Talk about the blues
Talk About The Blues by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
The Review Blues, that is

Source: http://threeminds.organic.com
I want to talk just a little about the Lost Art of Book Reviewing. I’m bringing this up not because I haven’t gotten any reviews (I have), but because I’d like to have a lot more than I do, and I’d like to have them be a little more considered.
First of all, if you’ve read and reviewed one of my books, or any book by any author, thank you. Readers may not realize it, but reviews are the best way to repay authors. Let’s face it, unless your name is Stephen King or JK Rowling, you’re not getting rich off your writing. I make ten percent royalty on the sale of a print copy of Just Cause (retails for $14.99) and fifty percent from an ebook edition (retails for $2.99). Basically, every time someone clicks on a “buy” link, I make about a buck fifty. To replace my day job income, I’d need to sell well over a hundred books a day, which isn’t going to happen any time soon. But I can get there some day, and that requires my book to show up on more lists, and for that to happen, it needs to be reviewed a lot more.
So if you risked your 99 cents or $2.99 or even $14.99 (or free!) to download an ebook or buy a print book, and you took the time to read it, your review, good or bad, can help another prospective buyer to decide whether or not to take the same chance you did. That can translate into another sale, or five sales, or fifty sales down the road for an author. That’s a great way to pay back an author for his or her work.
Now, I’m not going to tell you how to write a review, because everyone has their own method. What I am going to do is tell you how I review books. I review everything I read – even short stories – because I want to pay those authors back for their time investment in providing me with a modicum of entertainment. Pretty much every website follows the same 5-star ranking system, whether it’s Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Sony, etc.
Star Ratings:
1 star – I reserve this exclusively for books I chose not to finish. If I give a book a 1-star rating, it is because I didn’t like it enough to invest any more time in it. Fair enough; not every reader likes every book. However, if I give a book a 1-star rating, I explain that (a) I didn’t finish the book and (b) why I dropped it. The second part is important, because I want to give other potential readers more information than just a one-star review with no text attached (which is worthless).
2 star – This is for books I finished but didn’t like. My rationale for finishing despite not liking can be due to a variety of reasons. The most common now that I have an ebook reader is a poorly-formatted ebook. Whether it’s the fault of a self-published author for either not learning how to do it properly or spending the money to make sure someone else does it properly, or the fault of a regular publisher doing a poor job, there is no excuse in my mind for poor formatting. The same goes for poor editing. An otherwise-compelling book that is poorly-edited will get a two-star rating from me. And again, I want to stress that I explain why I give the rating that I do.
3 star – This is the rating I give for a book that was produced well but left me kind of disappointed overall. If I thought it was just okay, I’ll give it a three-star. These are, in my mind, the hardest books to review, because I have to try to put my finger on what exactly it is that didn’t appeal to me. This is when I have to be at my most critical. The important thing for me to remember with a three-star review is that I did finish the book, and I did like it overall, but for whatever reason, it didn’t quite connect with me. Good writers that are meh storytellers, or meh writers that tell great stories often find themselves in this category with me.
4-star – If I liked a book, this is usually the rating I will give. When I feel the writing is good, and the story is also good, four stars are warranted. My review will generally run to praise (spoiler-free! Important not to give things away!). These are usually easy reviews to write because I liked the book, and want to tell others why they should give it a look.
5-star – I actually give these out very rarely, because it’s uncommon for me to find a book that I just can’t put down, that I talk about constantly, that I read passages aloud to people who clearly don’t care, that I think about long after finishing it. 5-star books to me are ones I wish I’d written. To me, a book with a 5-star review is and will always be one of the Best Books I Ever Read. When I review them, I heap praise on the author and the book, and I’m not shy about bubbling, because they’re worth it. Here are the five-star reviews I’ve given out over the past year (you should read these books!): Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti by Genevieve Valentine, Wild Cards by George R.R. Martin (and others), Triplanetary by E.E. “Doc” Smith, Burn Down the Sky by James Jaros, Under the Scotch Broom and Dead Wives Tales by Allison M. Dickson, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore, Santiago: A Myth of the Far Future by Mike Resnick, and Watermark by Vanitha Sankaran.
Finally, I copy and paste the review onto Goodreads, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble, since those are the three primary places where people buy and select their books. If I bought the book from Smashwords, I will also post a review there. Note: Smashwords does not currently permit you to review a book that you have not purchased from there.


February 15, 2012
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Posted by ian
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JUST CAUSE is now out for sale, and I’m doing my darndest to get everyone on the Internet to buy at least one copy. Lofty goal? Maybe, but then, so is getting a book published. Here’s the thing: New Babel Books has signed me for the first four books of the Just Cause Universe series, and I have more finished and even more planned. If you want to get to read them all, we need to get the word out across the world. Send out the signal. Shout it from the mountaintops and broadcast it on a carrier wave to stretch beyond the Matrix into the world of the Real.








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