Monday, April 27, 2009

Viral Links that Swine Won’t Touch

It’s been a while since I’ve done a link round-up, so here we go. I’m on the down-side of a crazy-busy period and shouldn’t be spending my time on this, but I’m a glutton for punishment. On to the links…

  • The latest thing to get all the bloggers excited is about authors commenting on reviews. I’ve said a bit here and there, but the quote below sums it up good enough.

    It's all about how it gets done - it can be done well and it can be a complete train-wreck. I think that it can be difficult to do it well, which is why authors should be cautious.

    My own experiences are varied - I often get nice emails from authors thanking me for the review - typically there isn't any comment about the content. Sometimes an author will leave that comment at the review itself, which is also fine. It gets tricky when it goes further.

    I'll point to two examples on my blog -
    in this review, Scott Bakker commented a bit and then discussion exploded. It was good, healthy discussion, but at such a high-level that I'm guessing that 99.9% of readers couldn't really follow it (myself included).

    In this 'review', the author started constructive and degraded into petty insults. It was linked a few times as an example of why authors shouldn't comment on reviews. I definitely consider it an example of #reviewcommentfail.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Scalzi's commentary re: YA award winning books is perfectly noted. I'm still not sure why there is a prevailing preference for books suitable for that particular demographic to be forced into the back seat. "Gritty realism" equals better/best? It's becoming too formulaic.

Neth said...

-agreed

John Ottinger III (Grasping for the Wind) said...

and your contribution is made of funny! Everyone seems to love it.

Neth said...

thanks John

Greg Wilson said...

Holy cow--I just saw the comments section about the Carole McDonnell review, and all I can say is, uh...wow. That's about as unprofessional a reaction as you can get, and I give you full credit for staying extraordinarily polite in the face of the sarcasm and snark. Obviously I hope you enjoy The Third Sign, but as an author I hereby promise not to get into an argument with you, on your own review site (!), about what you did and didn't like about the book when you review it. You're doing authors and readers a service by reviewing books thoughtfully, and that's the bottom line.

Neth said...

-Greg, in general, I'm happy to have authors comment here on reviews of their work or elsewhere. Thankfully, that one is an anomaly. I simply stopped responding when I no longer had 'nice' things to say - unfortunately, it went on a bit elsewhere before finally dying the death it deserved.

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