Adam has a really cool looking website, at Review Haven: Fantasy and Sci-Fi, and reviews, mainly as the title implies SF and Fantasy. A little bit unfortunately (coz his reviews are really good) he only reviews print books at this time. Here is his Indieview…
“It’s not a good thing to “Argue” with the reviewer. But I don’t mind discussing points in my review if it helps the author. Say if she doesn’t understand why I’ve said something. In the end, it’s up to the author to decide if the reviewer has any sway, but given that the point of a review is to get opinions, you should try to pay attention. Everyone gets bad reviews, Even JK Rowling got bad reviews, despite the rest of the world loving what she wrote.”
Adam Bourke 28 April 2011
About Reviewing
How did you get started?
I am a member of the fanfiction site harrypotterfanfiction.com. I’ve written a few things on there, and the review system is really good. In the real world, I don’t think it’s as efficient.
The idea of reviewing books came from my friend at University, who said that the people she lived with were quite major book reviewers and got loads of books sent to them to review. It just made sense to me that I should do the same. I love reading, writers need feedback, and I also thought that it might be a good way to make contacts when I need my own novel reviewing.
How do you review a book? Is it a read first, and then make notes, or do you make notes as you go along?
To be honest, I can’t imagine making notes. Unless it’s a long book (400+ pages), I tend to read them in a single sitting, and I have the principle that if there’s something I notice wrong with the book, but can’t remember it when I’ve finished, it’s not as big a flaw as I thought.
Besides, if I stopped to make notes, it would feel to clinical to me. As if I was dissecting something and reviewing it’s internal organs, rather than the whole thing. part of a book is the experience of being somewhere else, and that doesn’t happen if I make notes
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What are you looking for?
I’m looking for a good story. Mainly. And in general this is anything that makes you forget you’re reading a book. If I’m disappointed to return to the real world when the book ends, then it’s a really good book.
I’m also looking for characters we feel real emotions about. A good writer can make you want to marry one of their characters and live a quiet life on a small planet somewhere with them. OK, that’s the best case scenario, but I like to know the characters. I like them to be real to me.
If a book has a great plot, great characters, but the grammar is less than perfect, how do you deal with that?
It really depend just how bad it is. If the odd sentence is grammatically incorrect, then that’s fair enough. I don’t judge that because my own grammar isn’t perfect (I had a short story I wrote published once, and realised there was a glaring spelling mistake in the first line). But if the bad grammar distracts me from the story, if I’m constantly stopping to figure out what a sentence means, then I have to comment on it. A book with consistently bad grammar will tend not to excite me, and hence get a worse review than if that was sorted out.
How long does it take you to get through, say, an eighty thousand-word book?
Hmmm, I tend to think in pages rather than words,but at say 250 wpp, that’s 320 pages. Right. About three hours. I used to be faster, but then I used to read a book each night. Now I read roughly 100 pages in an hour. Or 25000 words per hour.
How did you come up with your rating system, and could you explain more about the rating system?
Rating systems are generally useless. At least to me. I do have one, but it’s terribly subjective. And I don’t just mean that other readers would rate it differently, I mean that since every book is different (At least, one would hope they are), they can’t really be compared on a number scale. I recently realised that if I were to read one of the books I had reviewed again, the most likely candidate had a rating of 7/10, despite there being many with full marks. It’s because some things cannot be ascribed a value.
It’s kind of hard to describe. The 10/10 books are all better than that 7/10. But, just being better doesn’t make it a favourite. I also have a “How likely I am to read the sequel” rating, although not all books have this. I find this more useful than the rating system to be honest.
What advice could you give to authors looking to get their books reviewed?
Ask. And see if you can get people to post their reviews as widely as possible. I tend to post my reviews on at least four sites (my blog included) if I’ve been given the book. More if I can manage it. Also, research the reviewer. It shouldn’t be hard, just look at their blog. If you are on a Science Fiction/Fantasy review blog, you’re less likely to get that romance reviewed.
Oh, and at least use a spell-checker on the book. And the email, although I tend to ignore mistakes in emails, I guess it gives a bad impression to some people.
Do you get readers emailing you and thanking you for a review?
No, but my email address has only recently been made available on my blog – and on the page for authors looking for reviews at that. I Have had emails from authors though. Both Indie and Larger authors.
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?
Well. Sort of. It’s not a good thing to “Argue” with the reviewer. But I don’t mind discussing points in my review if it helps the author. Say if she doesn’t understand why I’ve said something. In the end, it’s up to the author to decide if the reviewer has any sway, but given that the point of a review is to get opinions, you should try to pay attention. Everyone gets bad reviews, Even JK Rowling got bad reviews, despite the rest of the world loving what she wrote. If you’re getting more bad reviews than good ones, it just means you need to write more.
About Reading
We talk a lot about writing here on the blog, and possibly 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 past-time is dying – do you think that’s the case?
I hope not. But I believe it probably is. Of the people that I live with (Three women, around 20yrs old) I’ve only seen one of them reading a novel. And that infrequently. My whole family reads, in varying degrees, but most of my friends don’t. So in my experience, I think it is. My generation reads less than my parent’s.
As for why do people love reading… I think it’s because it’s engaging. It allows you to be someone else for a while, in a new place. Each book is like a holiday in a way, and most people enjoy holidays. It’s more exciting than real-life. I’m sure everyone dreams of being a heroic knight, or private detective, or woman in a romance book. And books make it come true for those few precious hours.
About Writing
What are the most common mistakes that you see authors making?
This is hard to answer, everyone makes their own mistakes. The most common is probably spelling mistakes (Spell-Checkers!). But the biggest mistakes happen with romance. I’ve read a lot of books where characters go from vague attraction to deeply, intensely in love with each other in a single scene. This generally isn’t the case in real life. Vague attraction to lots of sex – maybe. But they shouldn’t be calling each other “love” or “Darling” twenty seconds after the first kiss.
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?
I won’t say that this isn’t true, as the first five pages of a book CAN make me buy a book. But I won’t say that they can make me put a book down. At least, not permanently. And especially if it’s for review. I would think that agents should request the first chapter, at the least, but I’m not one of them. I guess they don’t have that much time to read whole chapters.
There has been a lot of talk recently about the Page 99 concept, what are your thoughts on that idea?
Well. It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t hold to it. I mean, say page 99 is a hot steamy sex-scene. That could make a lot of people decide to buy/not buy the book. But what if it’s the only one in that 600 page book? Some people might be disappointed, some won’t know what they’ve missed. What if it’s a page explaining something important but quite complex that started on page 97? That’s going to just make the book look boring and confusing. It’s not enough data to go on. I have to admit, I often go on the blurb, which is also not enough information. But I think you have to read more than a page to make a well judged decision.
Is there anything you will not review?
Not that I can think of. But I’ll only publish Sci-Fi and Fantasy ones on my blog, other reviews go to amazon and librarything. And the SFF ones get priority. If I have a pile of books, the non SFF ones will be at the bottom. Never reviewed Non-fiction before, not sure if I’d want to. Depends on what it was. Maths or Science, possibly. Fashion – I sincerely doubt it.
About PublishingWhat do you think of the oft quoted comment that the “slush-pile has moved online”?
I don’t know. I know there are books online that could really use an editor. But editors often miss books. Again, Using Rowling as an example, she was rejected by several publishers who are doubtless still kicking themselves. So I’d say yes, the “Slush-pile” has moved online. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Not everything on there deserves to be on there.
Do you think attitudes are changing with respect to Indie or self-published titles?
In some ways, yes, because the prices are cheaper – especially for those who can read eBooks. So people are happier to buy them. And I think that’s the main problem people have with self-published books – they’re more expensive than mass produced books.
To be honest, I think I’m the only person I know that looks at the publisher of a book before reading – and only then since I started reviewing. I don’t think most people see a difference – except that self-published sometimes means less polished. But I personally don’t really distinguish between the two either. Both Indie and Publisher-Published books can be good, and both can be bad. I think a lot of people realise this.
Do you have any ideas or comments on how the industry can “filter” good from bad, asides from reviews?
Well, run a spell check on everything. If it says “5000” mistakes found, chances are that the writer hasn’t looked at it since he first wrote it. It’s probably nor going to be ready for publication. Obviously this is easy to get around, but it’ll provide a first line of defence against really bad books.
The problem is that to do anything like filtering, you need an organisation to do it. And that essentially becomes a publisher. Which then defeats the object of Indie reviewers. Unless there was an independent organisation that everyone used. (Kind of like films having to be certified). It would be hard to implement in any case. Fictioncentral.net used to be a good place for Indie writing, within age-friendly limits, but is unfortunately closed now.
End of Interview