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.

Desert Star (The Desert Series) by Lisette Brodey (Giveaway, Excerpt, Interview, Review)

There *is* such a thing as bad publicity

I mentioned, in places too numerous to link to, that I originally went the "traditional" route and queried agents. Although I wanted to go indie for a while, I was cognizant of the benefits of traditional, most of which were in the areas of editorial and marketing services. One of the things that convinced me to finally take the plunge was that there is almost no marketing support these days unless you're already really big or unless, for whatever reason, your publishing house takes a shine to you. Because the category I write in doesn't command a lot of shelf space in bookstores (that would be New Adult Romance, FYI), I realized I would not be one of those authors who would get a lot of support, if I got picked up at all.

I am happy with my decision, but we indies are very aware of how much work we have to do to generate our own publicity. I love writing for other blogs, but I realize that those don't have the same reach as a print magazine or newspaper. I am not the only indie who fantasizes about having a big platform to shout from so I could convince people that they should buy my book.

It's just that I always figured if I did, I'd be giving you good reasons to buy from me, not telling you all of the reasons why someone who doesn't like my stuff is so deficient. In fact, if I had a really big platform, I wouldn't want to tell ANYONE about the people who didn't like me. So the actions of two authors last week leave me not only disgusted, but puzzled.

I am not going to write out the name of the first author in question, nor am I going to put her name in the tags. Here's a link to some of Dear Author's coverage of the story. I am not going to give this woman anymore publicity because what this author did falls under the definition of stalking. I don't mean online stalking- I mean real-life stalking. I don't understand why the blogger she stalked hasn't brought criminal charges against her, because I would. And how did this start? Because the author could not handle that this blogger and reviewer didn't like her book.

People are crazy; what else is new? But what has been making me blink for the last few days is that the Guardian, a respected news outlet, published the story the author told about her obviously criminal behavior. It also astounds me that her publishing company, Harper Teen, has said nothing in response to what their author did. Until they do, I can only assume that their silence is cover for their approval.

Slightly less disturbing is the tantrum author Margo Howard wrote for the New Republic. Her book was given to Amazon's Vine Program for early review. She seems to find the idea of pre-publication reviews in and of themselves offensive, never mind that most authors (traditional and indie) long for such pre-publicity. Apparently, the Vine Reviews she received were unflattering, and she in turns feels that these unprofessional reviewers are uneducated mouth-breathers who are only reviewing so they can get free stuff and don't understand that books are different from "pots and creams".

Ah, that again. As a long-time reviewer and a member of the Vine Program, I would like to point out that it is extremely difficult to review the product if we don't have it. And since we are being asked to review it, it just doesn't make sense to charge us for what we review. Hence, what we get is free.

I'd also like to add that I'd been reviewing on Amazon by choice for about six or seven years before I was selected to be in the Vine Program. I have a decent rank, but I wasn't in the Top 1000. To this day, I'm not entirely sure why I was tapped, but obviously Amazon felt I offered something that they wanted for their program. This would, therefore, be the case with all of the other reviewers in the program. In other words: we were asked.

I'm an author; I get how much a bad review can sting. But if we're serious about not just writing but publishing our work, I fail to understand why we would not act like professionals and not narcissists. I also don't understand why the Guardian and the New Republic want to perpetuate the idea that reviews, which are really opinions, and perhaps books in general should only be available to those who are qualified.

Here is my list of qualifications: literacy. Yep- done. All those who qualify are invited to read books and share their opinions.

Review Tour for the New Pioneers, now booking on Juniper Grove Book Solutions!

You know what writers love? Sales! You know what else they love? Reviews (and hopefully positive ones).

The good people at Juniper Grove Book Solutions are helping me get the word out to people about my books. Between November 24th and December 19th, I'm on virtual tour with the heroines of the New Pioneers. While there's an incentive for people to review- a good one!- I'm also going to be available for guest posts.

Interested? Please sign up here.

Hope to see you there!

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.