Tag Archives: Goodreads

Reviews, social media and so on

Updated on June 2, 2011 by Janet Mullany

I’ve been thinking about reviews.

Specifically, should writers post reviews of books in the genre in which they write? Now this may come as a shock to you but I don’t read much romance and if I do there’s this weird expectation that I must either button my lip or say nice things. Just like our foremother taught us. So if I’m on goodreads.com and compelled to put in some sort of feedback I put in a number of stars. That’s it. It gets very tricky dealing with the village that is the romance community and the overall respectability and decorum one must maintain for else one’s reputation is gone and gone forever. Oops, no that’s Cranford, I think.

Which brings me to the issue of the Online Presence. I’m thinking back to a conversation I had with a couple of fans recently–actually not my fans, but Colleen Gleason’s–who said they never visited writers’ websites but did keep an eye out on Facebook which is how they knew she’d be in that particular B&N at that particular time. So, Facebook. Now that’s a Cranford. I don’t have a continual stream of nice and interesting things to say unless it’s about something happening with the release of a book or a cover or … come on, do you really want to hear about my yard (vines growing back, big patch of poison ivy, I have mega pump container of Roundup for it) or the tendonitis in my knee (getting better, thanks, developed in fight against vines). Or what I’m having for dinner? (I hope it involves bacon.)

But I do like Twitter. It’s a nice, fast way to share content with a link. Very impersonal, which means I don’t have to work at being nice and inoffensive as FB seems to demand. In fact it seems to encourage snarkiness, which is fine by me.

But back to reviews. If you’re a writer, do you post reviews of books by people you know or might meet?As a reader, do reviews influence your decision to buy? Colleen’s two fans, by the way, said it was the back cover blurb that sold them. What do you think?

Check out the new bit of my website, spice.janetmullany.com. I’m still updating so there’s more content to add but it’s done!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Goodreads, Romance Reviews, social media | 13 Replies

Why do you buy a book?

Updated on May 14, 2009 by Janet Mullany

First some vaguely related but blatant self-promotion: I’ve just found out that A Most Lamentable Comedy‘s release has been pushed back to July 23 which is great news because I’ll be a beach read and possibly sign at the 2009 “Readers for Life” Literacy Autographing in Washington, DC, July 15.

I’ve been trying to figure out what makes me buy a book and looking back over my buying/reading habits. The last two books I bought were at Heathrow Airport by two tried and true authors, Kate Atkinson and Nicci French (mystery/suspense writers) and not yet available in paperback here. There was a bookstore promotion of 50% off the second book and I had cash to use up.

So I don’t think that really counts. Besides, the real question is why you would take a chance with squandering your hard-earned cash on a writer or book you don’t really know anything about.

Do you think reviews, official and reader comments on such sites as Goodreads help?

Yet another lack luster Regency romance. I don’t know why I persist in reading these.

Awesomely funny book. Fast read, but so enjoyable.

Uh, probably not. Yes, they are talking about the same book (The Rules of Gentility).

Friends’ recommendations? My major going to bookstore and drinking cups of coffee friend and I have polar opposites in reading tastes– so far we agree only on a few, and even fewer that I have recommended. So far our only 100% agreement is Naomi Novik, my recommendation after she and her husband had read all of Patrick O’Brien’s books.

Back cover blurbs? Maybe…

Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.

Yes, I’m cheating. That was a one-sentence summary of The Wizard of Oz, created, with his tongue firmly in cheek, by Rick Polito of the Marin Independent Journal, according to this movie trivia page.

Covers? Oh lord no. Just try doing a google image search on bad romance covers and see what you come up with. (Does the one on the right remind you of an old-fashioned butcher’s shop? I had trouble even defining what part of the male anatomy it was).

I’m somewhat influenced by cover quotes from other writers and also by those helpful signs on Amazon, and in bookstores and libraries of If you liked this… although sometimes I find them wildly off mark.

My suspicion is that we’re manipulated far more by website and distributors than we really like to think. How many times have you wandered into a bookstore thinking you might possibly just buy one book and then find yourself leaving with an armful? Or cranked up your Amazon order to meet the free shipping amount?

What do you think? And share with us the last new author or book you took a chance on, and, if you can, why you did.