“When I was making the initial plans for the blog this was my biggest struggle. I seriously considered not including ratings at all. Assigning a number to something that can’t be measured seems wrong when you consider how subjective such a rating has to be. I’ve personally made many purchases based on one and two star reviews that described something I would like that the reviewer didn’t.”

Big Al 14 May 2011 BigAl’s Books and Pals

About Reviewing

How did you get started?

It was a combination of factors all coming together. For several years, I’d reviewed music for a few different venues, primarily for a website specializing in indie music of a particular genre and for a local Arts and Entertainment magazine in a large Midwestern US city. I had been out of that a few years and may have subconsciously been looking for something comparable.

Since winning a contest for reading the most books in a single month in second grade, forty-something years ago, I’ve been an avid reader. I’d purchased a Kindle, discovered Indie authors, and was active on the Amazon Kindle forum. Several of the readers and authors on the forum liked my approach to the reviews I posted on Amazon and kept encouraging me to start a blog. I resisted at first, but liked the idea more each time it came up. Eventually I let myself be convinced.

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

One of the negative comments I hear often about books by indie authors are they are rife with errors due to lack of proper copyediting and proofreading. My experience has been that, while sometimes this is an issue, it isn’t nearly as often as many perceive. To address this issue I’ll track these kinds of errors and include it as part of the review. I read all the books I review on my Kindle and will highlight typos, improper words, and other errors like that. This gives me hard data to use in that portion of the review. I’ll sometimes highlight or make notes about especially good or bad sections I anticipate wanting to quote in my review. However, I don’t take many notes for most books. The more highlights I make or notes I take the less likely the review is going to be a positive one.

What are you looking for?

Compelling characters and a good story presented well. That would seem to be obvious. However, different genres require a better job at some elements than others. A thriller is often plot driven with character development being less critical while literary fiction requires more from the characters and presentation than it does of the plot. In my review, I try to zero in on the elements that worked and those that didn’t while still taking a holistic approach as much as possible and taking into account any applicable genre conventions.

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

As I mentioned above, I keep track of grammar errors and typos. My reviews have a section specifically to grade each book in this area. I’ll often review books where I was a ‘Beta Reader’ or ‘First Reader.’ In that situation I’ll disclose I am reviewing based on a Beta version of the book, but not grade it in this area. This is because the normal process is to do an additional round of editing and proofing based on feedback from Beta readers. I’m not in a position to grade the final product in this area although I can judge the overall quality of the book. I’ll normally do the same if I’m reviewing based on an advanced reader copy for the same reasons.

However, if I am reviewing the same version of a book that is available for purchase my review will reflect any issues in this area. If I found up to nine errors in a novel, I’ll indicate ‘no significant issues’ in this section. This is a somewhat arbitrary number, but based on various claims I’ve read about what a traditional publishing company would consider too many errors in a book. Up to twenty errors, I’ll indicate the book has a “small number of errors.” To this point what I find isn’t going to influence my rating or generate more discussion in the review. Beyond this, I’ll mention the book has many issues with grammar or typos. I’ll try to be specific about the kind of errors and give my subjective opinion on how these influenced my reading experience. It may also influence the star rating the book receives.

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

It varies, but somewhere around four hours of reading time if I’m not making a lot of highlights or taking a lot of notes.

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

My internet friends say I like to “bloviate” which means just what it sounds like. I could bloviate on my dislike of rating systems for pages. When I was making the initial plans for the blog this was my biggest struggle. I seriously considered not including ratings at all. Assigning a number to something that can’t be measured seems wrong when you consider how subjective such a rating has to be. I’ve personally made many purchases based on one and two star reviews that described something I would like that the reviewer didn’t. Yet, many people don’t look beyond the rating on an individual review or the average rating on Amazon and other sites.

However, I wanted the option of posting my reviews to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, or other review sites, all of which require a star rating. I resolved this conflict in two ways. First, the rating is the final element of the review on the blog. If someone reads the full review, they should have formed an opinion of their own before seeing the rating. I hope that they’ll pay more attention to what was said in the review than any number at the very end. Second, in my “Guide to Reviews” page where I define the meaning of the ratings I try to make my stance clear. By design, the ratings I give are going to be high, averaging somewhere very close to four out of five stars. A book rated three stars is going to be a good book, but with something the reviewer perceives as a significant flaw, which will be explained in the review. One and two star rated books will have very serious issues.

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

The most critical is to follow instructions. My site and virtually every book review site have a page with instructions on how to submit a book for review. Most of these sites also have more authors and publishers seeking reviews for their books than they can handle. Failure to follow instructions is likely to result in no response and no review.

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

My site allows comments from readers on the review page. That is the most common place for reader feedback. Comments like, “this books sounds good, I’m going to buy it or add to my to-be-read list,” happen frequently. Readers who have read a book prior to our review also frequently comment. Emails, comments on our Facebook page, and even tweets with feedback, thanks, or reporting how well a reader liked a book also happens.

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?

In the last couple of months, I’ve written and read thousands of words on this very subject. Your advice boils those thousands of words down to a couple sentences. The only exception might be an error in undisputed fact. Maybe they spelled your name wrong.

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 past-time is dying – do you think that’s the case?

Dying? I disagree. My twenty-something daughter and her husband are both avid readers. My almost eight year-old granddaughter wanted a Kindle for Christmas, got it, and uses it. I do think reading, especially for entertainment and escape, is competing for our time with television, movies, video games, and many other alternatives. Because of this I think the average person might spend less time reading today than they did twenty, thirty, or forty years ago, when reading for pleasure probably peaked in the first-world countries. I believe that as the population became more literate a greater percentage of people became regular readers, but I also think this was always a small part of the population. As these competing forms of entertainment became available people read less.

However, I have hope the trend will stabilize or possibly even reverse. Electronic books can now compete better for our attention due to the ability to get a book immediately without a visit to the library or bookstore. We can now read a book on our cell phone, which is always with us. Those times like waiting in the doctor, dentist, or barbers office or a long queue we currently spend staring into space or reading year old magazines are now practical times to read a book.

I think reading allows more freedom for your imagination to run wild, filling in the gaps and letting your mind tailor the story to you. It allows you to experience vicariously things you can only dream of or would never want to experience for real. While movies, music, video games, and other sources of entertainment allow some of these experiences, none of them does as much or does it as well as reading.

About Writing

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

For indie authors, putting a book out before it is ready. You’re not only competing against other indie writers, but those who are traditionally published and have gone through the gauntlet of acceptance and multiple editors and proofreaders. Don’t think readers will forgive lack of editing and proofreading because you’re an indie or cost less. They won’t. The biggest investment a reader makes is not the price of the book. It’s the time to read. If they abandon this book for any reason, you can expect they won’t be buying your next.

The other thing I see is overly optimistic expectations. The majority of traditionally published books sold are by a handful of authors. Most authors don’t sell many books or make much money. Indie books are no different. Breaking out of the pack is hard work and involves a lot of luck regardless of your route to publication.

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?

When I was a kid, several hundred years ago, schoolteachers used to say you had to read 20-30% of a book before you could decide it wasn’t any good. Times have changed. Many readers will abandon a book early if it doesn’t grab their attention. E-books also seem to make it easier to abandon a book.

If I’m reading a book for review, I don’t feel like I can abandon it until the end. It isn’t fair to the author to review a book if you haven’t read it. I also think it is important that I review bad books, not just good ones. It is rare for me to abandon a book partway through, even if I’m reading it for pleasure with no intention of writing a review. I also think I’m an exception in this regard. However, if a book hasn’t shown promise in the first ten or twenty pages my experience is it is unlikely to improve.

There has been a lot of talk recently about the Page 99 concept, what are your thoughts on that idea?

Basic statistics tells me this concept is flawed. As a random sample of the author’s writing style, it might sometimes suffice. Beyond that, it suffers from being an insufficient sample to determine anything.

Is there anything you will not review?

Not much. I’ll consider reviewing any genre of fiction. Although there are genres I like more than others I’ve read and enjoyed books from every major genre. I also have a team of reviewers who are helping me write reviews. Among us are fans of every genre. We also review non-fiction if the subject is of widespread interest and aimed at a general audience.

About Publishing

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

I think there is a lot of truth in that comment. Often this is meant as a derogatory statement, intended to convey the thought that self-published books “aren’t good enough” to be traditionally published. As a blanket statement, I disagree. Many books that are good enough are now bypassing the traditional route or using self-publishing as a way to prove they are good enough.

It appears publishers and agents are searching for self-published indie books that are doing well and approaching the author about the possibility of publishing them traditionally. This is the interpretation where I think that statement has the most validity. Amanda Hocking is the most visible of these, signing a deal with St. Martin’s for a new series and another to traditionally publish her previously self-published Tyrlle Trilogy. Amazon’s Encore imprint seems designed to find the most successful indies and give them broader distribution with additional marketing muscle behind them. D.B. Henson’s Kindle bestseller, “Deed to Death,” is set for re-release via a traditional publisher in July. I’m sure there are others I don’t know about. I’m aware of similar deals in the works or not yet announced. For indie authors who want to be traditionally published, and there are good arguments both for and against, this is a new way this might be accomplished.

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

Slowly and not as much as we would like to think. Indie and self-published titles are readily available to those with e-readers and those who regularly read e-books using apps on their computer or smartphone. This is still a small percentage of the reading public. On the positive side, those who have made the jump to e-books seem to include a disproportionate number of high-volume readers who are more likely to stumble on or hear recommendations for indie books. Some of them will like what they find and experience a change of attitude. That is what happened to me.

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

Why would you need anything other than reviews?

Seriously, my answer depends on how I choose to interpret “industry” in the question. The traditional publishing industry would say they’ve always done this and continue to do so. Don’t buy books not published by the behemoths of the industry is one way to do this filtering. And it works, to a point. But that’s not an answer I’m satisfied with as a reader. It limits me to the least common denominator – the books a publishing executive are convinced can make money for their company. I don’t think it is the answer those who visit your site are looking for either.

Amazon has recommendation engines that are tailored to find books you might like based on what you’ve read and liked previously. Websites like Goodreads, Shelfari, and Library Thing are all designed to speed up the word-of-mouth process that has always existed to match readers to books. These are the kind of filters needed. Tools that help the reader do the filtering. I expect the tools already available will be expanded and improved over time to provide still more value.

End of Interview

Part of the joy of being Indie is the people you “meet”. The depth of passion, the integrity behind their work, and their willingness to share – it brings a smile to your face :). The above interview is a great example of that passion, integrity and the collaborative nature of our indie ecosystem.