At last, I'm Amazon-Free

The whole world is starting to cancel because of covid-19, and my schedule has been impacted like everyone else's. So you know what I took it upon myself to do today? Upload my last two books onto Smashwords. Why? So I can finally announce that I am DONE with Amazon.

The clincher was when a very earnest person from a non-profit fighting hunger apologized for creating a wish list for her organization that was published on Amazon. This person was only trying to make it easier for people to be able to donate shoes and other clothing to the destitute and food-insecure clients she served - one of the worthiest causes I can think of - and yet she was apologizing for being associated with a company infamous for mistreating their workers and (credibly) accused of antitrust practices.

I mean, really, how could I still justify having my books there? I couldn't, so I didn't. Several weeks ago I removed everything I had for sale there, and I had already set my Amazon Prime membership to expire. And it's funny, because now that I've liberated myself, I can more openly say, "Ugh, I hate Amazon," when someone suggests buying gift cards there or making some other purchase. "Evil" and "hatred" are the immediate replies I've heard - clearly, I'm not alone.

Putting Amazon where it belongs 

Someone is going to say that I'm full of sour grapes, and if I'd sold more successfully there, I wouldn't have wanted to leave. It's true, I was never willing to spend the increasing amounts of money that were needed to game Amazon's algorithm, because that's what it became after a while. But I can honestly say that I am glad I wasn't someone who cashed in early on the Amazon wave and then became increasingly, desperately dependent on Amazon's whims. I know people who went from being able to pay their mortgages with their book sales to needing to borrow thirty bucks before their next check came in - and that happened relatively quickly in the evolution of Amazon. But isn't that what Get Rich Quick usually ends up looking like?

I've compared the e-book wave to the mind-body fitness bubble from a decade or so before. One of the characteristics of the latter is that, if you look closely enough, you'll see that a lot of those organizations make money off of teachers in the form of trainings; there are some yoga and Pilates instructors who can pull in enough through private lessons to make a good living, but those people are far outnumbered by the people who are running from studio to studio to scrape together enough money to supplement their other gigs. Similarly, there are some superstar Amazon indies who are still making a lot of money, but the vast majority are trying to generate attention, not even sales, and are finding that they need to pay, not for teacher training, but Amazon ads if they want any traction.

(For the love of all that is good, please don't say this is why we need email lists. No, no, no. That was great advice five years ago, but since then the internet has been pretty much ruined by the constant calls for people to sign up for newsletters, and in thanks have been aggressively spammed at least once a week. Just...no. If you don't have something to say once a month that's worthy of being heard - and "My life is so fascinating and/or relevant, so buy my book!" doesn't qualify - just don't.)

I feel so much better. I've had this sticky, unclean feeling for about three years, and while removing my reviews (admittedly in a fit of pique) made me feel better, I knew it wasn't enough. While I do believe that we should have the right to hold conflicting ideas about the same thing, if I'm going to be about something, I need to act accordingly. And so, finally, I have.

Deb in the City

P.S. Apologies to everyone who left me a review on Amazon that has now been deleted. I thank you again; believe me, I appreciated it more than you can know.

Worth the Binge! Blog Hop - the K-drama edition

When Caroline Fardig asked what our next blog hop should be, I immediately thought of Netflix binging, because oh my, I’ve been binging shows on that platform a lot lately. I mentioned that my stints in the hospital made me reevaluate my stance against screen time. (Honestly, it is much easier to watch an engrossing story than to read it when you’re somewhat disoriented.) One of my happy discoveries was that, after a few years of shunning Korean dramas, many of the ones offered on Netflix are really good, and totally worth a few hours of my time (or, you know, half a day, or maybe an entire weekend).

K-dramas succeed for the same reason that British dramas do: limitations of time prevent them from getting too greedy and force them to keep the story tighter than some bloated American dramas that want to milk as many seasons, episodes, and syndication fees as possible. (I don’t even watch The Walking Dead, and after eight seasons I’m sick of it.) Which isn’t to say that some dramas don’t drag on longer than they need to (if something goes over sixteen episodes, be suspicious), but in general the story ends on a satisfying if not always perfect note.

I’ve watched numerous dramas in less than six months, and I originally started this post with the intention of going into all of them. But once that draft started hovering around 3000 words and I wasn’t quite done, I decided to focus on four: Stranger (aka Secret Forest), Life, Mr. Sunshine, and White Nights aka Night Light.

Stranger wasn’t the first Korean drama I watched, but the second. More importantly, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen on television and a new standard I measure all shows by, not just the Korean ones. It might be simplest to think of this as (yet another) updated version of Sherlock Holmes, with Cho Seung-woo’s Prosecutor Hwang Shi-mok as the (literally) emotionally scarred Holmes and Bae Doona’s Lieutenant Han Yeo-jin as the warmer John Watson. And if that’s what gets you there, fine, but it’s sooo much more. It’s an intricately plotted mystery that was planned in order to expose the corruption (I mean, no kidding, it’s Korean entertainment) that includes the police, the prosecutor’s office, the ministry, and, of course, the CEO of a powerful chaebol (conglomerate). You won’t really know what you’re looking at until Episode Four, but by then you’re already going to be sucked in by the characters, including Deputy Chief Prosecutor Lee Chang-joon (Yoo Jae-myung), sleazeball prosecutor Seo Dong-jae (Lee Joon-hyuk), ambitious prosecutor Young Eun-soo (Shin Hye-sun), and inspector Yoon Se-won (Lee Kyu-hyung). When you find out exactly who did what and why, you’re not going to feel any better when they catch the culprit. (I don’t think I’ve ever cried during a confession before.) But it’s the chemistry between Cho and Bae that’s going to find you binging as many episodes of this per day as you can and asking yourself will they/won’t they/should they?

Most of the main characters from Stranger (and oh my god is there going to be a season 2?!)

Everyone on the planet has probably heard of Descendants of the Sun, an internationally successful juggernaut that may have made the viewing public take K-dramas seriously. This year, the same team brought us Mr. Sunshine. (Unlike many other Korean dramas, that really is the original title. You won’t find out why it’s named that until halfway through the series, but I’ll preview that you’ll be tearing up when you get to that moment.) I admit to being more than a little indignant to read people hoping for a “happy ending” while they watched this, because the subject matter is the beginning of the end of the Korean kingdom/empire aka Choson as the Japanese tightened their grip and turned it into a colony. While this was criticized by some for being too charitable to the Americans and demonizing the Japanese, as someone who has read much about this period, I thought it did a good job of showing all sides. You shouldn’t thank the Japanese occupiers for anything they did—but it’s worth noting that they were the ones who forced Choson to outlaw slavery. And while most former Korean slaves still led lives of desperate poverty, it was no longer legal to murder and discard them. As Eugene Choi/Choi Yu-jin (Lee Byung-hyun), the son of slaves who became an American Marine captain, told his friend Gu Dong-mae (Yoo Yeon-seok), the son of butchers who became a Yakuza samurai, they may live in treacherous times, but they, unlike their parents, have choices. Would that have been possible without the Japanese occupation? Eventually. By 1894? Probably not.

Just some of the motley assortment of people fighting for Korean independence in Mr. Sunshine

As with, oh, history in general, it would be a mistake to think that this is just a story about the Japanese versus the Koreans. As to be expected from an ancient civilization, Korean society was both deeply complicated and deeply flawed. People had many reasons for fighting for independence with qualifications, just as they did for collaborating with the Japanese. This is is not to excuse the atrocities or to say that there weren’t ever clearcut victims and villains, but in most cases, choices were messier than we might think looking back, and Mr. Sunshine explored that.

While the series was long (24 episodes in total), I didn’t feel like any of the time was wasted. The story follows both Eugene and Go Ae-shin (Kim Tae-ri), the young aristocrat he falls in love with who leads a secret life as a sniper for the Righteous Army. Other main characters include Gu Dong-mae, Kim Hee-sung (Byun Yo-han), the wealthy young man whose grandfather owned and killed Eugene’s parents, and Lee Yang-hwa/Hina Kudo (Kim Min-jung), the wealthy daughter of a traitor to Japan who owns a hotel and despises her father. All of the men share an affection for Ae-shin and, frankly, have nothing else in common. However, the three develop a friendship that transcends class and history as they all come to the conclusion that Choson, for all its faults, deserves its independence. Similarly, while Ae-shin and Yang-hwa begin their interactions with a barely concealed contempt for each other, in the end they both earn the other’s respect by be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to preserve the country they love.

This ends in 1919 and I don’t think I’m giving anything away to say that few of the characters are left standing at the end. If anything, the “happy ending” is that Korean resistance continued up to that day and right through 1945.

Anyway.

Does everything look lighter after that? Perhaps, but that’s not to say that others didn’t deliver the same kind of sucker punch of desperation after betrayal. White Nights aka Night Light (I have no idea why these names are chosen, I swear) stands out from most of the K-dramas I’ve watched because the two main characters are women. Not only that, Seo Yi-kyung (Lee Yo-wan) is a corporate shark and Lee Se-jin (Uee) is a con woman desperate to learn at Yi-kyung’s feet and become a success like her. Yi-kyung’s motivations are complicated: her father was deeply betrayed by his fellow organizers of the Korean-Japanese Olympics in 1988, but she later falls in love with the son of one of those organizers, Park Gun-wook (Jin Goo of Descendants of the Sun fame). Once out on her own, she begins her career as a gallery owner who follows a twisty (and twisted) plan to slowly take over South Korean business and control the office of the presidency itself, which just happens to involve the former president who also betrayed her father. Se-jin is willing to help her until she sees the moral toll this costs the both of them. I loved watching two brilliant women maintain their affection for each other even as they tried to outwit the other. If anything, the conflict deepened their respect for the other.

An earnest con woman, a ruthless shark, and a wishy-washy chaebol heir walk into a television show...

The final K-drama I’ll mention is the one I most recently completed. Life (that, too, is the original Korean title. Don’t ask why, because it’s not like there isn’t a Korean word for “life”) centers around the staff at a teaching hospital of a university that’s recently been acquired by a chaebol. It’s easy early on to side with the doctors versus the corporation at the beginning, especially when President Koo Seong-hyo (Cho Seung-woo) orders the hospital to shut down the emergency, maternity, and pediatric departments because they aren’t profitable. A threat of a strike causes the Seong-hyo to back down, but shortly after he discovers that the doctors hid a death due to negligence. The president has the moral upper hand until he makes the truth public...and on the back-and-forth goes. We quickly discover, however, that as much as the president wants to turn the hospital into a money maker, he’s the best protection the staff has against the chaebol chairman Jo Nam-hyeong (Jung Moon-sung), who’s willing to destroy the hospital if it won’t become profitable for him.

The most chilling part of the show: these are the people responsible for our health care

It won’t take much for American audiences to recognize the many quandaries that arise when healthcare is seen as a business, just as many of us will sympathize with the argument “big business” makes that they can provide a level of oversight a chummy clique of doctors is unwilling to impose on itself. It’s messy, and no one comes out looking perfectly right, just as in life.

I must mention here that I wanted to watch this was not only for Cho Seung-woo but also for Lee Kyu-hyung. I didn’t think the actor could break my heart any more than he had in Stranger, but I spent 20 minutes of the last episode with tears streaming down my face as I watched him in his final scenes as the paraplegic orthopedist/health administrator Ye Seon-woo. I’ll watch this guy read the proverbial phone book and probably need tissues while I do so.

Lee Kyu-hyung, a rising star

A shout out must also be given to veteran actress Moon So-ri, who played the tough as nails Neurosurgery department head Oh Se-hwa. God damn...not to give anything away, but when she tells a corporate bully that she knows fifty ways to kill someone without leaving a trace and that he’d better take his son’s pictures off of social media, you’re going to clap.

Moon So-ri, a versatile, veteran bad ass 

I feel bad not having given explored the other K-dramas and comedies I’ve watched and loved over the past few months, but here’s a list of other dramas I hope you also decide to explore.

Descendants of the Sun

Bad Guys 1

Bad Guys 2

Strong Girl Bong-soon

This is My Love

Man 2 Man

The Prison Playbook

Live (not to be confused with Life!)

Secret Healer

And that is that! Thanks for reading, and be sure to check out Kerrie’s post tomorrow, followed by Morgan, Caroline, and then me again (I have thoughts and feelings about the Marvel shows!).

Much less Amazon for me

Back in the day, I wrote a lot of reviews for Amazon, and at certain points, I had a good rank to show for it. That was when it was fun: I read or watched something, then shared my thoughts on it. Some of my reviews were pretty long, but people appreciated my thoroughness. For some reason, I was invited to review for the Vine program, which meant that Amazon would send me things to review. While it was ridiculous to consider that a form of compensation, it certainly made it easier to try new things. I still think thoughtful, non-professional reviews are what gave Amazon an edge: while there were always abuses, for the most part, it was just people giving their opinions.

But then it started not being fun, and then it started getting ridiculous. Some vendors started paying for reviews, Amazon started making it progressively more difficult to leave a review, then started getting rid of some altogether. And that would be okay if Amazon hadn't been so indiscriminate, as they were with things like, for example, where an author put their table of contents. I won't bore you if you're not an author selling on Amazon, but there's a whole universe of ways in which some unscrupulous authors gamed Amazon's system and then equally egregious ways Amazon addressed it. Everyone who's worried about AI taking over the world needs to examine Amazon's dysfunctional algorithms, and then after that read David Gaughran's blog to discover how working with Amazon can feel like a bizarre nightmare.

I knew this and I stewed about it, thinking that my days on the system were numbered. When, finally, I realized that one of my reviews on someone else's book had been removed without any explanation, I'd had enough. Over one weekend this winter I spent hours removing every review on Amazon that I could. You'll still find four reviews from over a decade ago, but that's about 700 less than what was there before. Had I been simply deleting the content, it wouldn't have taken that long, but I wanted to preserve the reviews for many of the books. The majority of them went onto my Boston Public Library account, but a handful went onto Goodreads. Absolutely worth the trouble.

Can someone tell me what that arrow is pointing to?

I knew it was only a matter of time before Amazon started deleting reviews that had been left on my products, so I was only a little disappointed to find that I had lost reviews from two different people this weekend. I'm waiting for more, and frankly, I'm waiting to be delisted from them altogether. No, I haven't done anything to merit that, but neither have a lot of people who have suffered the same fate.

Please allow me to insert the perfunctory "of course I'm grateful to Amazon for opening up the market so indies could self-publish" and "I know Amazon is a private business and they can change their terms and conditions any time they want" yada yada yada. Sure, all of that. But it's also gotten ridiculous. The value they brought was that they eliminated the need for many of the "gatekeepers". And that's great, but at least you knew which rules those parties operated under. It seems they've replaced the old guard with reactive caprice. Sorry, I can't bring myself to say thank you anymore.

I have no idea what the alternative is, but for now, I hope everyone expands their universe beyond Amazon. Aside from your local bookstores (yeah, I know, a lot of them have closed), there's Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, Apple, and even Etsy. I know, many of those sites are not perfect, but the point isn't to replace Amazon with something else but to take advantage of all the options in the marketplace. Who knows if that will force Amazon to be better, but I know that nothing will if everything stays the same.

My month of reading dangerously

I did it--I kept my resolution for the month of January and avoided the television as well as internet- and radio news. I also wrote an average of at least 500 words a day, and the total was something like 17,000. Honestly, given all the reading I did, this was the easy part.

Here's what my completed reading list for the month:

Orientalism by Edward Said This book was, in so many ways, everything. About 350 pages long, but the longest 350 pages I have read in years. I will call Said's writing style "erudite", but I'm glad I made it through. What you need to know: "the Orient" is a stand in for "the Other", and the history of what we believe and tell ourselves about others is not pretty. The fact that some of what he wrote about 40 years ago is still pertinent today is just disturbing.

The Road Not Taken by Max Boot At 600+ pages, I had thought this was my going to be the most challenging tome on my list, but no. Boot is an excellent author of military histories. This wasn't simply a biography of the controversial Edward Lansdale or an exploration of the events leading up to American escalation in Vietnam; this work helps readers not only understand counterinsurgency ("COIN") but also why it's more important than how many troops or materiel we throw at any one place.

Japan in Asia by Akihiko Tanaka I consider myself well-versed in modern Northeast Asia, but I still learned a lot from this history of Japanese foreign policy in Post-Cold War Asia. My reaction to breathless news about North Korean nuclear threats and Chinese trade policy is a yawn, but I admit to being easily scandalized by the hardliners in Japan and Abe's provocative and at times unhelpful statements. Reading this gives a more accurate picture of internal Japanese politics, and not least because the full statements are reported, not the cherry-picked soundbites. Ah, books!

No Logo by Naomi Klein This is almost twenty years old, but if anything the interconnected problems with branding, production, labor, and culture have gotten more pernicious, not less. And while everything she writes about Nike, McDonald's, Shell, and their superbrand cohort is horrifying, the worst part is when she explains how these trends played out in the Bush and Obama presidencies (and yes, it's only gotten worse under our current administration). In other news, this book might have something to do with my borrowing a lot of books on sewing and knitting.

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden I couldn't put this down and finished it a day. While this isn't quite as perfect as Naomi Novik's Uprooted, Arden described a world I didn't want to leave. I am anxiously waiting to get my hands on the next books in her trilogy.

Bohemian Gospel by Dana Carpenter Hmm...this started out well. In fact, the first half was fantastic. But after that point it took a turn I didn't think worked, and from there on it got weirder. That could be forgiven if the ending wasn't completely out of left field. I have, sadly, no desire to read the sequel.

City of Lies by Victoria Thompson The story about a con woman in DC and New York had potential, but the writing style was a little more jocular than I thought it should be. And why this was in the Mystery section, I have no idea.

Uniform Justice, Death and Justice, Dressed for Death, and Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon I am unapologetic about the fact that I have developed an obsession with this mystery series set in Venice and featuring the earnest-in-spite-of-himself Commissario Brunetti. The usual satisfaction readers usually feel when they get to the end of a mystery is a luxury you aren't granted when you're visiting a world where justice, answers, and the law almost never work together. And in spite of the darkness, I can't put this down, but I'll admit the comic relief provided by Brunetti's boss Vice Questore Patta and the resourceful secretary Signorina Elettra Zorzi helped.

The first week or so of January was hard, and it didn't get easier until I loaded up on fiction. Read into that (no pun intended) what you will. After that, though, I didn't miss television or the sounds of talk radio (a discovery I made: I really like classical ballet scores, but I can't get into opera). I'm actually dreading watching some of the shows my husband has been stockpiling (although I can't wait for the new Jessica Jones season).

In other news, after discovering that Amazon removed 200 or so of my reviews without saying anything, I am in the process of removing all of my reviews from Amazon as well. Most are at my local library website, but a about twenty indie titles which aren't available through my library will be moved to Goodreads. This isn't just a fit of pique; I've been contemplating this for about six or seven years. If I thought that doing so was hurting anyone, I wouldn't do it. However, 1) the value of reviews (on Amazon, at least) has noticeably diminished in the last year, and 2) since I have no idea what their criteria was for removing my other reviews in the first place, I can't say that they would have been "safe" there anyway. Bittersweet going through sixteen or seventeen years of my own reviews and deciding what to keep, but as I've gotten older, I'm less in love with my own words and happy to let some of them go.

How was your January? And what have you been reading?

So maybe this is why you need to diversify your distribution chain?

As you may recall, I agonized last year over whether I should keep all of my books in Kindle Select, which meant exclusivity on Amazon, or whether I should diversify and make them available to Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo and all of the other channels. While KDP Select did offer what amounts to highly visible free advertising, the program simply wasn't offering the same return that it had even the year before, and there was no way to know how it was going to change. Fine- things change- but the more invested I was in it as my only platform, the more vulnerable I'd be to those changes.

Shorter: Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Which is why this piece in the New York Times is making me scratch my head. Let me be clear: I understand that as an indie author I have a lot more freedom than most traditionally published authors. If I want to change prices, all I have to do is go to my author dashboards on KDP or Smashwords. Also, if I really wanted to, I could sell my books directly on my website, in addition to or instead of selling them through other vendors. Authors who are published through publishing houses generally can't make those decisions on their own.

But...if I had a huge fan-base, I'd put information on my website, Facebook Page and Twitter account as to where else my fans can purchase my books if I didn't feel Amazon was doing a good job for me. I would also create a mailing list if I hadn't already and send out notices with the same information. And I would encourage people to shop for my physical title at their local Barnes & Noble or indie bookstore. I would also jump all over Hachette and demand that they make their website a place where readers can directly buy my titles. (What, that sounds futile? Less so than making demands of Amazon.)

This is not a static industry, and everyone has to constantly adapt. It stinks when we'd rather be doing things like writing, but that's the way it is. If, indeed, Amazon is doing corrupt things (it's one thing to lose your spot on a list due to an algorithm, it's another to lose it because someone took you off of it) then that highlights that we need to be less vulnerable to them. Yes, by all means, report this to whichever regulating bodies are appropriate, but in the meantime work every other angle and advantage you have.

Algorithms, preferences, word of mouth- oh my!

Okay folks- I will let you in on a little secret: many marketing efforts we indie writers employ are all about getting Amazon to highlight us, however briefly, on one of their landing pages so that you, the reader, will say, "hey, catchy cover/title/author's name...let me go check out that blurb...ooh, interesting...hey, not a bad price [especially if we're running a sale]...oh look, the reviews are pretty good...I am here, so why not?"

I'm going to spare you everything that (we think) goes into inducing you to have that conversation with yourself, but it is all contingent on the magical algorithms that power Amazon. It is, for the most part, a complete crapshoot, because we don't really know how Amazon makes its determinations as to what you like. We know that the more you sell, the more you sell, and we have seen some evidence that more reviews get you more visibility than those with fewer reviews (maybe!). And if we can get even eyeballs on our title after someone has looked at something else, that can give us a little bump too.

But maybe the algorithm is a crapshoot too.

As I've mentioned before, I've reviewed on Amazon for over a decade. I've also been known to create Wishlists and Lists for Listmania. Sometimes, I get great suggestions from my purchases, because I've rated something or because I've added something to a Wishlist. Because Amazon knows I like Thelonious Monk (you know, more than the average person with functional ears), they suggested a slew of other Jazz Artists and titles, many of which sat on my Wishlist for years until I recently added them to my Spotify list. And you know what? I found some great titles I wouldn't have found otherwise, certainly not through something like Spotify's Discover engine.

I've also come across a number of resources on cooking and fitness that I wouldn't have found without them. Also, because my sons love the Amulet series, I added the latest title to my Wishlist, and now I have a number of recommendations for age-appropriate graphic novels. Thanks, Amazon- you do a good job in some things.

However, I recently reviewed a Korean movie that was over a decade old. Sort of kind of obscure, but not unheard of- at least ten other people had reviewed it as well. Strangely, I did not see one suggestion when I went through the Recommended For You list that Amazon generates. Perhaps this is due to the fact that they, despite being an international juggernaut, really don't do well with things that don't "speak" to an American or Western audience? (I tell you, that Pankaj Ghemawat is onto something!)

Maybe...but then how do we explain Amazon's lack of recommendations to me for anything related to mythology? You think I talk about it a lot here? You should see how many items I've reviewed on their site. I would LOVE to get recommendations for more books on the topic, especially if it's anything along the lines of George O'Connor's awesome Olympians series. But, on Amazon, utter silence.

(Let's not even talk about how it hasn't had any foreign policy recommendations worth noting since I randomly picked up Arab Spring Dreams and Invisible Armies- or got and loved Lawrence in Arabia through their Vine program. I've got Twitter to scratch that itch. Right...)

Unfortunately, I'm picky: just because I liked one thing an author wrote doesn't mean I'll like everything. The last author I binged on was Agatha Christie- and even she got on my nerves after a while with some references that struck me as simply racist in the 21st century. (And of course I'm only talking about the Poirot series; I've never wanted to read Miss Marple.) So an algorithm like Amazon's can actually be useful to me, both as an author and as a reader, but it's not.

So how do I find things to read? The old-fashioned ways: word-of-mouth from like-minded friends...and browsing the library shelves. What are you going to do?

Excuse me, I'm going to do some research into the genealogies of Greek mythology now. (Are you listening, the internet?!)

Special is in the eye of the beholder

*Sigh*

Have you been following the Amazon-Hachette soap opera...I mean, contract negotiation? Did you catch the (incredibly elitist, condescending and slightly xenophobic) letter from Authors United in support of Hachette? Their argument that books are special snowflakes is taken down pretty nicely by Janet at Dear Author today.

Books are special- but not every book is special to every reader, and some books are special to none at all. As a writer, it's my job to make my story compelling, thought-provoking, lingering and all of the other things that might constitute make for "special". As an author, it's my job to convince you beforehand through whatever marketing strategies I can come up with that my book is, indeed, something you want to pick up. That's all on me, and that's as it should be. If I'm lucky enough to get a reader, and if one of those readers decides to write a review, the only thing they "owe" me is to be accurate when describing it (and you know, maybe not verbally abusive).

But that's it. And any writer who thinks otherwise is pushing the bounds of narcissism and entitlement.

Some of my thoughts on reviews

You may have heard about certain authors paying for reviews on Amazon.  I'm sorry- they paid for positive reviews on Amazon, because in the New Publishing World, authors live and die by their Amazon reviews.

I stopped reviewing on Amazon last year.  I discussed why here, but it comes down to the fact that even Amazon is gaming their own system.  I'll repeat what I said in that post: it has nothing to do with the people who have been reviewing on Amazon since before Amazon reviews were some kind of currency.  I haven't checked the Top Reviewer forums, but I know that in addition to a little head banging, there's got to be some serious laughter.  Because, well, algorithms aside, someone is paying someone for a review.  Lame.

Other people have talked about it from the author's point of view, and I'm not going to bother giving links to people who have argued in favor of it.  (But I am going to say, dude, if you really think getting a review copy of a book- to review- is compensation- for a review!- you need to go back to Logic 101.  And trust me, if I gave it a 1- or 2- star review, the book wasn't compensation.)  I want to talk about reviews from the Reviewer's point of view.

When I review I try to look at it from the reader's point of view.  What do I want when I read a review?  At the very least, a review that explained itself.  I don't want to see an extended summary of the plot, and I don't want to see someone gush, spew or otherwise explode with emotion.  You can tell me you cried, laughed or wanted to throw the book against the wall, but if you can't give me any details that help me understand why, I don't care.  Everyone is entitled to opinions and anyone is free to put them on a website or blog as a review, but if you can't explain why you felt that way, you're not adding much to the discussion.

That, in essence, is what I try to do.

In case you were wondering, no one ever paid me ever for a review I left on Amazon about anything.  (Okay, my kids really liked one of the toys I reviewed- but I left a four-star review for that because it was so difficult to use and required a lot of adult supervision.)  I was honest there and am honest here.  More importantly, I explained myself.  I can't prove anything, but I think that's why my reviews were well-received.

Someone is probably thinking that my criteria may be reasonable for a single review- or even reviewer- but what if you're seeing literally hundreds of short "I hated it" or "It's the best thing since canned beer"?  Maybe they're just two sentence reviews, but if hundreds of people agree, isn't that worth something?  To which I will say please see the links above.  I can only guess, but in my estimation, authors- and publishers?- are counting on that presumption when they pay for people to leave positive reviews... of something they've never read.

This whole review business is an imperfect thing.  That's exactly what you'd expect from a system that's dependent on opinion, and stars don't really change that.  Imperfect is one thing, but dishonest is another.  If I'm paying someone to not only to give an opinion but to express a specific one, that's not a review, that's a scam.  Fortunately, this is one of the easier scams to suss out.