And Now A Word From A Guest Blogger

 (Tap, tap, tap) Is this thing on? Testing one, two, three.

Hi, my name is Robin and I would like to get out my soapbox for a minute and talk to you about reviews. That’s right, reviews. Those reader comments that authors have a love/hate relationship with.

As a reviewer for a blog, I take reviewing very seriously. Do I get paid for it? Of course not. In a perfect world, I could make a living doing it but no such luck at this time. What qualifies me to be a reviewer? First of all, I am a romance novel addict. I have been reading romances since my teens, which if you do the math, comes to more than 35 years. As a fan, I have read a lot of books and have a pretty good handle on what works and what doesn’t. I also have never had much of a problem sharing my opinion whether you’ve asked for it or not.

But I do have other qualifications. I graduated from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Telecommunication with a Bachelor’s in Journalism. Sounds fancy, right? What that means is I know how to write and I take my writing very seriously. I even specialized in Public Relations so I have written more press releases and articles for newspapers than I would like to admit to.

So when the opportunity came about to write reviews for a blog, I jumped at the chance to combine my education with my passion. I went into reviewing a bit naïve. I thought that others had the same attitude to reviews that I did – professional, thoughtful and respectful. Wow did I get my eyes opened the hard way. I started to read other reviews and was shocked at many of them. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of reviewers that write quality, honest reviews that I admire. But it seems there are more that don’t.

I’ve seen reviews saying that they didn’t like a book because there was too much graphic sex. Gee, that would be why the book came with a disclaimer that there is a lot of graphic sex in it. I’ve seen reviews that say an author should find another career. Excuse me? Maybe that reviewer should find a different career. I’ve seen reviews that use profanity. I don’t understand. Can’t you get your point across without using profanity? After all, authors take their work seriously so we should take our reviews seriously.

Then I discovered that a lot of authors don’t read the reviews because of the mean and nasty things said. While I ultimately write my reviews for readers, I do want authors to read them because either I want them to know that they are doing a fantastic job and they should keep it up or because I have offered some profound advice (or at least profound to me) such as more dialogue or the plot was too convoluted to easily follow.

 I give a lot of thought and time to writing reviews so that they are clear and concise. I pride myself on writing professional, respectful, considerate reviews. In fact, if I have to give only one or two stars to a book, I will give even more thought and time to that review so that I can ensure it is never cruel or heartless. For an example, I had to give a book only two stars. This is what I wrote:

“My hat is off to the author because at least her writing pulled me in enough to have some emotions about this book. I certainly didn’t walk away feeling apathetic which would be even worse than disliking a book. I appreciate her efforts in trying to create a hero who could redeem himself, it was just too little too late for me. I still want to read more by this author. Hopefully the next in the series will feature more sympathetic characters.”

See, I was completely honest but still outlined what didn’t work while being respectful. It can be done folks. Another thing that many reviewers do is give spoilers in their reviews. Come on, seriously? That’s just crap. I have a simple rule in my reviews. If a plot point is not mentioned in the synopsis of the book then it won’t go in my review. The fact that there is a happy ending is not a spoiler because I think we expect that in a romance novel. But the fact that the hero is blind may be a spoiler. Just avoid spoilers in your reviews. It’s that simple.

Sometimes I want to smack other reviewers because of their mean and heartless comments. It frustrates me that they are giving reviewers like me a bad name. But there is a way to combat them and so this is where I challenge you to help out.

First of all, read reviews. It’s important so that you know which ones are good and which ones are bad. If you are on Goodreads, then start following the reviewers who write quality reviews. If you’re on Amazon, mark a review as helpful so that it ups our reviewer ranking. Mark the bad reviews as unhelpful. This will hopefully encourage the good reviewers to keep writing and tell the bad reviewers we don’t like what they are doing.

If you are an author, help out the good reviewers by promoting our reviews/blogs on your websites when we review your books. Get the word out about which blogs offer high quality reviews. And most importantly, don’t lump us in with those crappy reviewers.

If you can identify the bad reviewers from the professional ones, then you know which reviews to avoid and which ones to read. And authors please don’t be afraid to read reviews – even those that don’t give you four or five stars. You never know when we might give you some great advice or motivate you when you’re feeling down.

So that’s my sermon. Thank you for allowing me to get this off my chest. I feel much better. Now I will get down off my soapbox now and return to reading and reviewing.  Have a great day!

Robin Matloff Seitz