On Reviews

Jake the Cat ignoring me this morning because I was not properly attentive!

I don't review. I mention books from time to time, especially in my various columns and posts art USA Today Happily Ever After and Amazing Stories Magazine (Archive of  USAT and AM posts), and I think it's a fairly safe assumption that if I take the time to interview an author or mention the book, I enjoyed it.

I don't read reviews either, unless a reader tweets me or notifies me they've written one they want me to see. If someone calls a review to my attention, then I go look at it. I very much appreciate the time that readers and book bloggers put into writing reviews, to help other readers decide if the books are something they'll enjoy or not! And I know I need reviews to help Amazon in its algorithmic ponderings of the book in question.

I just can't read them.

I learned this lesson about myself in the early, wild days of eBay when feedback on buyers and sellers wasn't capsulized in nice anonymous stars about price, timeliness, communications and etc. In the old OLD days, people could and did write some outrageous things, much like a one star book review from a troll (not just an unhappy reader who has good reasons for why the book disappointed them - that can certainly happen even with the best book). We didn't get many bad reviews because we were highly conscientious sellers but every once in a while the customer would be unhappy. And wow, those words would wound me every time. I was doing my best, I was a widowed mother of two with a day job, trying to make the mortgage payment, didn't they realize they were taking food from my children's mouths if they left bad feedback....yup. I took it all onboard and I'd argue, in passionate e mails, to get the feedback removed or softened, or make the buyer happy. Good thing I learned NOT to do this on eBay so I'd be prepared for being an author LOL!

I finally made my daughters read all our Seller feedback first and only tell me if I had a specific thing I needed to know. Did the item arrive broken  and a refund really was needed? Fine. I'd deal with it.

So that's my tale, folks.

In a non-review, I read an ARC of  Jeffe's next release The Pages of the Mind (Uncharted Realms) and could not put it down. I LOVED it. Interview will be forthcoming when the book  comes out in June.