Publicity and Promotion Issues with Free Books

moderntimes · Post by **moderntimes** » 21 Sep 2015, 17:55

Highly unlikely that the reviewer works full time for the paper or has an office. Even 20 years ago when I was actively writing book reviews for a major daily, I emailed my reviews to my features editor. And was paid the vast sum of $25.

I'm pretty sure that's the arrangement in the paper where you submitted.

As bookowlie and I said, modern newspapers are divided into 3 main groups: 1) actual news, mostly local and statewide -- national news is usually taken from AP or UPI. 2) sports which is a fiefdom and runs by its own, and both these groups have regular offices in the paper's HQ. Then there's the "features" section -- Sunday supplement, articles on people around town, restaurant reviews, movie and book reviews, and so on. Most of these are written by non-office staff and many are "stringers" -- piecework where you're paid per the article, as I was.

So don't be to harsh on this reviewer, Zelda. Your book is long and the reviewer was probably honest that she's swamped. In my current reviewing for a mystery website, I'll often have 10 or 15 full length mystery novels sitting on my table to review PER MONTH. Give her some slack and I think you'll have a very nice review coming up.

And keep us posted and let us know when the review is printed. I've saved all of mine and they're precious to keep, even the bad ones, ha ha.

My senior editor just emailed me today, told me that my 1st novel's been proofread and vetted and she'll soon be sending me the "Track Changes" MS-Word file for me to review. This will be the penultimate review, last change will be the final galley proofs, so I'll also be very busy "reviewing" my own novel and what the editor thinks need to be changed.

LauraMcQuade · Post by **LauraMcQuade** » 23 Sep 2015, 15:00

The question that comes to me in this discussion is: How is a reviewer supposed to respond when they just didn't like the book? It's navigating difficult waters on this side, because I prefer to simply not review a book if I can't find anything nice to say about it. In my agreements with publishers, that's out of the question - the agreement is that I get a book and in return I post a review. But even that isn't as difficult to navigate as having to tell an author directly that you didn't find anything of merit in the work they asked you to look over. In my experience, authors can be so very touchy (and why not? That book's a piece of you!), and it makes it next to impossible to talk to them if you're not singing their praises.

Please don't misunderstand, I'm not making any comments about a book I haven't even seen! The question comes to mind because I recently had the unfortunate duty of reviewing a book for a publisher and I absolutely loathed the book start to finish - I can't imagine what I'd do if I was expected to communicate with the author directly about it!

zeldas_lullaby · Post by **zeldas_lullaby** » 23 Sep 2015, 15:42

Yee-ouch. Interesting question.

I've seen on a lot of review sites where the reviewers promise something like this: If your review is poor, we'll give you the option of whether to publish it or hide it. Of course, what you're talking about is being in direct contact yourself with the author. That would be tough. It reminds me of asking someone out and getting rejected (or being asked out and wanting to reject).

On the other hand, I guess that's why we have middlemen. But you raise the interesting point that in this case, there's no one between me and the local book critic. Food for thought.

rssllue · Post by **rssllue** » 23 Sep 2015, 15:53

Mmm. That makes me think of food.

Maybe I should become a food editor and then I can taste test recipes for free!

zeldas_lullaby · Post by **zeldas_lullaby** » 23 Sep 2015, 15:57

HA HA! I'm sure it's not remotely so glamorous as all that. You probably have to cook the recipes yourself and then comment on them. But here you go...

rssllue · Post by **rssllue** » 23 Sep 2015, 16:06

I can cook, so no problem there.

But starting with spam is going to be tough. Yikes!

zeldas_lullaby · Post by **zeldas_lullaby** » 23 Sep 2015, 16:21

Yikes!

moderntimes · Post by **moderntimes** » 23 Sep 2015, 16:25

Laura you bring up a good point -- what if the book you're reviewing is really bad?

First of all, none of the professional sites or newspapers I've ever reviewed for have ever required that I review a book -- I always had the option to refuse and I think that most other reviewers also have that choice.

A couple years ago I received a mystery book (I review for a mystery website) which was from page one, egregious and horrible toward women. It was brutal and predatory. Now my own novels have some graphic crime violence and sometimes that's done to female characters, true. But this book hammered women from the start and after I'd read 3 chapters I emailed my editor, told her no way. She said okay and that book was one of the very few books I've simply tossed in the trash. Because trash it was.

But what if a book is goofy-bad. Not an intentional farce, but the author tried to write an action thriller spy novel and blew it, created an accidental farce that was laughable? Well I just satirized the book in my review, poked gentle fun at the flaws, and made a "truths learned from reading this book" list. The readers of my review laughed at the review and even bought the book because they wanted some fun.

If a book is mostly good but has some flaws, I try to praise the good stuff and still point out the bad, with some comments that "this is just one reviewer's opinion" disclaimer. A pal of mine had written a superb first novel and I gave it a deserved top review which led us to become e-pals, he and I both Texans. His 2nd novel was also quite good but in the book, one of the Homicide cops was a black woman who spoke totally in the most stereotyped "ghetto-speak" Ebonics language. I dissed the book for this, saying that a seasoned cop who likely was college educated might joke among her peers by occasionally deliberately lapsing into "ghetto-speak" but she'd never do that all the time. I regretted this criticism but I played fair with my editor and stuck with my task as honestly as I could. I nevertheless praised the rest of the book because it was fine. So if you get a book with flaws, by all means point them out but try to be fair.

zeldas_lullaby · Post by **zeldas_lullaby** » 23 Sep 2015, 17:29

Hey, ModernTimes!

Yeah, you can't go wrong with tact. "This is just one reviewer's opinion." And constructive criticism. "I was distracted by the repeated grammatical issue involving its/it's." It's all academic to me, though; I'm not certain that I've ever reviewed anything for someone. No, wait; I've read a few books by friends, but they were really good.

If a book is really, really, really bad, though; as in seriously bad, then you have to wonder if you should just steer the person in the other direction. With me, for example, I've practiced piano for years, much of my life, but I can't play anything advanced. I struggle with a lot of intermediate stuff too, and I can't accompany singers. I should be encouraged to play for fun, but if someone were to tell me to try to make a career at it, they'd be seriously misguided.

The weird issue with writing is that people take it so much harder than I do about the piano thing. It's like what Laura said about how the book's a piece of you! That puts it pretty well. It's not like that with piano. People become so attached to wanting to be a writer, I think because it's a way to express whatever's in our minds. People also want to share their life stories, memoir-style. We live in an age where that's become human nature, combined with the ease of access to do so via the Internet. So as Laura pointed out, if you say, "Your writing stinks," then you've just crushed someone's ego. Not just the writer side of them, but the story side--the side of them that lived what they wrote.

Everyone's experienced something different in their life. I find it hard to believe that there are people out there whose lives are ordinary and uneventful and bland. Unfortunately, the human ego wants to share and be lauded, not just for writing well but for telling a story of human suffering in whatever form. But if you have not risen above your personal victimhood, then no one will want to read what you write. (OK, I've gone astray somehow, but bear with me.) I'm sick of all the memoirs being reviewed on here that read like, "Oh my life was bad, and this is how it was bad. The end." Give me some insight! Give me some realizations! Give me some plot twists! And give me good grammar! And tell me something unique and captivating!

OK, I apparently just gave a lecture. Anyway, I enjoy pondering the human ego.

moderntimes · Post by **moderntimes** » 23 Sep 2015, 18:52

Hey, zelda, nice points and a good "lecture" -- fine wit me.

I totally understand how some newbie writers get wrapped up in their books and yes they are part of the writer's soul. But hey, playing the piano is too. When I sang opera, I "became" that character and spoke (sung) as if I were that real person on stage, not me. That's critical in any stage work, acting of any type, and nowadays opera has a LOT of stagecraft and acting in it. In the old days, singers would just "plant and chant" which means they'd just stand in one place on stage and move around only if the were making an entrance or exit. Not today -- all the top opera singers have to also act onstage and they all take conventional acting lessons. It's required. And if you wanted to improve your piano to where you could perform, you'd take lessons too. I found I had a pretty decent amateur baritone voice but I wanted to get better and so I took professional weekly lessons for 2 years and developed into a fairly good semi-pro operatic baritone, and kept getting calls for singing at weddings and stuff for years afterward.

But anyway... a writer does empty a portion of the insides to the reader, of course. But that's part of ANY job, house painter or ditch digger or chemist or surgeon or writer or singer. And that's to be expected. If writers went into their job solely with mechanical craft but no "soul" the writing would be flat and lifeless. A writer MUST insert a portion of the spirit into the text.

What newbie writers need to do is learn this and get over the shyness. If they don't, writing "for yourself" is akin to masturbation. Fun at times but very self-centered. Better to not hide the light under a bushel. ALL writers face this initial shyness and they are, yes, sometimes intimidated by critics or worse, friends who are maybe jealous. What a writer has to do is learn from honest and well-structured criticism and get better.

I'm a fan of the Japanese author Yukio Mishima, whose life came unfortunately to a sharp end, I must say. Anyway, when he was a teen, he'd taken some of his poetry to a teacher who harshly criticized his writing, told him it was worthless and trivial. Mishima showed this to his mother. She advised him "Forget this. Hide that critical note and never show it to anyone else. Go ahead and keep writing. Soon you'll be famous and he'll still be a frustrated teacher."

l recommend newbie writers take that approach. If they receive good criticism, learn from it. If it's too harsh, ignore it. Keep plugging away and it can come to fruition. Not everyone who wants to be can become a writer, true. But you MUST persevere and not be dissuaded at the start. Eventually you'll either improve and start selling your stuff, or maybe, you'll come to the realization that you've not got it. But don't give up perfunctorily. Stay the course a long as is needed to find the truth, and find that truth on your own.

zeldas_lullaby · Post by **zeldas_lullaby** » 23 Sep 2015, 19:13

Great points, ModernTimes!

I took piano for years and years!! I'm excellent at reading music, I can spot an augmented chord (or a half-diminished chord, or a whole-tone scale) a mile away, but my brain function is chronically slow. I type 35 wpm, on a good minute (and I use proper fingering--little finger hits the p-key for example). There are some songs from my Titanic movie book that I had to practice for years before I could play them!

But yeah, anyway, about that. I guess a certain amount of talent has to exist, whether in writing or piano playing. With writing, I feel like I've gotten really good at it through consistent effort, starting when I was a teen and I wrote diary entries in narrative style, including dialogue from conversations I had. But with piano, I could practice all day and take lessons and it wouldn't get any better.

It's frustrating as all get-out, like hitting a wall.

It sounds like with your tenor voice, you had talent that you were able to develop there.

So play to your strengths, is what I always say. When I was younger, people over-encouraged my piano playing, I guess because they just figured I'd never be good at anything else. But my slow, methodical mind has found a strength in writing, because speed doesn't enter into it.

Jen3963 · Post by **Jen3963** » 23 Sep 2015, 19:38

The only time I gave a free book away is if they agree to do a review.

moderntimes · Post by **moderntimes** » 24 Sep 2015, 08:58

Well, some of my books went to friends or relatives as gifts, but yeah, most of the free books were sent to reviewers. But they are not duty-bound to review each book that's submitted. You just have to take that chance.

Zelda, I'm a baritone, not a tenor. Do you know why tenors can sing all those high notes? It's because of all that resonant open space between their ears.

btw, Opera is a definite Babe Magnet. I can guarantee that.