When desperate Authors pull a boo-boo and resort to lies

[Dr. Drib]

Don't you get a bit fed up with fake reviews?

I just encountered one that MAY be fabricated by one of our own members. I won't mention a name. The author has exactly two reviews, and each one concludes by mentioning the author's full name and highly recommending it.

I'm particularly suspicious when a reviewer tells me that he couldn't put the book down. (What's unsaid is that the reader was electrocuted while holding the book. Or was it that it was written by - GASP! - one of the writer's friends? Can this actually happen? I mean, that a friend - a dear and trustworthy friend whom you trust to tell you the truth - would actually LIE to you, when in actuality your book is a big stink-a-roo, a rotting corpse?! Do these things actually happen?

Here's my recent review for a book that held me spellbound. (OK, the truth: I was actually hypnotized by Mr. Carlos Carney last week, a popular stage magician who performs here in Peru.)

"This book held me spellbound with amazement and I could not put it down. I thought the writing was very intelligible and the plot was not a complicated mess like that Mazarin guy's stuff that a lot of people supposedly read. I think they're all liars, anyway. Who would read that stuff, with hundreds of characters? I stayed up all night to finish this book. It was that great. I fully understood Dick's motives, along with Jane's understated shyness around Dick. I could find no typos like what one finds in those typical Indy novels that are now being left in hotel rooms across the country. Talk about desperate authors and their new-fangled promotional sleaziness! I didn't need a dictionary for this one, either, thank God, unlike that Mazarin guy's writing. The fact is, if you're looking for a good beach read and want to attract the ladies (I don't own a dog or a rooster), then this is the book to take with you. I highly recommend it. Oh, and in case you think I'm the author's friend, I want you to know that I've never met the guy."

[mr ploppy]

In the writing groups on Facebook someone's been advertising a review your book service. Sounds a bit daft to me, you'd just end up on the also-boughts of a bunch of losers who need to buy reviews.

[gmw]

A couple of reviews of my books seem excessive in their phrasing to my eye, but I didn't pay for them or ask for them. This experience has me less willing to automatically discard some of the reviews I've seen on other books as necessarily fake. Instead, it seems to me that some people just aren't that good at (or experienced in) writing book reviews in a way that is all that useful to potential readers. Of course I'm grateful for any reviews (good ones especially, of course, even if they are sometimes over the top), since experience has also taught me that most people don't leave any review at all, good or bad.

Not that I doubt that it happens. But if I was going to pay someone for a review think I'd want editorial control.

[rhadin]

I can't comment on the review, but I will say that I have read books that I couldn't put down. What that means to most readers, although obviously not to Dr. Drib, is that the reader picked up the book to continue reading it at every available opportunity and even stayed awake at night longer than usual trying to get in one more chapter.

No, I don't write books and no, I don't review books I have written (mainly because I haven't written any) and the very few books I do review, I have bought just like any other consumer. I make it a policy not to review on my blog any books given to me by an author.

Although it has been quite sometime since I read a book I couldn't put down (although one I am currently reading comes close, "Ravensbruck: Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women" by Sara Helm, and one I recently finished also came close, "The Darkling Child: The Defenders of Shannara" by Terry Brooks), the last I can recall being "Sentence of Marriage" by Shayne Parkinson, such books do exist and most readers actually come across a few such books in their lifetimes.

In the case of the Parkinson book, I know several people to whom I recommended the book who also found it hard to put down and return to mundane chores that need doing in the real-world. (I have no connection to and have never met Parkinson, who lives oceans away from me.)

My point is that because you haven't yet read such a book doesn't mean others haven't; all it means is that you have yet to experience the greatest pleasure a reader can have -- finding a book so whose writing and story are so compelling that the reader wishes he/she could ignore life until it was finished.

[Dr. Drib]

I think having a 'bad' review (something that doesn't gush all over the place like someone with a terminal case of the squirts), is a good and healthy thing to have.

Having Aunt Jemima or Uncle Bert [they're probably wanted by the police, anyway] write reviews for your book is a bad, bad, bad thing to have on a review page.

And speaking of bad reviews, why are so many fantasy novels (mainly from Indy writers) so horribly, horribly, horribly bad?

Another, different writer here on Mobileread - and again, he must remain nameless lest he be pelted with rotten eggs which, unfortunately, is against our Posting Guidelines [hey, but I'm working on it] - doesn't know a comma from a comma splice. Here's an example (but not an actual example) of a horrible, horrible, horrible fantasy excerpt (from a novel not yet written) along with comma splices and insipid dialogue to show you what I mean:


Turlow yawned into the night and stretched his lithe body along the banks of Lake Beageeger. The faint light from a wandering Garrgeeler lit the way for him as the dawn approached, he wondered if a Gallagel was hot on his trail, but instead a lone Gelelgeeg made a glargling sound - 'glargle, glargle' - he stood still. Yes, there it was again: the sound of a lone Gelelgeeg calling to his mate, he wondered if Sheelleg would miss him, he hoped so. He couldn't stand her constant whining, it made for a difficult sleep, but her leathery skin was an excitement that he would miss. Ah, well, he said to himself, "I must not tarry here long 'ere Lord Darwin gather his forces, thus terminating my life forthwith!"

What's up with these horrible, bad, insipid fantasy novels populating the Indy market, written by (what I would assume) are otherwise nice dude and dudette-type writers? [Think Smurfs and Smurrfette.] Huh? What's up with that?!

Pass the Bromo Seltzer, Bob, 'ere I heave a big one!

[gmw]

One question you may need to ask yourself when looking at reviews of a new release is whether the author had any control or influence over the reviews from Aunt Jemima or Uncle Bert. It is not necessarily the author's fault that relations may have put up what they thought was a helpful review.

When I look over reviews of a book, I look at the content of a selection of reviews (both good and bad). Reviews without meaningful content (in either direction) I just skip over. I imagine most people do something similar.

I'm not sure why you feel obliged to emphasise Indy writers for terrible fantasy, it seems to me that there is considerable precedent among traditionally published fantasy. The main thing that traditionally published fantasy has going for it is that at least it has been professionally edited. Which leads to the next point...

I am guessing that HarryT has the ready answer (familiar to any of us that have been here very long ) for the comma-splice issue you have raised: An author should not try to edit their own work. Having sometimes been guilty of producing run-on sentences in my own writing, I naturally cringed a little when I read your post. I imagine most of us have been guilty of this or other crimes against the currently accepted styles of grammar from time to time. This is what editors and proof-readers are for, but some will escape detection, and the author must accept responsibility for the final result.

But, I would also add that I tend to avoid explicit criticism unless the crimes are truly heinous; obvious and repeated offences that have no viable defence. There are two reasons for this reservation on my part. Firstly, what I said above about being guilty of such offences myself and knowing that some may get through to final publication. And, secondly, there can be some latitude given in acceptable styles, particularly in fiction.

See Wikipedia: Comma splice

Some English style guides consider comma splices appropriate in certain situations, such as when being poetic or with short, similar phrases.

Latitude also exists in many other circumstances with the dreaded comma, making it one of the more difficult forms of punctuation to get right. The central point with most of the latitude is that strictly correct is less important than what is clear in the context.

The vagaries surrounding commas is one reason why I prefer the term "run-on sentence" to "comma-splice". The former expresses the problem that needs to be addressed (you can pick generally pick the problem when you try to read it aloud), the latter is a technical term that doesn't do much to aid understanding.

Fiction punctuated to very strict grammar rules is going to feel quite stilted and unnatural. Which isn't trying to say it can ignore the rules, but it must know which rules are meant to be bent and when. This is why it can be important to look for outside help.

[Dr. Drib]

I would say there are probably more Indy writers out there than 'the other kinds', so that's the reason for the emphasis. Too, most Indy fiction is free or is rather cheap to purchase, making it more accessible to the masses.

I'm still waiting to read the as-yet-unpublished novel by a gorilla. It might be more readable than the trashy, horrible, revolting, disgusting example I created in my earlier post.

Poetic? --- When the writer knows exactly what he or she is doing. Certainly. I seriously doubt that the writer of the tripe I made fun of knew what he was doing.

I would suggest we all make comma splices now and then. I know I have. But I would also suggest an abundance of such errors (and other errors) compromises the readability of a text.

[gmw]

I'm not really trying to defend some of the truly appalling things that get published these days. For much of it there can be no defence, poetic or otherwise. But without being able to address real examples (and I understand why you haven't done so in this instance), any conversation about grammar is going to get a little lost. This stuff is not easy to get right. I may make fun of Harry's posts on occasion, but they are exactly correct; writers need help.

Of course, grammar isn't the only problem. Long before grammar becomes an issue the writer needs to work out whether they can write a story that someone else (other than Aunt Jemima and Uncle Bert) wants to read.

I suspect fantasy gets more than its fair share of the failures because it can be seen as the easy way in: it doesn't have to be realistic, it's fantasy; the characters don't have to make sense, it's like a dream; the rules of the world don't have to be consistent, it's magic. ... Or that's the impression much of it leaves.

Whereas I'd argue that good fantasy has many difficulties that other fiction doesn't face: There's a whole world that needs to be built, there's a whole cast of characters that probably aren't entirely human, there's a whole new set of rules that need to be consistent for the story to have any meaning, and the reader needs to be introduced to all this in a way that remains involving, entertaining and internally credible. None of this is easy. Contemporary fiction at least has the advantage of starting from something familiar to the reader, a place where the rules are already known, and the writer can use this to their advantage.

[gmw]

And while I'm on a rant about the problems on writing fantasy ...

Many writers try to cheat and get the best of both worlds. They think that because they're writing a fantasy about vampires and/or werewolves and/or wizards & witches and/or elves, they are starting from the same place as any contemporary fiction author. Unless you're writing fan-fiction, (I feel like ringing a really harsh buzzer here: ) you are Wrong! It's even more wrong now than it was not that many years ago.

Some years ago you could write a story about vampires and the reader would start with a pretty good idea of what to expect. Stick to the traditional rules and the reader would probably stay with you. But these days there are many variations, even if you limit yourself to the reasonably well know variations. So a writer of vampire fiction is at least back to raw fantasy, letting the reader know exactly what sort of vampires these ones are and what rules exist now. I might even say that the writer faces the harder battle of making sure they don't inadvertently let their reader make wrong assumptions based on some variation the writer isn't even aware of. By writing name-your-standard-mythical-species fiction you will be constantly in battle with the reader's preconceived ideas of what they should be. Some do it well, but it is yet another hurdle in the path of telling a good story.

[Pablo]

If Richard Adin says he couldn't put down a book, I know I will like it. If some author I like praises a book, I may consider reading it. If Uncle Bert recommends a book, it makes no difference to me, I don't read Uncle Bert's reviews.

Why should I read reviews by people whose tastes I don't know? For me, the blurb is more important than any review, I couldn't care less how many "five star reviews" a book gets in Amazon.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

And speaking of bad reviews, why are so many fantasy novels (mainly from Indy writers) so horribly, horribly, horribly bad?

Writing is an art and like all art, some practitioners are skilled and most are not. Why is there only one Michaelangelo or Beethoven? Why can't we all duplicate their talent level (without painting by numbers )?

There are so many bad indy writers because ebooks have lowered the entry bar to ground level. In olden, golden years of book publishing, only "talented" writers got published and before they were published they were edited, sometimes multiple times, but highly skilled editors. eBooks have lowered the entry bar to publishing so low that writers sit at their computer, type whatever comes to mind, and publish

Writers often say that today their beta readers and their writing group and the free editing they received from their kindergarten teacher is enough to ensure high quality -- professional, highly skilled mentors and editors are not needed in today's self-publishing world.

I think just the opposite is true -- highly skilled editors are needed more than ever, but writers are unwilling or unable to pay for such services. Thus, the number of poorly written books available to buy increases daily.

[rhadin]

Originally Posted by Pablo

If Richard Adin says he couldn't put down a book, I know I will like it.

Thanks, Pablo, for the vote of confidence. I'm sending karma your way .

Originally Posted by Pablo

Why should I read reviews by people whose tastes I don't know? For me, the blurb is more important than any review, I couldn't care less how many "five star reviews" a book gets in Amazon.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. I do not care about the online reviews and whether a book gets 1 star or 5 stars. There are certain reviewers I trust, mainly those in The New York Review of Books, but I buy many more books than they can review and a goodly number of the books they review are not books that interest me. I look at the description and the topic. If it appeals to me, I buy it -- but only if it is from a publisher I trust. In other words, very rarely do I buy self-published books and those must be very inexpensive.

As I have said before, I largely buy hardcover nonfiction, and although I know it is no guarantee of quality that it is published by a university press, I at least know it has been vetted by the press.

As Amazon has demonstrated over many years, its star system is not one that can be trusted. Consequently, like Pablo, I ignore it.

[Rizla]

The first step should be for an author to learn how to write. I see so many poorly written self-pubs. Often they are full of grammatical errors or dreadful faults of style. Overly-biased / disingenuously positive reviews are not going to help an unknown, starting writer if he / she hasn't developed the skills of the craft.

[gmw]

Hmmm, I found a curious example of the OP on Smashwords. 26 x 5 star reviews. Each looked different enough to start with, but when l looked through the users behind each review I found that most of them have only reviewed this one book (suspicious enough over 26 users), but several of them had reviewed one other book - all the same other book - also with 5 star reviews.

Another thing that surprised me was the discovery that Smashwords allows a user to add multiple reviews to the same book. Some of these users had reviewed the alternative book 3 times.

(I was hunting through trying to work out where my next short story might fit best in the genres, and I wondered what the hell the "Mashups" genre was supposed to be, which is where I found the above example. I'm still not sure what "Mashups" means.)

[mr ploppy]

Mashups is 2 or more genres mixed together. Like motorcycle gangs and flying saucers, or hooligan romance

But I don't think I have any ratings on Smashwords, so it's not me.