Tag: book bloggers

On Amazon Reviews

John Guillen44 Comments

Do you live under a rock? No? Well then you probably know that Amazon recently started cracking down on its review system. And suddenly the world is going to end once again. I’m not entirely sure how they do it, but they’ve managed to link Amazon accounts to Facebook accounts. They use this link to see if all your Facebook friends are the ones leaving those five star reviews on your book.

Everyone and their mom seems to think this is the worst thing that’s ever happened on the internet. And once again I’m not with any of them. I’m going to ask you to be completely honest with yourself. Just be honest. Is it possible for your friends or family members to be objective in their Amazon review? Serious question. You’re probably thinking, “Well MY family members won’t say my book is good if they don’t really think it is.”

YEAH. RIGHT.

What they’ll likely do if you force them to write a review and they didn’t actually like it is they’ll give you all their feedback personally and then ease way off of the criticism in their review. And likely add a star or two. And if you say that your friends and family are different from this, then you might want to compare the reviews from people you don’t know to those written by people you do. Just do it. (like Nike.)

I mean, have you seen the reviews written by book bloggers? They review every book they read and somehow all the books are four or five star reads. Really? They can’t even be honest when reviewing books by others they’ll never meet, but people actually expect their friends and family to be honest when reviewing their book? Funny.

The even funnier part of this whole thing is that people think reviews sell books. Nah. They don’t. Which is why you can find books with a handful of nice reviews that don’t sell just like the book with no reviews.

What do you think of Amazon disallowing friends and family members of an author from reviewing their book? I think it’s a better way to have more accurate ratings. And I see nothing wrong with that.

On this day in 2014 I published Like a Reality Show, but for Authors.

 

Attending Book Expo America for the First Time!

John Guillen14 Comments

Book Expo America (BEA) is this week. And I’m going. I guess I have to go back and look at my Bookish Bucket List to see if attending is on the list, but it definitely should be. This is one of those events that one must attend at some point. Well, I mean any person with an interest in books.

The best part is that I’m “having breakfast” with both James Patterson AND Lee Child on different days! I don’t care what anyone says about Patterson, he’s one of my favorite authors and I get to meet him. And it doesn’t get any better than Lee Child when it comes to crime fiction. I was actually a bit disappointed that more of my favorite authors weren’t attending, but oh well.

It’s great that I’m attending, but I think an event like this would be a great place for bloggers to meet. I don’t know any bloggers who are also attending, but imagine if a group of 10-20 or even more bloggers could get together for the first time after interacting online for months or years. That would be cool. And if anyone happens to be crazy, then there would be plenty of opportunity to escape. But I don’t think any of y’all are crazy. Ha!

 

On this day in 2014 I published Hachette v. Amazon: You’re not going to like my thoughts.

PS: I’m not actually attending BEA, but I wish I was. Have you ever attended? Tell me about it!

Finding new Books to Read

John Guillen46 Comments

Just about every one of you reads more than I do. At least I think you do. Which means you likely have to find new books and authors pretty often, unless you’re one of those readers who reads the same books over and over again like you’re living your life in circles. Then I have no idea what to tell you.

But for those of you who like some variety in your reading, I’d like to know how you go about finding new authors. I have maybe 20 different series on my shelves, which means I’m not running out of books in those series any time soon. And even when I do I have plenty of others that I usually have my eye on. Besides the books I’ve read from the Amazon list, I honestly can’t remember the last time I went out searching for a new series to read. Definitely wasn’t in 2015, and perhaps not even last year.

So how do you find new series or authors to read? Goodreads? Amazon? Ask your neighbor? Other bloggers?

On this day in 2014 I published The Handwritten Letter. I wanted a pen pal when I wrote that post and I think I found one. But I ultimately stop replying to the letters because I’m awesome like that. I still think it would be nice to have a pen pal who I don’t communicate with regularly via any other medium. But oh well.

 

Stop Posting DNF Book Reviews

John Guillen23 Comments

Everyone knows that WordPress is overloaded with book reviews. The only reason I can see for writing book reviews would be because you’re getting ARCs. But all these people on here are not all getting them. They’re just writing terribly written book reviews because they want to. And you know what, that’s fine. What do I care? I don’t read them.

But something that bloggers seem to post almost as often are DNF book reviews. And I’m telling you to stop it. Read the following sentence very carefully, okay?

YOU CANNOT REVIEW A BOOK IF YOU DO NOT READ THE WHOLE BOOK.

Especially when I see people writing about how they couldn’t get through the second or third chapter. And they think they can write a review of the work? The fuck? Seriously. The practice of writing DNF reviews is a joke. And the next time I see one I’m going to copy and paste the link to this post without any other remark. So they have to click. And then they’ll probably give me some crap about they can write whatever they want blah blah blah, and I’ll just laugh to myself.

Stop this terrible practice.

On this day in 2014 I published Why do you Write?.