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Sharing and ranking my reviews

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

Back when I started doing reviews, I shared them by email with some friends and other people who asked to be put on the list after seeing other things I emailed out for PolyWogg Trivia and PW-Humour. I was an one-man GoogleGroups of sorts.

I had dreams of becoming semi-famous as an online blogger for movies. I tried posting a few reviews to various sites, and a site called Ottawa FilmCan loved my reviews — free content for them! So when studios offered them “press passes” for some premiere, they gave one to me. I went to the theatre, got in for free, and sat in a decent row where five of the seats said “reserved for press”. Me, with a press pass for a movie? Cool. I didn’t get a lot of free passes, but just enough that it remained a rush each time.

At the time, I was going to the movies fairly regularly, mostly by myself, and I tried to go to some premieres several times a year. So my reviews would show up within a day or two of a premiere. Sometimes I could even post them on the Friday night after seeing the 7:00 p.m. show. It was fun, and started posting my review links to IMDB.com as well, at a time when there weren’t a lot of people doing that. You couldn’t post directly, just your link, and online review sites tended to ONLY accept professional reviewers like Siskel and Ebert. There was no Rotten Tomatoes site and nobody had thought yet about collating reviews or ratings from the unwashed masses.

I moved into doing some book reviews too, or more accurately, moved into actually sharing them by something other than email, and when Amazon went live, I thought, “Hey, I could do book reviews for THEM!”. At the time, anyone with more than 100 or so reviews up was almost guaranteed to be in the top 20 reviewers on the site, and they were only soliciting and accepting book reviews at the time (not product reviews). I posted 50 or so and made it in the top 100 list for reviewers.

I had dreams of eventually getting books for free from publishers, as well as movies as screeners on DVD. But it’s a young person’s game, so to speak, before life intervenes and sucks your free time. You need to not only produce extensively to attract interest, you also have to do a lot of self-promotion and marketing. I couldn’t sustain that level, nor did I have much interest in the life of what people now do as celebrity Youtubers and social media stars even if it was on a much smaller scale. I had no entrepreneurial drive to turn it anything more than a hobby to guarantee those ongoing perks.

Over the last ten years, I’ve focused on my blog, and did occasional reviews when I got around to it. I managed to go through all my old book reviews, format them for the new site, and even write another 50 or so. I expanded to Amazon.CA when the Canadian site opened, and then expanded outward to lots of sites. I really don’t have a strong reason why at this point, but I post to Amazon (Canada, US), Indigo, Kobo, Ottawa Public Library (added recently), Barnes and Noble, Library Thing, Good Reads and Google. I did Shelfari for awhile too, but alas, it died. And as always, my own website. I’m not after free books or screeners (although I wouldn’t say no to the latter), but I love when people comment on my reviews to agree or disagree. People around the world that I don’t even KNOW. Still a bit of the rush of when I used to get press passes. Maybe some sort of external validation thing, I guess.

As I said, I ranked high on Amazon.com early on and even stayed there for a time when I had less than 50 in total, but that was solely based on number of reviews. Over time, people started posting reviews of limited length (i.e. “Good book, you should read”) which are worthless in my view. There are RABID onliners who have views about those types of reviews, and from both ends of the spectrum — many who think (as I do) that it hardly qualifies as a review as it doesn’t tell you anything other than “Yum” for a restaurant or recipe vs. others who think it qualifies as censorship or snobbery to put any limits on what constitutes a review. Regardless, Amazon changed up the algorithms eventually based on whether people rated a review as “helpful” or not.

Recently, I got curious though, as I passed the 125 review mark for my book reviews. Where do I rank now?

It took me a bit to find the reviewer ranking in my Amazon profiles, but I am at the 400K (!) position on Amazon.com and 19K on Amazon.ca. A far cry from any “top” positions. However, that is not surprising since I tend to rate older books, not new releases, which means very few people are going to see them shortly after a book’s release and click “helpful” (you get the most clicks for that when there are less than 10 reviews, particularly when I do a decent review of some length compared to the “read it last week” reviews, which don’t tend to get many “helpful” votes).

I can’t seem to find a list of how I’m doing in terms of raw numbers anymore though. When I review the list of “top reviewers” now though I see that the list varies considerably in how many reviews they have. Some have as few as a couple of hundred, some as many as 10K. However, when I look at the 10K ones, their reviews are almost always REALLY short, four stars and above, and some of the first to ever appear. Yeah, cuz that seems legit. Particularly for accounts active less than at least five years.

It’s one of the complaints about Amazon reviews, how the integrity has been compromised over the years by scammers and if I go to the Top Reviewers Hall of Fame area, there are a number who are listed who now have ZERO votes and ZERO reviews. Why? Almost all of them have deleted their reviews in disgust, or to monetize them elsewhere themselves, or in rare occasions, because Amazon killed their accounts! But I digress. I only have 120+ reviews on Amazon US and about 150+ on Amazon Canada, with the difference being that Amazon Canada also includes some product reviews (electronics, etc.), all verified purchases. For my books, while most of my ebook purchases come from Amazon, not all of them do. Some are just library loans, but I still post the review everywhere.

Over at Good Reads, they also go by “votes” on your reviews, but those numbers are driven by two things. First, it helps to give your reviews as early as possible for new releases so that people considering a book will see your review in the first five or six — get your review in early, and they’ll upvote you, same as on Amazon.

However, second, Good Reads encourages you to link to other people on the site — i.e. creating friend links like on FB — and a lot of them find those friends through Twitter-like reciprocity…they “like” anybody they can find and are liked back. Or they interact through discussions. Either way, they “link” to each other and thus any review one of them does, it instantly generates eyeballs and clicks. Think of it as a way of using the site to create your own following. Amazon doesn’t really do that in the same way, but Good Reads does.

Many of the top 20 reviewers on Good Reads have maxed out their account with 5000 friends. The lead, a woman named Emily, has 10K followers on her page on FB too. That requires not only effort to sustain but also a lot of effort at self-promotion, as I mentioned earlier. More power to her, but not my cup of tea. As a measure of her power, she has 500K votes on Good Reads, with the person in number 2 position being less than 300K. Wow. And she has that following from ~1500 reviews. I don’t know if all of her reviews are as long as the few I sampled, but she has a breezy style and doesn’t seem to post short ones…she talks about the book in some length, putting up > 200 books a year. The Top Canadian, Lola, read about 250 books in 2018, with 160K votes over the years. My ranking is so low, I don’t even register, but I don’t self-promote either. Hmm, I should probably think about that a little. Even if I just put my links on my blog too (I’ve recently started using their API to gather the book image and then link to the individual review overall).

Over at Chapters, I can’t seem to find a list of Top Reviewers. Heck, it’s even difficult to FIND my profile to see that I have 89 reviews with a whopping — wait for it — six votes. Yeah, pretty sure that’s not going to lead to any recognition. 🙂 On their sister site, Kobo, I can’t even find a list of my reviews nor any rankings. I pulled up one of my old reviews, and it doesn’t even let me click on my name to show me ANY info if I wanted to see other reviews by the same person. That is a huge missed opportunity for them.

For Barnes and Noble, they’ve linked their paperback and NOOK reviews, same as Amazon has with Kindle, and like Chapters, it’s almost impossible to track reviews of any one reviewer. I suppose I could get to it through a complicated Google Search of the site. I can’t even find out how many reviews I have posted there, and I wrote them!

Over at Google Books, it’s the same thing. I can see my individual reviews (i.e. if I go to a book I already reviewed), but there is no easy way to see all my reviews nor for others to see my profile. There are opportunities for upvoting, but it doesn’t seem to track it in any way.

Library Thing is a lot like Good Reads, but not as well developed for interactivity and rankings. I am not thrilled with the interface at all, including how to add books to my list in order to review them quickly, but that may just be a simple workflow tweak I haven’t seen yet. The site does however give a lot of stats about the books in your “library” and different ways to sort and see the data.

Finally, last but not least, I started sharing my reviews with the Ottawa Public Library. I have 145 “community credits”, which you get for doing various things like rating a book or submitting a comment (i.e. a review). Can you DO anything with credits? No, but it’s a bit of gamification I guess. I don’t see anyway to share my lists though as anything other than an RSS feed. And no way to search across other feeds.

For movies and TV, the world is simpler. I only post at 6 sites:

  • Internet Movie Database (IMDB): TV series reviews and rating, TV episode reviews and ratings, movie reviews and ratings;
  • The Movie Database (TMDB): TV series reviews and ratings, TV episode ratings, movie reviews and atings;
  • Rotten Tomatoes: TV season rating and review, movie review and rating;
  • MetaCritic: TV season rating and review, movie review and rating;
  • TV.COM: TV series reviews and ratings, TV episode ratings;
  • TVFanatic: TV episode ratings;

And I have absolutely NO idea about rankings within those sites.

I won’t get famous, that’s for sure. But I like doing it.


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A PolyWogg Reading Challenge for 2019

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

I have been wanting to do a reading challenge for some time now, and each year I think I’m going to do the Good Reads one (with a 50 book pledge, for instance). But I feel the approach of just counting books is “off” somehow, like a raw number isn’t really what I’m talking about. Would I feel twice as good if I read 50 books instead of 25? What about classics, should I only be counting classics? Is there a way to somehow add gamification to the mix?

Or when it comes right down to it, is all I’m hoping to do is keep track of the books I do read and actually get around to reviewing them? My “to be reviewed” pile is more virtual than real, but is still quite large.

What am I trying to do by participating in a Reading Challenge? I thought I would look at a bunch, see which ones appealed to me, and work backwards to figure out why. Somebody over at GirlXoXo (yes, that’s actually the name, and they ranked high in the Google search results so might as well start with them!) has compiled a list of 2019 reading challenges, so I thought I would wander through the list.

What’s out there?

The big list as of the time of review has some 88 different types of challenges in it, and dozens more in the comments, so let’s see what I find…

  1. Pre-curated lists — Some of the lists pull from various Book of the Week/Month/Year lists, bestsellers or award winners that were generated by someone else (i.e. someone else made all the lists, the Reading Challenge is to pull some books off those various lists and read them);
  2. Location — Either written in or taking place in a specific city, country, continent, planet, or in space;
  3. Genre lists — Young adult, mystery, romance, fantasy, adventure, treasure, time travel, science fiction, coming of age, mythology, banned books, biography, historical fiction, alt-fiction, cozy,music, nonfiction, classics, “harder books”, art and creativity, dystopian, humour, multiple themes over the year, etc;
  4. Origin — Books that were given to you, already in your library, borrowed from someone, borrowed from a library, found on Project Gutenberg, self-published, etc;
  5. Series-based — All of a series, first in a series, next in a series, complete a trilogy, only backlists, etc.;
  6. Time-based — By seasons, decades, birthdays, centuries;
  7. The Title — First letter, or includes a word from a list (like a colour or a season), alliterative, three words long, etc;
  8. Adaptation — Something that was turned into a TV show or movie, or vica versa;
  9. Occupations — Police, detective, librarian, etc., etc., etc.;
  10. Length — Really short or really long, or everywhere in between;
  11. Formats — Paper, audio, or digital? Finals or ARCs?;
  12. The Author — Alphabetical, gender, diversity, everything by one author, only dead authors, only new authors, etc.;
  13. Named lists — Specific set of authors and/or books.

Some of the Challenges aimed for a specific schedule i.e. Month 1 was Book X, while others were more “a bunch of categories / checkboxes to complete over the course of the year”. Some of them add in gamification elements for sub-challenges (mini, weekly, monthly, quarterly). And others created little “bingo” cards to help encourage progress.

What appeals to me?

It sounds strange, but I really like the idea of gamification. Something like the bingo card approach that lets you have built-in mini-successes like a full-line, four corners, two lines, a row or a column, etc. And in the end, you get your full card. And, not for nothing, the Card approach works out to about 25 books for the year, i.e. one every two weeks with two weeks “off”. I’ll hit 25 books by the end of the first quarter, probably, but will they fit the card? That’s the REAL question. So I’m going to go with a bingo-style card.

From the broader list, I do like the idea of pulling from some pre-curated lists. I tried to create a master list for myself a few years ago using a number of “award” lists that were done — The Guardian, NYTimes, a bunch of others of the “Top 100” books of all time sort of thing. Plus I used some mystery award winners (Shamus, Anthony, Macavity, etc.). I almost caved when I found a fantastic website called The Greatest Books, which basically is a compilation of 119 OTHER lists of great books, and was just going to use their combined list, but since their combined list has 2073 titles in it, I thought I might stick to subsets.

I wasn’t that thrilled at first with the idea of an “origin” list (i.e. where did you get the book?) but as I thought about it, it grew on me. I do have a couple of books given to me that I haven’t gotten to yet, so an extra nudge would be good. Plus ones that are in my library in the “to be read” pile, some from the library, and I love the idea of something from Project Gutenberg.

In terms of genres, I’ll pretty much read anything but I do want to boost a couple of non-fiction titles, and I’ll cover mystery out the wazoo without even trying, but I might as well have a couple “better” ones on there. Series are too easy, I eat those for breakfast, lunch, dinner and several snacks in between.

I also like the ones that are alphabet-based…pretty easy to address, I think, so title and author are easy to add. Not sure the diversity ones work, as the “classifications” are a bit nebulous at times and I worry about the real metrics behind the approach. Almost like a social conscience quota — oh, good, you’re not a racist, you read an “author of colour”…I mean, wtf? This is 2019, not 1919, right?

My bingo card

As you’ll see, BINGO doesn’t quite work for me, even though I know it’s traditional, so I changed it to READS. And while I was originally thinking some books could show up in more than one place, I think they should be unique cells that get us to 25 in total for the year. Here are the explanations of the 25 cells:

  • Under the E:
    1. A book that was given to you;
    2. A book whose author’s name (first or last) starts with A, B, C, D, E, F, or G;
    3. A mystery novel that won one of the many mystery awards, such as an Agatha, a Shamus, a Macavity, an Edgar, or an Hammett;
    4. A book whose author’s name (first or last) starts with O, P, Q, R, S, or T; and,
    5. A book that was bought in a real bricks and mortar bookstore;
  • Under the A:
    1. A non-fiction book, something more general in nature (not a business or self-help book), perhaps biographical, learning, or simply factual;
    2. A book recommended by a friend;
    3. Any book of your choosing — this is a reader’s choice / free square;
    4. A book from either the Modern Library’s Fiction or Non-fiction lists; and,
    5. A non-fiction self-help (or business) book.
  • Under the D:
    1. A book borrowed from the library;
    2. A book whose author’s name (first or last) starts with H, I, J, K, L, M, or N;
    3. A book that is humourous, perhaps satirical, comedy, or biographical;
    4. A book whose author’s name (first or last) starts with U, V, W, X, Y or Z; and,
    5. A book from somewhere online, like Project Gutenberg (United States, Canada, or elsewhere), the library, or even Amazon / Google / etc;

If you don’t particularly like mysteries, feel free to replace the AMATEUR DETECTIVE (under the R), MYSTERY AWARD WINNER (under the E), and FORMAL DETECTIVE (under the S) with suitable protagonists and awards for the genre of your choosing.

Let me know in the comments if you’re participating, and how you’re doing! I’ll post updates back to this page for my own reading through-out the year.


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Falling in love again

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  
Back when I was a wee lad, in the home country don’t you know (well, Peterborough, Ontario, population at the time around 55K), I ordered books from the Scholastic Book Club. I loved the SBC order forms, and frequently started out with 20 or 30 books I wanted, and had to whittle down my order to only one or two. One time, something I had ordered wasn’t available, and they gave me a credit plus a grab bag of three free books.
 
One of those free books was part of the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series. Eventually growing to 42 books, the series was in its late teens volumes, maybe early 20s, but I think teens.
 
I fell in love for the first time, partly as the lead investigator was about my age, my size, and smarter than most of his friends. I had read some Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and I would go on to read Sherlock Holmes, Tom Swift, Rick Brant, the Bobbsey Twins, the Happy Hollisters, Louis L’Amour out the wazoo, Travis McGee, dozens of other series. Including my favorite “adult” series, all by Warren Murphy.
 
But the Three Investigators were my first true love of a series. I tracked the others down. Some through the library, most through the Trent University Book Store and a Coles store in the Peterborough Square. Then I found a bookstore on George Street in Peterborough, a rather small shop with a mix of used and new. And they carried the new 3I series books. Every couple of months, I would find a new one. I didn’t know the business model, but the authors were all on contract. Four or five in total, I think, most of whom got paid relative peanuts to write-for-hire i.e. no royalties, just paid to write in the series.
 
I have no idea how they licensed Alfred Hitchcock’s name, and eventually they had to deal with his death (the premise was just as Dr. Watson would “introduce” and tell the Holmes’ stories, Alfred Hitchcock would “present” the 3Is’ stories and the intros to the book were supposedly by AH).
 
Eventually the stories petered out, and it took awhile even to find the last couple. One or two of them I actually had to order, an unheard of idea back in 1980 or so for my pre-teen life.
 
Later, they tried to release an “update” to the series, with the kids no longer 10-12 but mid-teens. The stories were fine, but the characters were nothing like the earlier versions, more like kids with the same names. Pretenders, not the real McCoy.
 
It has been said that you can never fall in love again for the first time, but actually I can. I’ve started reading The Secret of Terror Castle, Three Investigators Book 1 to Jacob. I feared it would be too mature for him, but he’s following the story just fine. In retrospect, a ghost story premise is probably not the best of ideas since he thinks there are ghosts in our house and monsters in our basement, but I know the ending and think he’ll be okay with it. Think any episode of Scooby Doo and you can guess the outcome.
 
Last week and again this week, I’ve been reading to him here and there. We’re about halfway through book one. What I really want to know? If he’ll want to read Book 2 on his own when I’m done, or will want Daddy to keep reading to him. Either way, it’s nice to feel the love in the air.
 
Of course, I also have Artemis Fowl and Percy Jackson on deck at some point too. Not quite ready for Harry Potter, but he’s got time. There are 41 other books to go.
 

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Really? Tips to read more?

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by 5

One of my yearly goals that frequently reoccurs is to make time to read. Or simply to read more. So when I saw a link to an article about tips to “help you spend more time reading and finish books faster” (Source: 11 tips and tricks to make yourself read more), it seemed like a great potential resource. But when I read it, I couldn’t stop laughing at the suggestions. Maybe if you were a non-reader, but as a reader looking to carve out more time, they seemed hilarious to me.

1. Never leave home without a book — it says this is inconvenient if you don’t have a bag or purse to carry it in. Really? *I’m* a reader…half of my travel accessories are built around being big enough to carry both paper books and e-readers. I have small bags, medium bags, large bags. When I travel, I have large bags with enough room in them to carry my smaller bags for traveling around with once I get there. What reader doesn’t either have a bag if they are still a Luddite only reading paper or an ebook app (or five) on their digital devices?

2. Track your reading progress — Under the heading of “what gets measured, gets done”, here’s the thing … every second you spend TRACKING is a second you are not READING. Hello???? I want to read, not learn an app. However, tracking is important for shaming others who don’t read. If you don’t have the stats, you can’t humiliate others near as well.

3. Join a book club — book clubs are many things. But an incentive to read is rarely one of the most consistent. Reading is something YOU DO BY YOURSELF. You READ to READ, not so you can leverage it for more social interactions that will take you away from READING. On the other hand, if you’re low on your monthly quota of rich snacks, snooty acquaintances, and cheap wine, a book club might be for you!

4. Only read what you’re into — I’m sorry, that’s not how readers are wired. I read stuff I love. I read stuff I hate. I read stuff written on bathroom walls, graffiti on public buildings, the tags on mattresses, labels on cereal boxes, the name of the manufacturer of eye test charts when I’m waiting in the optometrist’s office. Read what I’m *into*? I’m INTO EVERYTHING — I’m a READER.

5. Knock out a few pages wherever and whenever you can — oh, you sly dog you. Books are like heroin or cocaine. You don’t get to just have a taste to take the edge off, you devour, you dive, you lose yourself in them until social relationships crumble around you because you were reading, lost track of time, and accidentally showed up 3 hours late to a wedding. Your own.

6. Read while you exercise — One of my favorites. I absolutely will read when I exercise. Or, more likely, I’ll exercise when I’m done reading. Which is when I finish reading every book ever written. Twice.

7. Read before bed — Really? Does this ever work out for anyone? I’m a READER, not a sleeper. This is how you ended up missing work the day after Harry Potter #4, 5, 6, and 7 came out. Cuz you were READING the night before, in bed, and stayed up for HOURS.

8. Get in tight with a book nerd — Here’s the thing. Book nerds have no friends. Well, not organic friends anyway. They have lots of paper friends. That’s why they’re BOOK NERDS — they don’t like PEOPLE!  Kind of hard to make friends with people who see you as an impediment to their continued reading.

9. Don’t read a bunch of things at one time — See point 4. I read EVERYTHING at once. If I accidentally leave a book at home, I’m on to the next book. I’m a reading ‘ho, I’ll become mentally intimate with anything with lines of text. Sometimes several partners a day. And when I’m done, I toss them aside like yesterday’s business, and I’m on to the next one! Sure, once in awhile, I’ll reminisce about my favorites, savour a particular experience, but the high fades like store-bought love often does, and I’m jones-ing for the next contact.

10. Find or make a quiet place — Quiet? Who needs quiet? I need a BOOK, after that the world disappears. Walls could crumble, buildings could fall, and I’d still be wondering what the Queen of Hearts is going to say or do next.

11. Couple it with something you love — Great idea. How do I couple reading with reading?

Maybe, after all, that article wasn’t meant for the likes of me…

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My 2016 Reading Challenge

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

Each year, I set reading goals for myself, but usually not very specific i.e. 25 books, which I blow through in a few months of binge-reading. But I don’t say in advance “these 25 books”, as my goal is usually “more”, to make time for reading. And then I do, with a binge mentality.

A year ago, I read through a whack of Robert B. Parker and Sue Grafton novels. Somewhere around 60 I think, in about three months. Just plowed through them. Binge reading. One of the downsides to an e-reader is that I finish one and immediately start on the next in the series. Narnia, Artemis Fowl, Spenser, Kinsey, all grist for the reading mill.

Yet I have also wanted to “improve” my reading selections, with some from a long list of award winners or books recommended by friends, or even just great classics. I read Dracula that way, merely because I had never read it before and it’s such a classic tale that has survived in countless forms. This year, while perusing some other reading challenges, I decided I would be VERY specific as to what I was going to read, up to and including the exact books or series I would finish.

With at least one per author whose last names start with each letter of the alphabet. And my Alphabet Reading Challenge is now set. For most letters, I had numerous to choose from. In other cases, only one or two (hello Q!). The final list includes:

  • award winners from Time Magazine, Guardian, etc., all of whom regular compile “best of” lists;
  • recommendations from friends when I started making my list;
  • category award winners like mystery writers for Edgars, Shamus, and Agathas; and,
  • national awards like Man Booker, Governor General, Pulitzers, etc.

Which means the final list for this year is a bit eclectic with a broad mix of titles to keep it interesting. Some of them I’ve even read before, but it’s been a long time, so I’m going to read them again.

  1. Margaret Atwood – The Blind Assassin
  2. Lawrence Block – Writing the Novel: From plot to print to pixel
  3. Paulo Coelho – O Alquimista (The Alchemist)
  4. Fyodor Dostoyevsky – Crime and Punishment
  5. Marian Engel – Bear
  6. William Faulkner – The Sound and the Fury
  7. Diana Gabaldon – Outlander series
  8. William H. Hallahan – Catch Me, Kill Me
  9. Kazuo Ishiguro – The Remains of the Day
  10. Donald Jack – Three Cheers for Me
  11. Stuart Kaminsky – A Cold Red Sunrise
  12. Harper Lee – To Kill a Mockingbird
  13. Gabriel Garcia Marquez – 100 Years of Solitude
  14. Vladimir Nabokov – Lolita
  15. George Orwell – 1984
  16. Terry Pratchett – Discworld
  17. Paul Quarrington – Whale Music
  18. J.K. Rowling – Harry Potter series
  19. J.D. Salinger – Catcher in the Rye
  20. Leo Tolstoy – War and Peace
  21. John Updike – Rabbit series
  22. Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez – The Dirty Girls Social Club
  23. E. B. White – Charlotte’s Web
  24. Lu Xun – Diary of a Madman and Other Stories
  25. Richard Yates – Revolutionary Road
  26. Carlos Ruiz Zafón – Shadow of the Wind

By my rough count, that’s actually about 51 books when you include the series. Not sure I can do all of them this year, but I’m sure going to try.

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Another reader`s preference for paper format

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

I find most of the articles on the net about ebooks vs. paper to be wrong-headed and mostly silly. Passionate paper people who claim that anyone using an e-reader to be woefully uninformed, of low culture, and possibly impotent vs. all digital, all the time people who claim anyone reading paper is clearly a Luddite. Personally, I don’t care the format. Paper, ink, e-ink, pixels, back of a napkin, side of a serial box, pamphlet, newspaper, ceiling of a dentist’s office…I’ll read anything anywhere anytime. And usually it doesn’t take much time before I disconnect from the physical format and immerse myself in the story. So when I saw yet another “I’m going to read paper” post, I just about blew past it with a yawn. However, I didn’t, I clicked, and I find Michael Hyatt’s take kind of interesting (Why I’m Putting Ebooks on the Shelf for 2016 – Michael Hyatt).

One thing he notes that for him, “e-books are out of sight and out of mind” whereas the paper books loom in front of him on the shelf waiting to be read, and reminding him to read. Kind of an interesting idea, I think, partly because I have found the same at times. I carry my e-reader with me, but if I don’t physically “see” it, I often grab my tablet or something else first. He also finds the physical stack comforting when he’s done reading them…I see his point, but the concern with a library overwhelming the house negates that pleasure pretty quick for me.

A second item I like is that he finds the bookmarking and taking of notes less effective for him, something he enjoys doing easily with physical books. I certainly find that for non-fiction, less concerned with it for fiction.

The third item that resonated with me was about how he doesn’t get the same sense of accomplishment when he finishes an e-book as a paper book. I have found that too…in paper, I close the book. I might literally feel a sense of closure, but it’s also a moment to reflect for a second or two on what I have read, to savour the ending, to digest the story arc. On my e-book reader, particularly if I’m reading a series, I will go on to the next one almost immediately and be well into Chapter 1 without taking the time to really savour the flavour of the previous meal. That’s not really about the e-book though, that’s about my personal reading style with e-books. Nothing would stop me from savouring it the way a closing of a book does.

Sure, he also argues that e-books don’t engage the senses, there’s lower retention and comprehension, etc., and most of the science around it is complete crap, so I’m ignoring those points. I also find no resonance with arguments about more easily distracted by e-mail or games on tablets, etc. — when I’m reading, I’m reading. Earthquakes don’t distract me. I don’t even pretend to understand his complaints about more difficulty navigating though.

Yet, as I said, I`m glad I clicked. Those three points were interesting, and quite different from what most people write on the subject.

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A life spent reviewing…RIP Harriet Klausner

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

I was saddened to read today that Amazon’s most prolific reviewer, Harriet Klausner, passed away at age 63. (The woman who wrote 31,014 Amazon book reviews and upended the Internet, dead at 63 – The Washington Post).

I met Harriet through the Dorothy-L newsgroup back in the late 1990s. I confess that I didn’t particularly like her style of review, a little too positive without enough critique and a little too pun-laden for my tastes. She almost always posted positive reviews, partly as she said that unless the book was good, she didn’t read past page 50, and sometimes not even that far. I admired her dedication to writing and posting the reviews. And, like anyone who posts away, and in such a prolific fashion, you get the fans and the haters, sometimes in equal measures.

The fans were obvious. Legions of people read her reviews and followed her missives; publishers included her gushes on the covers of book-jackets. The haters were equally legendary, often emboldened by finding other skeptics. Most of their popular criticisms of her had little resonance with me.

They questioned how one person could read so many books so fast. I too could read 3-4 books in a day if I had the time, and have done so many times. I don’t do it very often, and it has to be a certain type of book — serials, procedurals, Travis McGee sized novels, etc. Lots of YA. My record from my mis-spent youth was seven Three Investigator stories in a go, and from my adult years, 5 Kinsey Millhone stories in a go. I don’t recommend it, as they all blend together. So I had no trouble believing she was reading them all although as with most speed-readers who are not photographic-readers, retention becomes an issue even within hours of finishing the book. Even Harry Potter, for example — many people spent hours engrossed in the pages over several days; I read the fourth one (the first big one), in a single go, one day. It’s an immersive-type experience, but there’s little time to savour the flavour before it’s done. It’s almost like fast food instead of a gourmet meal. If I went into full skim-read mode, I could finish the first one in about 1.5 to 2 hours. And, if I was really into it, I could skim read 10 books in a day. Not my idea of fun, but to each their own.

They questioned the validity of her review, often citing the fact that her reviews were short, relatively content free, and error-prone. I find those same “errors” to be more reminiscent of someone who skim-reads tons of books, then sits down to review and finds that the details aren’t as sharp as they were when she finished the book. Jim becomes John; Mike becomes Martin. I have the same problem when I’m reviewing TV episodes — if I don’t do the review right after the episode, i.e. as soon as it ends, I find it really hard to go back and write the one-line tweet review even four episodes later. They just all blend together. Add in the fact that her reviews weren’t really reviews, they were short blurbs, about the equivalent of a dust-jacket and dashed together in 3 minutes with no going back to ensure she got the name right, etc. Not my style, but she was a perfect example of a type of internet dweller — the prolific commenter, writer, reviewer who cares more about writing a review and posting it to share their opinion than proof-reading, editing, tweaking, fact-checking. It’s a quick review, not painstaking journalism.

Harriet is, in my respects, the opposite of me when it comes to writing reviews. She could dash off 150 words and consider herself done, sending it out into the world. My reviews have detailed structures — plot / premise, what I liked, what I didn’t like, a summary, info about publisher, year, stars, series, tags — and I’ve agonized over things to include or not. I’ve spent 2 hours reading a short novel, and another hour writing the review to get it down to 300 words that I think are fair, reasoned, pithy but substantive. I’m anal. If it goes out the door with my name on it, I fuss. The result? Really low volume of reviews. I have tons of books on my TB Reviewed list because they are just too time consuming. I can’t let go.

So while I could never switch to Harriet’s approach (short, formulaic, and in some cases error-laden), I wish I had her laissez-faire approach. It’s just a short review, one of hundreds. For me, even if people don’t agree with my review, I hope they find it helpful. Thorough even. In a word, professional, which falsely suggests that I think Harriet wasn’t…in actuality, I think it was just a different standard of self-analness.

A frequent complaint was also that she *gasp* profited from her amateur reviews. She probably did, in at least four ways, but not in the way most people assume. There’s no evidence, ever, that she “sold” reviews, so let’s ignore that particular claim — people assume she must have been selling them to do so many, since why would she do it for free, but that was how her brain was wired. And is likely linked to the first form of profit — there is a huge selfish thrill to having people read your reviews. I love it. It’s addictive. I suspect, without knowing of course, that this was her main drive, and if so, she profited immensely. 30,000 reviews? Millions of people reading her reviews. Secondly, she was an Amazon affiliate too I believe. So if they clicked on her review site and got to Amazon to buy it, she would have got a few pennies if something sold. Is it enough to live on? Hardly. But it might pay for a few books a year. Third, she got TONS of free books from publishers. As an executive mentioned back in ’05, it was a way to get yourself reviewed when the big reviewers didn’t have space for you. Harriet would read just about anything. And did! Plus, it was risk-free — if she didn’t like it, she would stop reading it early, and not rate it. If she finished it, you would get at least 3 stars and probably 4 or 5. Again, risk free.

The fourth way she “profited” was how she got into some hot water with people, and understandably so. All those free books? She sold them off used on used book websites. And I totally understand why some people would say, “Wait, I sent that to you for free, you can’t sell it and make money!”. I get that, makes sense. But I do know there’s a larger spectrum at play, another side so to speak, which is part of what was apparently stressing her out — she was throwing them out, didn’t have room to keep them all. A pretty large volume. It’s hard to imagine a former librarian not finding that incredibly traumatic on its own. Plus, lots of people said, “Hey, shouldn’t you give those away instead?” so that they wouldn’t end up in landfill. Plus another group of more mercantile types who said, “No way, don’t give them away, sell them, you did all that work, you should get something for it!”.

Taking books out of the equation for a second, partly as it is so visceral to the soul of a reader, this is to me just human nature — some people can get quite lively about whether you throw something out like a used toaster vs. e-recycling it vs. donating it to Value Village vs. trying to sell it online. In that vein, I have a used microwave. Works fine, a few years old, we bought a bigger more powerful one. But the old one works great. Do I want to sell it? Not really. I’d be far happier to give it to someone who needs it than sell it, but I have family and friends who think that is almost heresy. Equally, I have 3000 books I need to get rid of — if someone would take them for free and use them, I’d happily give them to them. They represent thousands of dollars of my investment, so there are TONS of people who are aghast that I’m not trying to have a book sale of my own, or donating to the library (they won’t take them, too many and too old) or a host of other options because “Well, they’re worth money.” I personally wouldn’t feel comfortable selling ARCs, but I can understand that not everyone has the same reservations as me. I hate the idea of the profit, but I love the idea they’re not being recycled. I wonder if the people would feel differently if they were sold, but all proceeds went to a literacy charity?

None of these criticisms really resonate with me, because in the end, it comes down to something far simpler for me.

Some people liked her, some people loathed her. Yet for the authors of the books for the 31000 reviews she did, they generally got a 4-star review and some positive words about their story posted by someone who didn’t know them, wasn’t related to them, and didn’t profit much (if at all) from doing the review.

I didn’t always agree with her, I didn’t know her that well. But I’m saddened she’s gone from the review world…

She came, she read, she reviewed a life spent reading. There are far worse legacies.

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2015 – New areas of writing

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

The seventh item on my vaguebooking list was “07. Seven new topics”. These are new “subject areas” that I want to write about on my blog.

Pop culture is likely one of them, although it might be more narrow than that, maybe “pop culture intersecting with the news”. I didn’t comment on Jian Ghomeshi or Bill Cosby’s news items when they hit, but I loved watching people post and take sides, often looking like internet trolls in comment forums except they were posting the same comments on their own social media feeds. My take is a bit different, and is primarily about the law, and the court of public opinion vs. the court of justice or law. I may yet blog about it.

Equally, I love the law. So much so that I couldn’t become a lawyer. I’d like to take a subject area and blog about that, but I haven’t yet found my niche. It may very well harken back to my days at law school when I was working for the Ministry of Education in B.C. and focus on the law, schools, education, and children. Haven’t quite decided yet. But there’s an itch there that I’d like to scratch again.

In the realm of writing, I have three areas that are of interest to me. First and foremost is the changing nature of the business model of publishing. I’m very much in the world where “everyone must choose their own path”, and I may turn my attention again to the world of disrupted publishing. Second, I think there is a lot of general information out there about marketing of books in the modern age, but not a lot that gives a comprehensive list of “here’s everything you COULD do, choose wisely”. I started work on this at one time, and would like to go back to it. Finally, I also think there is a ripe area for a different slant on books and publishing, and that’s measuring the performance of libraries. I did some research and even some preliminary writing about three years ago, but never brought anything to fruition. I think libraries are going to come under increased fire in the digital age, and while they have a strong role to play, I don’t think many of them are telling the right story or using the right yardsticks. When they tell their story initially, they act like a community centre; when their funding is threatened, they claim critics are burning books and destroying literacy if the library goes the way of the dodo. The balance is off, and maybe I can find something I can contribute to the conversation.

In a similar vein, I’m wondering if I have something to say about charities. I feel that much of the rhetoric out there is a bit one-sided, or at times, diametrically-opposed two-sided. I know, for example, that there is not much out there giving people insights into different types of charities. I also have some questions for myself that I want answered on local basic human needs programming, and the most effective means of contributing donor dollars.

Finally, I do reviews for books, movies, TV and music, or at least my website says I do. I’ve been a slacker-doodle for my reviews, and I want to get back into them. I am not yet ready to commit to exactly what the other six categories will look like when I’m done, but I know this one pretty well. So, I commit to:

  • 24 book reviews;
  • 250 reviews of TV episodes (tweets);
  • 24 movie reviews; and,
  • 3 new reviews of Billboard year-end results.

That should keep me busy too.

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Konrath on the Mystery Writers of America

The Writing Life of a Tadpole Posted on by  

There are very few windmills that I feel strongly enough to tilt at…stupid people is one. Bullies are another. People pretending they understand policy and government, and being condescending towards others’ views — although that tends to combine both of the first two. But I have a pretty strong respect for the importance of human rights, freedom of association, etc. when they are used as swords to advance legitimate causes or shields to prevent oppression. Where the heck is this idea going? Membership in a society that basically holds itself out as representing an industry but then turning around and barring people from the industry who don’t meet their standards.

If you look back to some lovely research published in the 1980s and 90s by the Harvard Business Review, everybody thinks their job qualifies as a profession. Janitors think they’re a “profession”. Taxi drivers another. And when people of like mind and employment get together, and talk about their profession, they frequently start saying things like “Hey, that person isn’t any good, we should really have standards and block these yahoos. They’re not ‘professional’ like we are. Our ‘profession’ is slipping.”

This makes sense in some quarters where professional certification can and should be required. Doctors. Pharmacists. Optometry. Law. You want to know that the person treating you has met the requirements for their profession. But what about an author? Should they have associations with standards that bar some writers from joining?

JA Konraths’ Blog, A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing, talked about this last year, and I pegged the article for future reference. It targets the membership requirements of the Mystery Writers of America and notes that they don’t allow membership if you were “self-published”:

The MWA, an organization that was supposed to exist to help writers, seemed to exist only to sustain itself. After a few years of getting nothing back (and yes, I aired my many grievances often to board members) I simply stopped renewing. While MWA no doubt does some good things (they rightly fought the Harlequin Horizon vanity imprint, and do various workshops and community events), I felt like I was giving more than I was getting. I was helping MWA, but they weren’t helping me.
…
But the times have changed. Now it is possible for authors to circumvent the legacy gatekeepers by choice (rather than because they had no choice.) Self-pubbed authors can sell a lot of books and make some real money. Full time salary money. In my mind, that equates with being a professional.

So when MWA recently changed its submission guidelines and issued a press release, I was intrigued. Had they finally gotten the hint? Were they looking at this untapped resource of self-published writers and realizing the potential to make their organization relevant again?

Alas, no.
…
There are a lot of self-pubbed authors earning more money than a lot of MWA members. Certainly the MWA could use this new blood to teach longstanding members how to thrive in this brave, new world. And they NEED this information. MWA members have backlists and trunk novels and are getting repeatedly shafted by the Big 6.

How much could John Locke teach them about ebooks and marketing? How about 200 John Lockes, attending banquets, speaking at conventions?
…
So what would my membership requirements be if I were running the MWA?

I’d have just one. Prove that you’ve sold 5000 books. Once you do that, you’re in.

You can read the full post via A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing: MWA(BNSP) – Mystery Writers of America (But Not for the Self-Published).

A year after that post was written, why am I referring to it? Because the MWA in their infinite wisdom handed out their lovely awards recently. And guess what? Self-pubbed books didn’t qualify. Which only makes sense in that weird world of elitist gatekeepers — after all, how embarrassing would it be for a writer to win and yet not even be eligible for membership?

I’m glad people like Konrath tilt at such windmills too as this one wouldn’t rank high enough for me to do it myself. But if we look at the list of big sellers for 2012 for Amazon, I am willing to bet that Chris Culver’s The Abbey is probably better than most of the ones that were traditionally published. And yet wouldn’t have been eligible. I’ll do a review sometime (bit behind on those) but the story is awesome as a debut.

I am grateful that my local writers’ group doesn’t have such stringent “traditional publishing” only requirements — but then again, it is a group for writers who help other writers, regardless of where they are on the spectrum. It isn’t about validating someone’s ego when young whippersnappers are outselling them 3:1.

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