A frustrating discussion

[mmegaera]

http://dearauthor.com/features/letters-of-opinion/where-has-the-fun-gone/

Dear Author is one of my favored places for finding new-to-me good reads.  They write interesting opinion pieces, too, and the above is one of those.

And I just want to say — while of course I appreciate positive reviews, I appreciate honesty in reviewing even more.  So, just in case  anyone out there didn’t realize it, I will not react badly to a negative review.  At least not to anyone but the cats.

Mirrored from Repeating History.

Comments

[dfledermaus]

Hah, thanks for the link, that sucked down a couple hours of my morning.

Reviews are for other readers, and if you stop being honest, they lose their value. A two or three star review, thoughtfully done, does not necessarily prejudice me against a book. I tend to ignore gushing four and five star reviews unless there are some really convincing reasons given.

As someone who has no ambitions of writing professionally but is an avid reader, I think a public statement like this (and abiding by it of course) is the best thing any author can do to combat the trends they are complaining about. It's funny they mention Kirkus Reviews. Those are the only professional reviews I ever took seriously, and a cover blurb from them carried great weight with me. If they said it was a great book, it was. Not always to my taste, but I don't remember every disagreeing with the quality.

[mmegaera]

Kirkus is famous (in certain circles, anyway) for not pulling their punches. I can only dream of getting one of my books reviewed by them, though.