DEAD IN THE WATER

Reviews are useful. You want reviews.

They're less necessary if you have five or six books in a series out there. In that case a reader might stumble upon one of them, like it, and seek out the others. Such a reader might not even notice the book they're about to buy has bad reviews. He's already made up his mind to try it, based on the book he just read.

But a stand-alone book pretty much needs some reviews in order to look legitimate. Remember, this is the wild-west world of independent publishing. There's all sorts of stuff out there. A little guidance would be nice.

Now, not all readers like the same book. There can be a mix of reviews. Many stars here, fewer stars there—a range of opinions. It happens.

But what about that first review? What if it's one of those with a low-star rating? Isn't it possible that one review might poison the well?

Take my book Mad Minute (please). It only has one review on Amazon.com. It's a good review (five stars), but more than a little misleading. The reader has concluded the book is a parody of the thriller genre. It's not. I frankly don't know enough about the such novels to parody them. Nor do I find the genre beneath me. I like thrillers.

And if I amuse myself by portraying characters who have a few odd-ball quirks, or who don't take themselves with deadly seriousness all the damn time, it is not my intention to attack the very genre I'm writing in.

In this case, even a five star review may be damaging. "Real" thriller readers might avoid the book, thinking I'm making fun of their chosen reading matter. And by extension, making fun of them for liking it.

What I need here, obviously, is more reviews. Good reviews (from folks who enjoyed the book) that nevertheless are willing to see the book as a genuine thriller and not a parody of the field.

(Should I be grateful the reviewer thought it a successful parody and not a failed one?)

I have another problem in Britain.

I have now gotten a review on each of the two books (so far) in the Mad Minute series. Book One (Hot Status) got a three star review, along with complaints of confusion over who were the bad guys and who the good guys. The reviewer also complained it was too short, the rest of the volume taken up with photos of missile tracking radars and so forth, plus a sample of the second novel (Mad Minute). And just to be clear, his complaint of "too short" was not in the sense he was enjoying himself and wanted more; I think he thought I was perpetrating some sort of fraud upon the reading public.

(The information about word count and photos, etc., can be found at the bottom of the product description, which the reader apparently never saw.)

The reviewer also referred to what he called the events of "9 November." Actually, the book is about actions taken on what we in America call "nine-eleven" or "9/11." We use the month-day-year format for dates. In Europe they use the day-month-year version. For them, nine-eleven becomes 9 November. The confusion is understandable. Perhaps he thought I was the one making the mistake. Either way, one of us is apparently unaware of the events of September eleventh.

Anyway, the reader managed to finish the book (he was surprised; the shortness of the text [30k] must have tricked him).

He had a harder go with the sequel, Mad Minute. It's a full length novel (over 80k), but he could only get through the first 15%, pronouncing it "stupid and badly written" and destined for the "dustbin."

"Stupid and badly written" is pretty much the opposite of what I was going for in this or any other book I write. What I find strange is that he gave the book two stars. It seems to me this is exactly where you drop the one-star bomb. (I believe one star is the lowest number of stars Amazon allows.) What was the other star for? Did the reviewer worry there might be some redeeming elements in the 85% of the book he declined to read?

"Stupid and badly written" is not the sort of review you want, especially if it's the only review in evidence. It's hard to see how anyone would go forward with a purchase in the face of that review. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't. Life is too short, and all that.

So, yeah, you want reviews. But not all of them are equally welcome.

Does this mean a bad review should keep you from writing and publishing books? Clearly not. Some readers will misunderstand what you're up to and take the time to tell the world of your apparent idiocy. In the end, you can only hope those folks are merely exposing their own defects.

Which is not to say it's impossible to write bad books.

Anybody out there want to vent about their own bad reviews?

A NEW BOOK, AT LAST

I'm writing again (after quite an absence) to announce a new book has hit the Amazon stalls. It's the second in the Trevor Blake Adventure series, a middle-grade chapter book of about 26k words.

It's called The Shrine of the Breathing Breath. The cover should be showing up on the left-hand sidebar, clickable to get to Amazon to grab the free sample.