Has this ever happened to you? You are asked to read and
review a book written by a friend or acquaintance or relative. When you finish, you think, “Oh, no.
What will I write about this book? I barely got through it. And my friend/acquaintance/relative
wrote it.”
It can feel uncomfortable giving a negative review even to a
stranger. But when it’s someone you know, it is even harder. You know the
author worked hard and thinks it good enough to share with the world. But you
know better. Maybe the plot is too thin or too thick. Maybe the dialogue is
stilted or inappropriate. Perhaps you didn’t care about the characters you were
supposed to relate to.
But all authors need to seek honest reviews of their work.
And there are ways to phrase your review criticisms that make it easier to hear
so authors can use the suggestions to improve future works. Whether they know
it or not, authors are seeking usable, honest feedback.
Hard as it might be to hear, ultimately we improve more from
well-crafted negative comments than from the rosy, glowing, “this book is
perfect” reviews. The exception to that is if the “perfect” book reviews
explain why it’s perfect. We want to repeat what we do well in addition to
fixing our flaws.
And the number of reviews we get counts as well as the
average rating for the book. There are big time, legitimate reviewing sites
that won’t consider reviewing a book until it has a certain number of reviews
with a certain minimum average rating. Getting reviewed by sites with tens of
thousands of readers is huge for authors. That’s one reason we seek out reviews
as soon as a book is published.
Here is my list of the five things authors expect from
reviews:
1. If you accept a
book for review purposes, review it.
I can’t tell you how many books I “gifted” to people asking
only that they give an unbiased review in return. I am running about 50% for
follow-through. I wonder why they don’t review it. Did they hate it and don’t
want to hurt my feelings? Did they lose it? Did they flat out forget?
2. We don’t expect or
need long reviews, but we do like specifics.
A book review doesn’t need to and probably shouldn’t get
into too much detail about plot points. But, hey, if you’re going to give away
something, put SPOILER ALERT at the beginning of your review so others will be
warned.
That said, the review can be a short paragraph or few
sentences, but don’t be too general. Give specifics.
Instead of “great character interactions”, you might say “the relationship of
the hero and heroine was complicated by lack of communication”. That is a
specific that helps other readers. And it tells the author that part of the
story was effectively communicated.
3. Don’t diss the
book for the wrong reasons.
If the book didn’t arrive on time or the cover was damaged
in transit, contact the seller. The author has no control over such issues. We
get that you’re frustrated and want to vent, but a book review isn’t the place
to do that. The author can do nothing about it.
Likewise, don’t be so critical if the book didn’t meet your
expectations in certain ways. For
example, I use various pen names for branding purposes. I do not want someone
who likes my cozy culinary mysteries to pick up Streetwalker and start looking for the recipes. But if the book blurb
signals the type of book and you didn’t bother to read it, don’t take it out on
the book or author if it didn’t meet genre expectations.
That said, if the book didn’t meet your expectations because
you know cozy mysteries are supposed to keep violence to a minimum and “off-stage”
and this book had gory details like in police procedurals, then, yeah, take the
author to task for violating expectations. Or if you expected the main
characters to be people you can care about (per cozy mystery expectations), and
everybody is a jerk, then the author violated expectations and should be called
out.
4. Give a rating
number that reflects your comments.
I admit to being puzzled by the three-star reviews that only
say positive things. Okay. I get it that you reserve five stars for a very few
books. But why isn’t it a four-star book? What do I need to do to bump it up to
the next level? When you don’t give me specifics (going back to #2), I can’t
always figure out how to move my writing up to a level you’d enjoy more.
5. Help the author of
a book you liked by dealing with trolls and inappropriate or inaccurate
reviews.
We all get them. The holier-than-thou folks who never met a
book they liked. Or, sadly, there are authors who trash other authors’ books to
cut down the competition. Or there are people who just didn’t get the book and
write scathing but inaccurate reviews.
Please consider responding to those reviews in defense of
the book. We like it when dialogue ensues among our readers and people chime in
on the topic. As people argue for and against the book, we learn a lot about
what is important to our readers and about how well we delineated our premise.
So there you have it. Authors want to hear from you. They want
to know what kinds of books resonate with you. They want to get better. Help
them do that.
Check out these tips about how authors can respond to book reviews.
