Reviews - What Goes Around, Comes Around


I’ve seen some really spiteful reviews out there in the ether, needlessly unkind words that have absolutely no relation to the work which some reviewers claim to have read, and hated. Until I began publishing, I had no idea that I was even meant to write reviews for the books I read - I guess it never occurred to me that anyone else would be interested in my opinion and perhaps that’s part of the problem. Nobody was - and now they are. In fact, an author will go to great lengths to get that reviewer’s precious opinion, in the dreadful numbers game that pushes publications further up the food chain because of the number of verified reviews.

Gutenberg Bible courtesy of Creative Commons
Wikimedia uploaded by Gun Powder Ma

Until a couple of years ago, I was happily getting books out of my local library and reading them, before just as happily returning them. The lady behind the counter would take them and put them back into the system, not even remotely interested in whether they had met my expectation or if I had failed to get beyond the first chapter. I wasn’t awfully inclined to hand them over with, ‘Thanks, that was really great, I read it in the bath,’ or, ‘I didn’t like all the expletives in that one’ (opens page to make point) ‘I don’t suppose you know what that swear word actually means...?’ She wasn’t interested in the minutiae of my reading experience, what I thought of the cover or blurb and she definitely wasn’t passing on any of my inane observations to the author.

Now we live in an age where the author is not just someone remote; that photographed gentle looking soul on the back page who wrote the book in your hand, but with whom you can have no meaningful interaction. They are accessible, their email address and website is in the back of their work, you can get in touch, compliment or abuse them and walk away largely unscathed. You can follow and un-follow them, like and unlike them, scour their lives and find out personal things about them. It’s all out there and in their eagerness to engage you, the reader, they handed it all to you on a plate in short bios, comments on Facebook, posts on Google+ and throw away comments on Twitter. You can have an opinion on what they wear, where they go and who they go with, in addition to that all important critique of their latest piece of work. You can extol or rubbish it as you so desire, depending on what mood you’re in or how much you enjoyed the thing they pulled out of their head for your pleasure alone.

Old book bindings at the Merton College Library
Picture courtesy of CC Licence Tom Murphy VII

Just scrolling down random reviews on Amazon, I can tell you now that there are some horrible things written about novels which were published with the best of intentions by good people full of hope. Things like, “Hated it. What a load of rubbish...” “Just couldn’t finish it...” “He’s mad if he thinks that’s literature...” and yes, maybe good money was spent on something that wasn’t really print ready and the author needs a bit of a kick into reality, but surely there are nicer ways to do it? I have to balance the thing out to be fair, as I also saw some really helpful comments too, “An awesome storyline but the book needs a really good editor...” “Some parts of this novel weren’t very realistic and it lost its believability for me when...”

Good on you, those awesome people who put up a review at all and bravo to those readers who, instead of ranting about their wasted 99c, actually gave some helpful pointers to the author. We’re so full of our own sense of ‘me’ as a society, that it’s suddenly become ok to say, ‘I hated that book,’ but not why. If you take something back to a shop, you give a reason if you’re expecting your money back, ‘It didn’t fit me, it didn’t look right on, it made my butt look like HMS Interloper.’ You wouldn’t get away with saying to a shop assistant, ‘I hate it. It sucks.’ If you’re unfortunate enough to get caught in the crossfire of someone else’s family dispute, they’re really quick to tell you why they don’t like that particular family member. Believe me, they can go on for hours. Anyone who’s ever watched Jeremy Kyle or in the olden days, Jerry Springer, try and mediate between two raging forces who can’t even remember how it all started, knows all about the ‘why’s’ of arguments. If you get a horrid cup of coffee and paid NZ$4 for the pleasure and have the courage to take it back to the barrista, rather than sneaking out and leaving it on the table, you can’t just say, ‘I hated that coffee,’ because they’re bound to ask you what in particular was wrong with it. So how come it’s alright to tell someone that their book sucked, in public, on the internet for all future customers to see for time immemorial, but not tell them honestly why?

I had a bad review recently and it actually rocked my confidence initially. A book that had been getting only 5* reviews from perfect strangers suddenly had this 3* thrown at it and why? Well, I honestly couldn’t tell you. There was nothing coherent about the review that gave me a clue, other than that the person just didn’t like it. That’s ok but it would have been helpful to know what in particular they didn’t like. They raved on about nonsense really, not getting parts of the plot which, when I checked again were clearly explained and accounted for and they even used the wrong name for one of the characters and misunderstood the location of the whole book. So whilst they had admittedly damaged my poor book’s stats without just cause, I had to dismiss the review as the strange ramblings of someone I would probably rather didn’t ever buy any of my novels again.

Some reviews are so downright unhelpful, it makes me wonder about the kind of people who bother to place their fingers over the keyboard and type. One novel I bought recently was ruined for me because the reviewer decided to blatantly reveal the ending. (Note to self - never read reviews when you’re half way through.) I mean, why would you do that, destroy the ending for everyone else just because you thought it was rubbish? And some of them are so littered with grammatical and spelling errors, I wonder if they are even qualified to be commenting on the quality of somebody else’s work.  

I think the moral of the story is to do what our parents told us when we were kids:

Think before you speak...only in this case, it’s think before you type.

Some salient questions before pressing ‘submit’ for that mean review:

1. Am I being deliberately personal?

2. Did I give this novel a fair go?

3. Have I been reasonable in my criticism and offered examples to back it up?

4. Have I listed at least one thing that the author got right?

5. Would I stand in front of this author and be prepared to read my review out  
    loud to them, when I can see their reaction?

If you can’t think of even one nice thing to say, then perhaps you aren’t reviewing with the right heart, but are just needlessly assassinating another person’s work for the sheer fun of it. In which case, don’t expect to be taken seriously and if you are an author trashing another author’s work, don’t be surprised when what goes around, comes right back to bite you.