you can't act as your own editor if you make sure to take the time to go through everything carefully; I've seen proffessionally edited works with at least a couple of typos o..."

I agree with your "show respect" comment. I personally cannot proofread my own work. I see what I want to be there, not what is there. So i have passed my books along to several people to do it for me. After I stop looking at it for a bit, I order a physical paperback copy, then go over it again. It is a lot of work.... and you are all right about the professionals having typos also. In every James Patterson novel I find at least one "the the". I truly started thinking that perhaps the editor was putting in a calling card, or a joke. It just seems weird to me. But for me, it is much easier to find the mistakes in other people's works, than my own. Especially if I have been working on it constantly--my eyes go fuzzy.

David wrote: "...I think reviewers can cut through an awful lot of crap if they just require all authors, SP or otherwise, to submit a query letter containing a formal proposal of review, the synopsis, and author links. ..."

I merely require authors to publish books; leave me alone to buy, read, review or not. I would be completely creeped out to be contacted by email or snail mail (particularly at addresses I gave amazon for billing purposes) by an author asking me to read or review a book. I buy, browse and borrow whatever books I want to and sporadically am moved to review. I never accept free for review copies since an early failed experiment taught me I don't enjoy the self-imposed deadline. Messaging me on goodreads or other book sites where I now review with a review my book request ... not so creepy and gives me the opportunity to flag message as spam and block the sender.

Save the query letters and formalities for paid, professional reviewers and review sites. Don't ferret out reader/ consumer-reviewer contact info. Even for readers with review blogs, don't ferret stuff out and assume you are sending the proper query letter -- most of those blogs will have submission guidelines somewhere that you will be better off following.

Reviews are just a reader's opinion. Any opinion, whether it be positive, negative, constructive, or destructive, may be taken seriously, with "a grain of salt", heeded, disregarded, or totally ignored.

Attempting to strictly regulate reviews smacks of censorship which, though often well-intended, may lead down a slippery slope and, therfore, is best avoided.