Should Authors Respond to Reviews of Their Books

Quite randomly, I stumbled onto a web of posts and tweets detailing an incident of an author commenting on a review of one of their books, being taken to task for it, and then spending what I see as way too much time further entangling themselves in the resulting kerfluffle.  I won’t name this author, because I’m not posting clickbait.  I read both sides of the argument, and while I sided mostly with the reviewer whose space was invaded, I do think some of the nuance on both sides that was over-shadowed by this author’s bad behavior offers valuable insight into both review and more general netiquette.

First, I want to establish some premises:

1. Posting to the internet is a public act.  That’s true if your post is public rather than on a private blog or Twitter account, say.  But it ignores the complexities of human social interaction.  If I’m having a chat with my friends at IHOP (Insert your franchise pseudo-diner of choice), we’re in public.  So it’s a public act.  But not quite!  If some random patron three tables down were to start commenting on our nastily engaging discussion of who should fuck who in the latest, greatest reverse harem anime, we would probably consider that quite rude.  In fact, we have lots of terms for that sort of thing: butting in, nosy, etc.  I think a valid analogy could be made for the internet.  Sure my Tweet stream is public, but as a nobody with no claim to fame or blue checkmark, it’d be quite a shock for the POTUS to retweet some comment of mine about the economy or the failings of the folks in Washington.  The line can be a bit blurrier if I run a popular but niche politics blog, or if I have a regional news show on the local Fox affiliate.  But just because you can read what I wrote doesn’t mean I expect, much less desire, a response from you.
2. My blog/website is my (semi-)private space.  Yours is yours.  I own the platform, I decide the rules.  You can write whatever you want on your blog.  Your right to write whatever you want on mine is much less clear-cut.
3. You have institutional authority over your own work.  While most authors may not feel like they have much power in the publishing world, as the “creator”, they have enormous implied power in the world of fandom and discussion of their own specific work, or maybe even someone else’s, if they’re well-known friends of Author X, say.  If I criticize the War in Vietnam or Iraq, and a four-star general comes knocking on my door the next day, you better fucking believe I’m gonna be uncomfortable.  An author may not have a battalion of tanks at their disposal, but they sure as hell have presence, possibly very intimidating presence if they are well-known in the industry or for throwing their weight around in fandom.

Given these basic premises which I hope I have elaborated on specifically enough, I have some conclusions about what I would consider good standard netiquette.  I won’t say “proper” because I have no authority in this area, nor does anyone, really, to back up such a wording.  But a “reasonable standard of” at least I can make logical arguments for.

1. Say what you want on your own platform.  And you can even respond to what other people have said, especially if you are not an asshole and don’t name names of people who are not egregious offenders of social norms or who haven’t made ad hominem attacks.
2. Respect people’s bubbles.  We have a concept of how close to stand to someone we’re in a discussion with in real life, for example, that can be a good metaphor for on what platforms we choose to respond.  Especially as regards critique, since responding to negative comments about oneself is something we know from past experience can be fraught with dangerous possibilities.  I would posit that a person’s private blog is reasonably considered part of their personal space.  A column on a widely-read news site might be considered more public,but then  you have to weigh the consideration of news of your bad behavior being far more public and spreading much faster.You should not enter it without a reasonable expectation of a good reception.  If there is a power imbalance between you and the individual whose space you wish to enter, we have rules for that.  real-world analogies.  For example, before you enter someone’s house you knock or ring the doorbell.  A nice email to the specified public contact email address asking if they would mind if you weighed in is a fairly innocuous way to open communications, and can save face on both sides by avoiding exposing one or the other to the possible embarrassment of being refused or the stress of refusing a local celebrity with no clear bad intentions.
3. Assume permission is required unless otherwise explicitly  stated.  This one gets its own bullet point, because I think it’s the easiest way to avoid the most trouble.  A public pool you might enter without announcing your presence.  Would you walk into a stranger’s house without knocking? One would hope not.
4. Question your reasons for engaging.  Nobody likes to be  called sexist.  Or racist.  Or shitty at doing their research.  Or bad at writing.  But reactionary  defenses against what could be construed as such an assertion do not in my mind justify an author wading into a fan discussion.  Or a reader discussion, if one considers “fan” as having too much baggage.  An incorrect narrative fact is likely  to be swiftly corrected by other readers or fans.  Libel or slander is probably best dealt with legally.  A reviewer is not your editor.  You should probably not be quizzing them for advice on how to improve your writing, or story-telling, or world-building.  Thanking a reviewer for a nice review might be best undertaken as a link on your own blog.  They’ll see the pingback, and can choose to engage or not.  At best, one might pop in to provide a link to their own blog where they provide answers  to questions raised in the post in question or a general discussion of the book they may wish to share with those who read the review.  But again, such a link would probably be best following a question on whether any engagement by the author might be appreciated.

Overall, I think I’ve suggested a good protocol for an author tojoin in fan or reader discussions without causing consternation or full on flame wars, and at a cost barely more than a couple minutes to shoot an email.

 

Fool’s Assassin by Robin Hobb

You can read my review of Robin Hobb’s new Fitz/Farseer novel over on Notes from the Dark Net.

 

Spoliers:  It could have been better.

 

Now with Book Reviews! Sort of…

A friend of mine, Nick Morgan, has started a book review blog.  It’s mostly just for fun.  But he’s invited me to do the speculative fiction reviews, and I’m really looking forward to it.  I’ve always wanted to give book reviewing a try.  Also guest-blogging will be a mutual friend of ours Marisa Greene.

I may or may not be cross-posting the reviews to the Chimney.  I haven’t decided yet whether that would dilute the focus of this blog to much.  If I don’t cross-post, I probably will link to them on Twitter and at the bottom of whatever post I happen to be writing for the Chimney that week.

 

Keep an eye on Notes from The Dark Net for those reviews.

 

Reader Interpretation and Authorial Intent 2: The Difference Between Good Books and Books You Like

It’s becoming less of a strange concept these days: Just because you like a book, it doesn’t mean it’s good; just because you hate a book, it doesn’t mean it’s bad.  People often talk about this concept under the guise of “guilty pleasures”.

That’s the reader interpretation side of the issue.  On the authorial intent side, we have goals vs. execution.  An author might have sophisticated thematic goals, deep understanding of their characters, or brilliant and edge-of-your-seat plotting ability.  But that doesn’t mean they can put all of it on the page so the reader can see it.  I’ve heard many writers discuss the goals of their book, their plans for the characters, etc.  And quite often I’m dying to read that book.  But when I finally get my hands on a draft, or even a published book, it’s awful, or I hate where they went with it, or both.  Casual readers might be more familiar with this issue from reading back cover blurbs.  They’re written to sell the book, often by someone who is not the author, and they make it sound like the most fascinating book in the world.  But then you read it and it’s trite, or boring, or predictable.

In order to visualize this, think of a three-dimensional graph using Cartesian coordinates: x, y, z.  x is the goals of the author.  Are they unique?  Interesting?  Well-constructed?  Then they get a high x-value.  Look at the execution.  Is it elegant?  Is it good?  Does it get across what the author wanted to get across?  High y-value.  Finally, and this is arguable, but the most important issue to some people: Did you like the book?  Were the characters interesting?  Did the plot twist blow your mind?  Did everyone get what they deserved–or not?  High z-value.

To give you a better idea of how this graph works, high scores on all three axes mean the point on the graph representing a given book is in the back right corner.  The further away on the y-axis, which should pierce your belly-button, the better the craft behind the book.  The farther to the right on the x-axis, the loftier the goals of the story.  Finally, the higher up on the z-axis, which should be running parallel to your spine, the more you enjoyed the story.

As an example of a book to be plotted, let’s take The Scarlet Letter.  This was a brilliantly crafted book, with lofty thematic goals.  And I sort of liked it.  So it would sit somewhere to the bottom of my sternum, well past my right middle finger-tip, about five feet in front of me.

Nova Ren Suma’s Imaginary Girls, which was a fantastic example of magical realism, had lovely prose and interesting characters, and which I thoroughly enjoyed, would be fairly close to the upper right, back corner of my book box.

And then there are the tons of mediocre books that I might not read again, but don’t regret reading the first time.  And then we have Haruki Murakami, who is no doubt a great author, but whose penile adventures I have exactly zero interest in.  If we stuck the z-axis right down through the top of my head, he’d be about at knee-level and to the northeast of me.

 

I think “guilty pleasure” does a decent job of describing the phenomenon of knowing something is not particularly good and still liking it.  Kind of like McDonald’s.  I love McDonald’s even though I know it’s horribly unhealthy, and try not to think about the process of making it while I’m eating–or ever.

More bro-type folks then I might find Natty Light to be a better metaphor.  It’s an atrocious beer, tastes like watered-down camel-piss, but at least it gets you drunk.

And now I’m going to go feel ashamed of myself for suggesting that anyone compare natty light to literature.  Even Twilight-level literature.

ETA: If I were a good writer, I probably would have opened with that Twi-light/Natty-light line…

(This is not hating on Twilight.  I don’t like it, and it’s horribly written.  But plenty of people I know have said it’s their guilty pleasure.  Other readers may feel differently.)

 

Reader Interpretation and Authorial Intent: A Review of Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma

Before we get going, I should explain that if I’m trying to find a book to read by online reviews, I look almost entirely at the negative ones.  Most books have only a few 1- and 2-star reviews, so usually I read all of them, and some of the more popular 3-star reviews.  Maybe a couple 4-stars.  (I mean on Amazon and GoodReads.)  That’s because the majority of five-star reviews in my experience are mostly gushing, don’t discuss the reasons why the reviewer felt that way except in terms so abstract as to be useless, etc.  Sure, some low-star reviews are like that.  But a lot of them take the time to point out every little itch and then about half are in between.   And I find it more sueful to hear what people hated about a book when deciding if I want to buy it.  Although unless a book has almost nothing over 2 stars, I don’t actually pay much attention to reviews for decision-making anyway.  I just enjoy reading them for their own sake.

You might be wondering what all this has to do with Imaginary Girls.  I don’t usually post reviews on this blog, partially because my taste is so weird, and partially because I don’t want people to get the wrong idea of what this blog is about.  I primarily enjoy writing about the theoretical aspects for speculative fiction, and as with this reviews, occasionally about YA.  There are plenty of awesome review blogs out there, and I’m not interested in competing with them.  I’m not capable of competing with them; my goals in writing a review are different than theirs.  The reason I’m writing this review, besides that fact that Nova Ren Suma is an awesome writer and I loved this book, is because after I finished I was surfing reviews on Goodreads, and I saw a review, not surprising, but quite illustrating of a topic that’s been percolating and/or fermenting in my mind for awhile.

As the title says, it’s the tension between reader interpretation and authorial intent.  By reader interpretation, I means the feelings and insights and the rewarded or frustrated expectations that a reader takes away from a story.  And there’s a unique interpretation for each reader.  I won’t debate the issue of validity here.  It’s much too heated and ambiguous a discussion for me to get side-tracked on here.

So, instead, let’s begin with my review.  The review I mention earlier had a different reader interpretation of Ruby than I did.  She hated her.  So did I.  But whereas the other review saw this as a flaw, I saw it as the point.  I don’t know Nove Ren Suma enough to make a firm claim to her intent.  To an extent, it doesn’t matter.  half the point of the novel seems to be to provide ambiguity.  I admit that I am going to go a bit into spoilers.  That’s where my goals in a review differ slightly from traditional reviews.  Ruby is not a nice person.  She’s not a mean person either.  She’s more just amoral.  What matters to her is what she wants, not what’s right or wrong.  And the book does a great job of taking that, and still making her not a complete monster.  When people have always done everything you wanted, it’s not that strange to take it for granted.  Ruby holds the whole town under her spell.  Her character isn’t cruel, just a bit purposefully oblivious.

And that’s part of what makes the book as good as it is.  Ruby’s complete narcissism plays so beautifully into the magical realist elements of the story.  It’s Chloe’s complete belief in her sister that allows all the fantastic events in the story to seem believable.  London’s revival is perhaps the most unambiguous magical element.  But for the rest of it, when you finally have a break from the consensus reality that Ruby holds over the town, when Chloe and London and their friends pass the boundary line and start to say all sorts of awful things about Ruby, there’s a moment where you realize that maybe Chloe isn’t the most reliable of narrators.  Is she so under Ruby’s spell that she never saw these cracks?  That’s one interpretation.  Or there’s the idea of the boundary of Ruby’s power.  There’s enough wiggle room to take either route.  Or perhaps even the boundary is real, in the sense that Ruby doesn’t have enough energy to control things outside of town for mundane reasons involving time and physical stamina.  The moments near the end of the second third of the book, where Chloe sees Ruby for once tired, not perfect suggest that this too is a possibility.  This tension between various possibilities is part of what makes magical realism, real-world superstition, and a magician’s tricks so bittersweet.

Chloe has a few other moments of cognitive dissonance, as well.  And in general she takes the route of doubling down on her faith in Ruby.  Totally believable, to me.  All fiction requires suspension of disbelief.  Even the real world does.  And Ruby has, evidenced by little hints throughout the story, taken a great deal of time to set up her perfect little world, or at least the image of it in Chloe’s eyes.  When you have the scene at the beginning of the book, at the reservoir, and everyone seems under Ruby’s spell, there’s another interpretation to consider:  perhaps many people are under Ruby’s spell–temporarily, or patchily, or entirely–but there’s also an aspect of rubber-necking and denial that could be in play.  Some people absolutely see through manipulation and tricks.  But they still love to see the master work.  Or they want to be part of the legend, even though they know the legend is a fraud.  It’s easy to forget that with humans, sometimes appearances can be more important than reality.  You see it in rich-people take-down stories all the time.  The cracks being exposed, the polite but purposeful ignorance.  The winks that say “I saw saw that” or “we all know the truth but it’s more useful for us to pretend we don’t”.

But it’s common theme that the people most capable of casting these sorts of spells are also not the nicest of people.  They understand manipulation.  They know how to play groups off against each other, how to get someone to overlook the many little problems in the face of the one big wonder.  And they learned those things for a reason.  We don’t really get to learn Ruby’s reason. They had family troubles, and their mom was not the most perfect.  Perhaps some things happened in the past we didn’t get told about.  But I know people like Ruby, I’ve seen how they construct their worlds, paper over the cracks, and the portrayal of that in Imaginary Girls is very well done.  It wouldn’t be the book it is if Ruby wasn’t so selfish and controlling.  The tragedy of the book, the great and terrible beauty of it, is that even if the magic is real, even if Ruby did what she did, and Chloe and then London were brought back from the dead, even if she truly loved her sister in her own way, Chloe is still, for the foreseeable future lost in the spell of someone who’s dead and gone.  (Or is she?!)  It doesn’t even matter if things were really how Chloe saw them, because Ruby has screwed her up just the same.

 

Nova Ren Suma has done a beautiful job encapsulating what it’s like being a teenager, looking up to someone–loving someone, even–looking past their flaws.  Even though I’ve never lived by a reservoir, or had the family situation Ruby and Chloe had, or whatever, this book definitely resonates with me, and reminds me of things that happened when I was younger, and most of all it created a great mystery that was fun to investigate, even if it was impossible to figure out the right answer.  And she did it with brilliant prose and fascinating characters.  And it’s hard to ask more from a book.

 

How to Write a Book Review: What to Include, Part 3

In part 2, talked about what to put in the body of a review.  Now I’m going to talk about the odds and ends of reviews that get scattered about.  I prefer to put most of it at the end, but you can also put some of these things at the beginning of your review:

1. Comps/Recs: The first thing that I don’t see in a lot of reviews is comp titles.  Comparative titles are books of a similar genre with similar stories and themes.  Another name for comp titles might be rec(ommendation)s.  You might notice if you buy on Amazon their “buyers who bought this book also bought” lists.  Those are recs based on their similarity to the book you’re looking at.  There are two valuable things about comp titles/recs, and it plays into why I’m using two names here.  Recs are books you suggest to a reader because they are similar to the book the reader is currently considering/has read.  Comp titles are books the reader might possibly have read already that are similar to the book they are considering.  The idea is, if you liked a comp title, you’ll like this title, and if you like this title, you’ll enjoy a rec.

2. Other books by: This is a category you can put at the beginning or the end.  Your telling the reader other books by this author they may have read or heard of, and how they are similar or different.  The goal here is to help them decide if they might want to read this book based on those other books this author wrote.  If they hated those other books, they might dislike this one, but if they loved them, they might love this.

Somewhat related is putting the author’s name in the title of your review.  If you want to snag a reader that might not have liked an author’s previous book, you might leave it out of the title.  That way, they’ve already gotten to your review before they can dismiss this book out of hand.  Conversely, if you’re after readers who liked the author’s previous work, then you definitely want to include the name in the title, so they know your review is about the right book.

3. Topic of Interest: Some books, especially YA books, have a topic related to the story, such as mental illness, or bullying.  It might in some cases be valuable to include information such as informative websites, hotlines such as the National Suicide Hotline, etc. Or a book about GMOs might link to Monsanto or anti-GMO pages.  A book about space might link to NASA.  A book review involving the Society for Creative Anachronism might benefit from links to the SCA’s website.

4. Other Reviews/Interviews: If you’ve read other reviews, or particularly interesting interviews with the author, you might want to link to those, as well.

5. Ratings: If you include star ratings or number ratings in your reviews, you can put them at the end of the beginning depending on your style.  Ratings can be useful, because they can encourage a reader to read a book, and you can give a higher rating than might be expected of a book you had issues with but still enjoyed.  However, ratings can also be misleading.  Is a three-star review positive?  Neutral?  Has the reader enjoyed books you’ve reviewed with that rating previously?  That’s something to keep in mind when considering whether ratings are a valuable tool for your review or not.

There are certainly other extras a review can have, such as give-away copies, but the above seem to me to be the major ones.  But if anyone reading this has suggestions as to additions I should make, I’d love to hear them.

 

Now that I’ve addressed the basics of why and how to do a book review, I want to look at how to put this together to create an actual review.  So next time, I’m going to take these posts, and use them to write a review of Nova Ren Suma’s 17 & Gone.  And the post after that, I’m going to dissect that review, and explain, again based on these six posts, why I chose to include what I did, and why I didn’t include other things.

 

How to Write a Book Review: What to Include, Part 2

This is post number two in my discussion on what to include in a book review.  Last time, I talked about the metadata for a review.  This time, I’m going to talk about the body of the review:

Body of Review

Initial Thoughts

After-Reading Review

Conclusion

Final Thoughts

Most reviewers like to start out with some general thoughts.  These initial thoughts might include a quick comment on an author’s previous book, if there was one.  They might include feelings the reviewer had while reading the book.  They might include a quick comment on the main character.

The review itself generally, though not always starts in the second paragraph.  There are many, many possible formats for a review, including just several linked paragraphs, titled sections, a quick statement of opinion on the awesomeness of the book.  Many people liked to address the plot, the characters, any special subject matter, and occasionally themes.  Rarely do actual reviewers comment on the quality of the prose, except to say it was incredible.  With Amazon or GoodReads reviews, the reviewer might comment on anything.  Finally, especially with special-interest reviewers, the reviewer might comment on particularly bad handling of certain subject matter, such as race, gender, or cultural depiction.

I differentiate between the conclusion and final thoughts, though they are often mixed together.  I define the conclusion as a summing up of the major points of the body of the review.  Was it a good story, well-written, clearly addressed themes.

The final thoughts generally include whether the reviewer would read this author again, are they glad they bought the book, and what they think the general audience of the book is.

Next time, I’ll discuss the miscellaneous post-review scraps.

 

How to Write a Book Review: What to Include, Part 1

Last time, I talked a bit about how knowing your platform can help you write a more informative book review.  That covers all three my questions to ask before writing a review.  So, now, I’m going to suggest what infomation should be provided in a review, and why each part of it is useful for writing reviews in general.  I’ll give the list, and then look at each piece of it below that.  I won’t add formatting right now.  I’ll save that for later.

Metadata

Title:

Author:

Genre:

Page Count:

Publisher/Publication Date:

Source:

Cover Photo

Summary

Body of Review

Initial Thoughts

After-Reading Review

Conclusion

Final Thoughts

Post-Review

Comp Titles/If You Liked this Recs

Didn’t Like This Recs

Author Bio

Authors Other Works

The order of these can bet switched up if you want, but this is generally the most common and most useful order.

The metadata kind of goes together, so let’s look at it all at once.

Almost always, for obvious reasons, the title of the book goes in the title of your post.  Often, and I personally advocate this, the author’s name goes there, too.  For example Review: The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan.  Obviously, most pre-built blog software won’t let you use formatting in the title, but if you have your own website, or a pro-version that lets you create your own template, you can do something like the above.

Genre is useful, especially as a tag, for helping people find books they know they’re interested in.  Of course, if you have a genre review blog, you might be able to leave it out.  Unless you like naming sub-genres, or of you think the genre of the book is arguable.

As far as page count, it can be good to include, although it’s specific to certain editions.  But some people like short books, and others like long books, so it can’t really hurt.

Publisher and publication date are less relevant.  Date can tell you how old the book is, which can say something about writing style or subject, although only if the reader already knows the genre fairly well.  Publisher is more just a detail.  It might encourage a reader to look at similar books in a genre, but that’s about it.

The source is where you got the book from: publisher, author, agency, contest, store, library.  Books received as part of publisher/agency/author promotion require a disclosure.  Store, contest, library are just useful information.

Covers are also not necessarily relevant to a review.  However, especially in a store or library, knowing what the cover looks like makes it easier for the reader to find.  It can also suggest if they are the target audience for a book, as most covers are targeted at specific demographics.  Especially in YA/NA and many commercial genres.

The last part I’ll go over for today is the summary. You can write your own summary, use a Goodreads or Amazon summary, use the back-cover or cover-flap copy, or use what the provider of the copy suggests, if they suggest anything.  Summaries should not contain major spoilers, ie, major twists in the second half of the book, obvious answers to mysteries not noted on the cover copy, and they should obviously avoid specifics of the conclusion of the story.  A summary/blurb’s purpose is to entice a reader, or give them an idea of what the book is about, not to spoil it for them.

Many reviewers like to put their metadata in a little box or visually separate part of the review.  It makes it easier to locate on the page, and highlights it for the reader.  It might also be useful to include links to author/publisher/store websites to help readers learn more about the book or purchase it straight from your review.

That’s all for today.  Probably by tomorrow, I’ll publish the second half, going over what to actually write in the body of a review.

 

How to Write a Book Review: Know Your Platform

Last time, I talked about knowing your audience and how that could help you write more successful book reviews.  This time, I’m going to take a look at platform.  Platform is on what basis you are reviewing a book.  It applies to Amazon or Goodreads reviews just as much as to book review blogs.

There are several common platforms for book reviews:

1. I read the book, and I want to share what I thought about it.

2. I am an author and I was asked to blurb/review this book.

3. I review books as a job/hobby (and may receive review copies from publishers).

4. I love this genre of book, so I’m reviewing books in that genre to introduce others to it or encourage them to read more.

5. I review books because of a certain element they have that I want to be more well-known, more popular, such as: environmentalism, racism, PoC characters, cultural appropriation, etc.

There are more, but those are some of the most common.  They can all work for individual reviews as well as series of reviews.  It can be important, especially in review series, to establish your platform explicitly.  This can help readers to decide whether your review will be helpful to them.  You can do this as part of your blogs “about” page, but you can still do it on a review site with a disclaimer or similar at the beginning of the review.

If you plan to depart from your platform for a certain review, it’s also good to explain that at the beginning of the review, as well.

Now, what does knowing your platform do for you?  It depends on what you want out of your blog.

1. It can help keep you consistent so that readers will keep coming beck if they find something they like.

2. It can encourage readers to keep an eye out for your reviews because you’ve established a platform that can appeal to them.

3. It can keep away readers who you are not targeting, and avoid problems of a reader wandering in from the wrong place.

Establishing expectations in your readers and then living up to them is the best way to keep readers happy. And it’s much easier to do when you have a coherent platform ahead of time.

4. Finally, having a platform allows your readers to recommend your reviews or review blog to other people they know who may find it interesting–even if they themselves don’t care for the genre, or subject, or theme.

All of those things are reasons why you should know your platform when you write a review.

Lastly, here are a few things you can mention when writing a review to tell a reader where you’re coming from:

1. Are you an author?

2. Are you an author who writes in the genre you review?

3. Did you receive a copy of the story/book from the publisher?

4. Do you read frequently in this genre, and do you have favorite sub-genres that might bias your opinion of a book?

These can be placed in your bio/about, or in some cases, directly in your review.

I’m sure I’ve missed some details here, so if anyone has any suggestions about how else to capitalize on having a pre-set platform, or disagrees that it is always helpful, I’d love to hear it.

Next time, I’ll give an example of a book review skeleton, and explain why I think each part is important.

 

How to Write a Book Review: Know Your Audience

Last time, I talked about knowing why you want to write book reviews.  This time, I’m going to talk about who you’re writing them for.

All sorts of people read books, and they have all sorts of personal tastes.  Some review styles will work for some people, but none will work for all people.  That said, there are a few general categories of reader you can think about when imagining your target audience:

1. General readers— These are your everyday people who often read best-sellers and critically acclaimed novels, and books in Oprah’s Book Club.  They often won’t know genre tropes and conventions, or specific sub-genres.  Common genre story-lines might not appeal to them.  Or they might find them fascinating and novel.  Each reader will be different.

2. Genre readers— Convincing a reader to read a book in their favorite genre is different than convincing a general reader.  On the one hand, they probably know most of the tropes, conventions, and names for those tropes and conventions.  On the other hand, they’ve been reading in this genre for a long time.  You have to convince them that this book is worth their time: unique, fresh twist; good writing.

3. Non-genre readers— One of the hardest audiences to write for might be those who don’t see the value in whatever type of book you’re reviewing.  They would never read such trash.  It’s all written by hacks, and full of cliches, or its only purposes is for pathetic people to escape their boring, everyday lives.  Or, they may just not enjoy the kinds of stories they think your chosen genre(s) is full of.  Even if they have no conscious prejudice, you still have to find an angle of attack that highlights what they value in a story.  And that’s going to be different for every pair of “opposing” genres you encounter.

4. Librarians, especially if you write CB/MG/YA/NA— Libraries, public and school, order a huge number of books.  They use online reviews to decide which books will bring the most benefit with their limited budget.  There are many professional pipelines for reviews and books being targeted at librarians.  But they do read many independent reviewers, as well.  Especially for school librarians, it can be difficult to figure out what they’re looking for in a book.  Of course they will buy books they themselves enjoy, but they are also looking for books they can recommend to their patrons.  The best of them will know what groups that they serve are under-represented in terms of the books available to them in the library.  They’ll be looking at reading level, profanity, sexual or violent scenes, etc.

5. Writers— As the online community of writers grows, they are becoming something of a target audience in their own right.  In some ways they are like genre writers in that they’ll have a more than passing knowledge of genre conventions.  But many of them also spend a lot of time learning markets, reading for research on top of for fun, and they often have limited time for reading.  So it can be much harder to really sell a book to a writer than to a normal reader.

6. Young readers— Younger readers are increasingly online, and looking at book reviews to find what they want to read.  Especially fans of “children’s book” categories such as Young Adult and Middle Grade.  Depending on what categories and genres you review, you’re going to have different audiences, especially in terms of gender.  And it’s important to know what’s trending in terms of story-line and genre, because trends are big in categories like YA, and a lot of people will go online to find something similar to whatever it is they just enjoyed.

Knowing your audience is going to let you know what formats might be appropriate for your review, what to emphasize, what to focus critique on.

Next time, I’m going to look at why readers are going to trust your reviews.  Basically, what is your platform as a reviewer.  It’s important for a book reviewer to have a platform, although, considering anyone can review something on Amazon, it might not be important in the way you’d think.