To be blunt, in our opinion, Indie books that are not professionally edited have helped to damage the image of Indie books in the public eye. Unedited books don’t help the Indie author whose name is on the book, either.

L.T. Anderson – 23 August 2018

About Reviewing

How did you get started?

We originally decided to become Indie book reviewers when we experienced the hardship of trying to obtain reviews for ourselves. As readers, we had left a review here and there if the urge hit us, or if we really liked an author’s work.

After we published our debut novel, we found how hard it is to get someone just to read our book, let alone review it. So, the wheels started turning. Very little research confirmed that nearly every debut Indie author out there has the same problem. Of course our hearts went out to them since we’ve experienced the same thing.

In short order, we put the word out on social media and on our website that we’d be available to read and review Indie debut novels.

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

This varies by the book. It’s not necessarily a hard, fast rule, but if you have to make notes, that could be a bad sign.

Breaking that down, it’s like this: If the book has a ton of characters and you need to write them down to keep track of them, that’s an unwelcome interruption to the flow of reading. Another example is when something doesn’t seem right, like the MC is eighteen years old and the author says she remembers something from 1993, it makes you go, “Wait…”

On the other hand, once in a while we’ll spot something that is totally badass. Knowing we’re going to write a review, we might stop and write that thing down to be sure we include it in the review.

The best read would be going through the entire novel without pausing because the story is so engrossing and well written you don’t want to stop for anything.

What are you looking for?

It’s been said that Stephen King is a great storyteller. That’s first and foremost with us. If the story is awesome, we tend to overlook minor grammatical or formatting issues. After all, we’re not the author’s editor and we’ve even seen typos in Stephen King’s books.

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

We touched on this a little in the previous question. If the grammar is less than perfect enough to interrupt the flow, it could be a liability no matter how good the story is. That said, it has to be evident that poor grammar is the rule with the book we’re reading as opposed to a glitch here and there.

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

If the book is awesome, two to three days. We both still have day jobs, but a good book can take you away and you might end up done before you know it. On the other hand, if there are issues and we’re taking a lot of notes, it may take a week.

We’re always fine-tuning the craft. We established a fifty page minimum. If we just can’t get into a book after the first fifty pages, we probably won’t finish it. This helps us, the author we’re reading and the authors waiting in our queue.

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

We use the five-star rating system because that’s what most sites expect. On our website, we use half-star increments. You may see a 3.5-star rating on our website, but it’s bumped up to a four elsewhere because most sites don’t use half stars.

What we came up with is more of a takeaway system. In other words, every book starts out with five stars. If we get halfway through the book and the story is still good, the characters are interesting, and we still want to read more, the stars hold.

However, if the story somehow falls flat, or the author’s cliffhanger is an obvious attempt to shortchange the reader and sell the next book, a half or full star may fall from the rating.

There have been books where halfway through one of us says to the other, “This just dropped to four stars.” Why? Because we’re human and we review like readers, not like authors.

It would be nice to give everyone five stars. But doing that would destroy our credibility as reviewers if every book doesn’t deserve five stars. Our fifty-page rule comes into play here as well. A book could lose a star after fifty pages, but still hold our interest enough to make it halfway through. By the end of the book, four stars.

We do make every effort to state why each book received the rating it received. We feel like it’s obvious in our narrative.

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

For us, that’s a little bit of a loaded question. It’s kind of like asking the guy whose been divorced five times for marriage advice. We have one review on Amazon after three months. That’s the reason we started doing this—to help people like us.

Seriously though, our advice is to be patient and keep asking politely. Sure, three months isn’t that long in the big scheme. It just seems like a long time to the author.

Start working on your next book. Be active on social media, and don’t let every tweet and post be about your book and asking for reviews. Get noticed in good and friendly ways. And give back to the community. If you continuously stand around with your hand out, whining about getting (or not getting) reviews, you’ll get passed by.

If you know you have something great, stay positive.

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

We’ve actually tracked this. If an author publicly “likes” our review on social media, that’s thanks enough and we appreciate that. However, we’ve received thank you emails from about a third of the authors whose books we’ve reviewed. That number includes some 3.0-star reviews, so our rating isn’t necessarily the reason we are thanked. Most authors appreciate that we’re honest in our critique.

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?

Totally agree on that. If you ask for a review, that’s what you get. We don’t charge the author, and ninety-nine percent of the time we buy the ebook. Again, we review as readers, not as sympathetic authors. That’s how we’d like people to review our books.

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?

This is a good time to answer this question, because at work we both had a bad month all in one week. Speaking as readers, people like reading fiction as an escape. Sounds trite but it’s true. People read because they get to shut the real world out and escape into, and sometimes be a part of, a world far removed from everyday life.

You read about things you’ve never seen, places you’ve never been, and meet characters you’ll never meet anywhere else. It’s nice to come home to a good book and forget about all the bs for a while.

On reading dying as a pastime: It’s hard to argue statistics so we won’t try. But welcome to the information age. If reading a book is dying as a pastime, we believe there are two main reasons.

First, it’s because many people are naturally lazy. If they can watch a movie, why read the book? It takes effort. People, especially the newest generations among us, are more entertained by watching moving pictures or flicking their thumbs on a tiny screen.

That fact is directly related to the second reason reading may be dying as a pastime. We had a recent conversation with a seventeen-year-old high school senior. He mentioned one of his teachers was playing some classic music by Jackson Browne, one of the most prolific songwriters of his era. The teacher was amazed that this high school senior knew who Jackson Browne was.

So we asked him, “How do you know?” This boy said his dad plays a lot of classic rock and makes him listen to the lyrics and the nuances of the music. Our comment was, “If the former generation doesn’t pass this stuff on, who will?”

So it goes with reading. Readers need to be active in singing the praises of reading and pass it on. How will the non-readers ever know if the readers don’t tell them? Honestly, they don’t want to hear it from librarians and teachers. This kid didn’t learn about Jackson Browne from his teacher. He learned it from a true fan.

About Writing

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

We see Indie authors consistently making two big mistakes.

The first is not hiring a professional editor. Yeah, you’ve heard it a thousand times. There’s a reason you’ve heard it a thousand times. We’re not talking about paying your best friend who got straight A’s in English all through school. As much as it hurts financially, bite the bullet and have your book professionally edited.

To be blunt, in our opinion, Indie books that are not professionally edited have helped to damage the image of Indie books in the public eye. Unedited books don’t help the Indie author whose name is on the book, either.

The second is the inability to tell their story in a manner the reader can relate to. It’s like this: You have a great story you know your readers are going to love. You do your outline, or whatever your routine is, and you start typing away. You finish your manuscript and you read it. You think it’s awesome.

Unfortunately, you left out key facts that you know, but you forgot to weave into your story. You assume the reader knows everything you know about your characters, their world, etc.

Conversely, you tell the reader everything, down to the rivets in your MC’s jeans and the type of wood his arrows are made of, and what obscure region in some obscure imaginary land the wood is grown.

So there’s a balance that we see many Indie authors can’t seem to find. Much can be said about this, but you get the point. Find your voice and learn how to tell your story in the badass way you have imagined it.

Neither point is a knock on Indie authors. Please see this as a learning opportunity.

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?

Absolutely not. Sure, the author should learn how to grab the reader as soon as possible in the beginning of the book. However, we’ve had books literally suck us in by writing style alone. Maybe we’d make lousy agents, or maybe there would be a lot more good books published by the big five if they’d let us tell them what to put their weight behind. There are probably a lot of Indie gems out there that the big publishers will never know about because of this self-imposed rule.

Is there anything you will not review?

Yes. Non-fiction, erotica, realistic fiction, books with graphic rape scenes, incest, child abuse or animal abuse.

About Publishing

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

As much as this may be a true statement, it doesn’t mean everything in the slush pile is not worthy of publication. In our opinion, many Indie books put many traditionally-published books to shame.

Traditional publishers can’t possibly see every awesome book presented to agents. We read an article several years ago where an agent stated that on occasion, she chose, or didn’t choose a book to represent based on her mood on a given day.

That helps to demonstrate the power in Indie publishing. Put out awesome work. The cream will still rise to the top.

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

Yes, slowly. We discovered Indie books before we started writing our own. One reason we promote and support the Indie community is because we see the value and creativity of Indie authors.

The Indie community is a boon for the reader. We believe readers are coming around. This may be anecdotal, but many of the people we have spoken to prefer Indie books. They have found with the availability of Indie books, they can truly be the proverbial “kid in a candy store”.

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

It’s hard to pin down how the industry would even want to be in a position to filter good from bad. Would that defeat the rebel, the purpose and the drive behind Indie publishing?

We don’t necessarily believe traditional publishing even has a handle on filtering good from bad. Whether a book is traditionally published, or Indie, isn’t the reader the ultimate filter?

End of Interview:

LT Anderson is a father-daughter writing team comprised of Les and Taylor Anderson. To read their reviews visit their website. While you’re there you can explore and find out about their book as well.