I read a lot of reviews and based on the reviewers reviews of titles I have liked I may pick up an unknown just because they liked it and I probably would too.

Paul – 19 August 2014

About Reviewing

How did you get started?

I work in an office setting, constantly plugging away. Creating website after website. I needed to take my mind off of what I was doing and get everyone on the phone around me out of my ears. I remembered enjoying audiobooks on long road trips as a kid. So, I started looking for possible books to listen to. I found a book that sounded great, had great reviews, and was inline to entertain me, Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry read by Ray Porter. I was entranced and quickly got more books from the series.

Quickly I realized that anyone I talked to about the next great audiobook I listened to, their eyes would glaze over and they would loose interest in the conversation. With my experience running the largest online bonsai magazine (http://ofbonsai.org), I thought to myself that people might want to read my opinions.

Slowly I started out and put myself out there. Thanks for the encouragement by Bob Reise (The Guilded Earlobe), I kept at it.

How do you review a book? Is it a read first, and then make notes, or do you make notes as you go along?

It really depends on where I am while listening. If I am at work, I will dot notes and save as a draft on my blog. If I am away from my computer, which does happen, I will bookmark spots in the audiobook to come back to later.

What are you looking for?

I want to be transported into the mind of the author. Entranced by the world they have created. Relate or get attached to the characters. I have really come to love blood, gore, action and witty characters. I also need to believe the narrator’s story. If not the audiobooks are harder to enjoy. A really good narrator can transform a story that is just ok into something special. Likewise a poor narrator can take so much away from a great story and turn it mediocre.

If a book has a great plot, great characters, but the grammar is less than perfect, how do you deal with that?

I am no grammar expert by any means, so I don’t think it bothers me. Again the great plot and character can distract me. Sometimes the grammar is so bad that I notice it but realize that it is supposed to be that way.

How long does it take you to get through, say, an eighty thousand-word book?

I had to do some calculation on this one. So this would equal approx. 7.5 hours, an average length for audiobooks. If it is really good and I am really busy at work I could get through it in one work day. Normally though it would take me a minimum of 2 days.

How did you come up with your rating system, and could you explain more about the rating system?

Sure, my rating system is the average score on four elements. Plot, narrator performance, production quality, and attention holding. Plot and performance I “borrowed” from Audible. After finding that there is some much more than this with audiobooks I added the latter two. So now if a plot is great (5 stars), performance is not great but really good (4 stars), production quality is not good (2 stars), and it mostly held my attention (3 stars). A 5 star print book rating suddenly turns into 3.5 stars. So there is a huge range of how an audiobook can come across, which is important as audiobooks are so much more than a written book.

What advice could you give to authors looking to get their audiobooks reviewed?

I would say make sure to find a reviewer that like the genre that your book is in. Follow their policies and procedures. Provide a review copy, as many reviewers do it simply for access to a wider variety of books. I have made it easy by using a pluging that keeps track of my queue for me, I was a mess before that.

Do you get readers emailing you and thanking you for a review?

Emails no. Comments on the blog, Facebook, Twitter absolutely. I have heard from a handful of people that only decided to give a book a listen based on my review. It makes me smile and cross my fingers that they like it as much as I did.

My advice to authors on getting a ‘bad’ review (hasten to add that might mean a perfectly honest, well written, fair review – just bad from the author’s point of view) is to take what you can from it and move on. Under no circumstances to ‘argue’ with the reviewer – would you agree with that?

I would. I have gotten emails from authors saying my review was crap, seen posts on redit attacking my lack of literary skill. My review is simply my opinion, I will not like everything about every single book.

About Reading

We talk a lot about writing here on the blog, and possibly not enough about reading, which is after all why we’re all here. Why do you think people love reading? We’re seeing lots of statistics that say reading as a pastime is dying – do you think that’s the case?

For me I have a very busy lifestyle, like many I know, where I have no time to read, I buy magazines and they just sit there. Audiobooks has opened up a world to me that I never thought existed. I think listening to books is very similar to reading them. They both expand your imagination, open your mind to new concepts, the list goes on and on.

About Writing

What are the most common mistakes that you see authors making?

Not getting a proven narrator to tell their story. There are tons of people out there that will read a book out loud for money. There are much fewer who are really good at it. If you want the audiobook to be a success please pay a little more and get some real talent.

Then again sometimes it is not about the money but about putting in the time to do research on potential narrators for your book. I have a friend that just recently became an author and went through the process. She put in a ton of time sorting through all the available narrators on ACX. Until she found the perfect one. Her time and effort will pay off.

We’re told that the first page, paragraph, chapter, is absolutely key in making or breaking a book. Agents typically request only the first five pages of a novel; what do you think about that? If a book hasn’t grabbed you by the first five pages, do you put it down?

Again since audiobooks don’t have pages I will talk about time. Usually if I am not engrossed or at least interested in the story by hour two, I might move on. Other time I might just get though it hoping there will be something awesome just on the horizon. The best audiobooks do grab me within the first 10 minutes.

Is there anything you will not review?

I have tried out most genres regardless of my initial feeling about them, just to make sure. I will not review erotica, romance, classic literature, history, business, nonfiction. Other than my preferred genres I will have to think hard before I introduce a new one.

About Publishing

What do you think of the oft-quoted comment that the “slush-pile has moved online”?

Not sure, since I get all of my audiobooks online in one form or another.

Do you think attitudes are changing with respect to indie or self-published titles?

Yes I do. My own attitude has greatly changed over the past few years. When I started out I want only audiobooks from the big publishers. I started to feel like I was listening to the retelling/structuring of many books. Then I opened it up to the self-published audiobooks and my mind was blown. If the summary sounds good, give it a listen.

Do you have any ideas or comments on how the industry can ‘filter’ good from bad, aside from reviews?

Not sure how else we would do this. I read a lot of reviews and based on the reviewers reviews of titles I have liked I may pick up an unknown just because they liked it and I probably would too.

End of Interview:

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