Q&A a la Ann Landers: Getting the Help Your Book Needs

More in the Questions and Answers Series a la Ann Landers  direct from my SharingwithWriters newsletter. Subscribe at http://HowToDoItFrugally.com and get an e-copy of my booklet Great Little Last-Minute Edits for Writers.  By the way, feel free to e-mail Christine to get more information on Fjords Review.

 

Peer Review and Proof Reading: Getting Help for Your Book ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

QUESTION:

Carolyn:

A few years back I'd bought your book, The Frugal Book Promoter (http://budurl.com/FrugalBkPromo)  and found tons of wonderful tips, information, and people to network with.  It is amazing to me that some people may not take advantage of such a gem.

I've reviewed over 250 books and am the staff book analyzer and reviewer for Fjords Review, a literary journal.  I enjoy reviewing, but want to publish my books too.  Would you consider XXX a place to send a children's picture-book manuscript?

What are your thoughts on peer-review? This is where fiction authors send the first 30 pages to people who love that genre and ask for their opinion and suggestions. These people are asked to be brutal and to comment in red if they want to on your manuscript.  In return, they get mentioned in your book.

Best Regards,

Christina F. Kennison
ChristinaFrancine@hotmail.com

P.S.  Where might I find amateur proofreaders or editors? You mention using them in your book and I like the idea.

ANSWER

Christine,

Regarding amateur proofreaders/editors, I'm sure you also noticed that I said using them are a good starting point but will not do the same job as a professional editor who really has a grasp on everything in the publishing world--from grammar to formatting to style choices for books as opposed to, say, academia and newspapers.  This is even more important for a first book.

 Most people who use amateurs search out former English teachers or friends who majored in English. By the way, this works better for nonfiction than fiction. Many who know a lot about punctuation, as an example, have no idea how to punctuate dialogue (which you no doubt read about in The Frugal Editor (http://budurl.com/TheFrugalEditor) . Using amateur editors is a little like the peer review you mentioned. You consider the source. I. e. what they are experts in. If they are general readers. If you hear the same thing from several of them. Then you do some research on your own before you decide to accept or reject their suggestions.

Regarding the press you mentioned. I don't think they're quite right for a children's book. Children's books require an awful lot of formatting and design expertise so, I think you'd be better off hiring a designer/formatter who has this kind of experience--one whose work you like. Or try the traditional publishing route first.

 I also suggest you join what used to be called list-serves like pod-publishers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com and self-publishing-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Ask questions and learn from the questions others ask (and the answers they get).

Choose groups like these that have a lot of real experts willing to recommend and help. If you find a group with lots of newbies, you should be able to tell soon enough. Then you take their advice as exactly what it is--amateur advice. That is, not something to be ignore, but something to be carefully weighed. And be very, very cautious about any ideas or advice that smacks of unethical behavior or seems too easy.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor .

Your Book, Your Reviews and Amazon

Opinion

 

On Amazon, Ethics, and the Review Process

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Howard Kurz of CNN’s Reliable Sources program covers the media including journalism ethics. Kurz departed a bit from their usual focus one recent Sunday morming (8 am Pacific Time) to talk about Amazon reviews! Yes! Amazon reviews! And how they are trying to do away with reviews written by authors’ mothers and other closely related folks—and not necessarily only those related by blood.

 

Apparently, Amazon is doing to these folks what they’ve done with reviews written by reviewers who review for other online sites like Midwest Review. That is they obliterate (delete!) the reviews. And they often—if not always—do it without notifying the reviewer.

 

Kurz noted that it’s not really kosher for authors to ask readers or fans to post reviews. I don’t agree with him. Even reviewers who get paid for writing for The New York Times may well be fans of that author. That seems like an ethical line impossible to draw anyway. In fact, if a reviewer has an author's entire body of work, that would only put them in a position to write a more fully considered review.  

In the next breath, Kurz notes that with all this care, Amazon is taking to purify their review process, they still haven’t taken much of a stand against those who haven’t read the book at all.

But making that move may put Amazon on rather shaky ground. It is hard to determine whether someone has read any given book. Just because they didn’t buy the book from Amazon is not an indication that they didn’t read it. They may have received it as a gift or borrowed it from the library. Or the author’s publisher might have supplied a review copy.

 

When the reviewer doesn’t get lots of things right their inaccuracies still don’t prove it’s a fraudulent review. I’m convinced that many reviewers either don’t read well, read too fast, or simply don’t know very much about critiquing a written work. The way I see it, Amazon wanted amatateur reviews. They have opened the can of larva and now they must live with the larva. Of course, some of those larva turn into butterflies. 

 

I’ve read many reviews in which the reviewer admits that they’ve judged the book by its cover, its first typo, or its first chapter. (I’ve yet to see a reviewer admit that they’ve given a one-star review because they hated the title.) I’ve also noticed that there are a whole lot of these reviews less-than-desirable reviews that Amazon hasn’t deleted!

I love CNN's Reliable Sources. I watch it most every Sunday. I really like Howard Kurz. He’s a journalism pro. But as a critiquer of reviews and the review process, I think he needs a guest who knows more than he does to help him out.

Perhaps one or two SharingwithWriters readers would be up to the task.

CHJ

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including the award-winning second edition of, The Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or by partnering with your publisher; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . 

Peer Reviews Are About More Than Content and Expertise

Let's Talk Peer Reviews . . .

When many of us write nonfiction, we ask for peer reviews. We ask if experts in the field might give us input on our book before it is published. But there is more to it than that (especially for writers of fiction so keep reading!). Some of us are fully cognizant of what that "more" might be and others are not.

For many miss a couple of vital elements of a peer review that Susan D. Daffron mentions in her front page article for Span Connection (Nov. 2008) and that is the author will find more peers willing to help if he or she is asked to review only a chapter rather than a whole book. The other is that the peer review process might well contribute to the gleaning of absolutely great endorsements/testimonials for the cover or inside pages of the finished book.

What I like best about the peer review process is that is can be tailored to benefit writers of the so-called hard-to-promote books--fiction, poetry and memoir.

Writers in those genres often think they can't find interested experts but experts come in all stripes. They can be editors, teachers, authors of similar genres, and on and on. In other words, the peer review process can work well for any author. It's only a matter of figuring out what is in your work that you might have reviewed, finding people with expertise in that area and in blocking out a period of time in the writing process just before sending your manuscript off to a publisher to let the peer review process work for you in all the ways that it can.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and two how to books, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't and The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success. She is also the author of the Amazon Short, "The Great First Impression Book Proposal". Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor blog.