Back on the Review Rollercoaster

Sandra Parshall

Everyone who leaves a comment today will be entered in a drawing for an ARC of Under the Dog Star.

Now begins the review roller coaster. The giddiness that comes with a glowing review, the despair that follows even the slightest criticism of my newborn literary baby.

Under the Dog Star won’t be published until September, the only version available now is the uncorrected proof (ARC, or advance reader copy), and it doesn’t even have a final cover yet (although a rough mockup that has since been discarded is popping up everywhere). But the first review has appeared. Of course I’m obsessing about it. It’s on an internet review site called BookIdeas.com, not in one of the powerful industry magazines (Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, Kirkus), but it’s all I have at the moment, so I’m obsessing about it.

Not that it’s negative. Although the reviewer takes a slightly jokey tone in spots, it’s a favorable review without a single outright nasty comment. Some samples:

“The author manages rather deftly to address some basic ideological issues in her narrative... the conflict between the rule of law represented by our deputy sheriff and the mob rule of a renegade posse is vividly presented.”

“The... storytelling technique is similarly solid, particularly the author’s attention to detail in presenting dialogue.”

“Rachel is portrayed as a person of pluck, stubbornness, and passionate dedication to her cause.”

“Fans of murder mysteries will get their fill of mayhem and local color and characters in this well-written tale.”

So what bothers me? The reviewer doesn’t think Tom Bridger, the deputy sheriff who is co-protagonist with Rachel Goddard, is charismatic. Tom, the reviewer notes, lacks the “charming insouciance of Peter Falk in Columbo or the dry humor of Jerry Orbach in Law and Order.”

Waaaah!

I love Tom. Rachel loves Tom. I think Tom is strong, honest, courageous. He has no patience with idiots and heartless bastards. He’s a tough cop in a place where just about everybody owns a gun and resents law enforcement. Hit him and he’ll hit you back, with interest. He has been known to land a hard kick to the ribs of a drug dealer, and in Under the Dog Star he uses a particularly painful method of getting vital information from a bad guy. But he absolutely does have a sense of humor and a soft side. He loves and protects Rachel, his little nephew Simon, and Billy Bob, the old bulldog he inherited from his father. In this book, though, he’s dealing with some of the worst scum he’s ever encountered, so the lighthearted moments don’t come often. Does he really have to be insouciant like Columbo or a wisecracking cynic like Orbach’s L&O character Lenny?

Okay, this should be enough to make you understand what I go through – what most writers go through – when reading reviews. Forget all the good stuff, all the praise. What I always home in on, and remember forever, are the negatives, however small they might be.

I wasn’t expecting the first review so early. I thought I'd at least have a final cover before the reviews started. But now I’m over that initial hurdle and braced for more. 

Bring ’em on. 

I’m ready. 

I hope. 

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Leave a comment to enter the drawing for an ARC of Under the Dog Star. Make sure I can reach you by e-mail if you win -- either include your e-mail address in your comment or send it separately to sandraparshall@yahoo.com. I ask only this of the winners: If you like it, please tell a lot of people, but if you don't like it, please tell no one.

Whatever Happened to Women's Fiction?

by Sheila Connolly

When this blog posts, I expect to be at the Malice Domestic convention in Maryland. For those of you unfamiliar with it, it’s an annual event that brings together several hundred writers and fans to celebrate traditional mysteries. It’s a lot of fun.


If you scan the crowd there, you will quickly see that the majority of attendees are women, both writers and readers. Since women make up a large of percentage of the readers of this genre, that’s not surprising. However, it’s not true of other mystery conferences such as Bouchercon, where you will see a better gender balance in the crowd. Of course, the definition of mystery there is much broader, encompassing thrillers, procedurals, suspense, etc.


The national organization Sisters in Crime, celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, in 2010 commissioned a survey evaluating who buys and reads mysteries and why. The analysis showed that 65% of mystery readers are female. Why, then, do male mystery writers make more money and get more reviews? One simple (simplistic?) explanation is that women will read across the spectrum of mystery writers and subgenres, but men read books by women much less frequently than do women (and they’re also less likely to read traditional mysteries).


An article in the Southern Review of Books this month adds to the mix the fact that the publishing world is increasingly dominated by women as editors and publishers, but for all of that, in the New York Times Book Review, the New Republic, The New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, and the Times Literary Supplement, reviews of books (all genres) written by men far, far outweigh those of books written by women, sometimes by as much as three to one.


All right, perhaps I’m ranting. Many of us female writers know this, and have known it all along. I started thinking about it again recently because I’ve been reading Meg Wolitzer’s new book, The Uncoupling, published last month. In the story the women of a small New Jersey town all stop sleeping with the men in their lives—and yes, the Greek play Lysistrata plays a role in the book). It’s not a Mystery (although it may be a mystery)—there’s no crime, no blood, no officers of the law poking around. But it felt familiar, and I realized that was because it reminded me of a crop of books that came out in the 1970s—books by Alison Lurie, Gail Godwin, Fay Weldon, Marilyn French and their peers. These were books about relationships and characters—mainly women. Women as wives, mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends (not necessarily in that order). The books were labeled “women’s fiction.”


Somewhere along the line the term acquired negative connotations, although I’m not sure why. But to come full circle, I think I write the kind of mystery I do—call it traditional or cozy or amateur sleuth—because of these books, many of which are still on my bookshelf. In all my books my protagonists are women who happen to solve crimes. They’re smart, they’re independent, and they understand people, and that’s how they unravel murders. At least, that’s what I’m aiming for. And that’s why it’s such a pleasure to go to Malice Domestic, which gathers together lots of intelligent, interesting women who enjoy that kind of book.


One final note: just this week Harvard history professor and author Jill Lepore wrote an article for the New York Times entitled “Poor Jane’s Almanac.” It’s about one of Benjamin Franklin’s many sisters, one who wrote to him regularly, and the one to which he wrote most often—and their letters have survived. A woman who could read in Jane’s 18th-century world was a rarity. Jane Franklin did not lead an easy or happy life, and yet she never stopped reading or writing. Nor do women now, with or without accolades or reviews or recognition. That’s why I wouldn’t miss attending Malice.

Reader Reviews: Helpful or Harmful?

Sandra Parshall

With space for print reviews rapidly disappearing, online reviews by readers are more important than ever – and someday they may be all we have left. Most publishers have been quick to add avid readers to their distribution lists for free advance copies, hoping for an online mention, any kind of mention, of each new book. A lot of writers, though, hate this practice and complain about amateur reviewers who seem more interested in proving their cleverness than in fairly evaluating books.

Authors who may have carped for years about negative reviews from Kirkus or Publishers Weekly or biased newspaper reviewers now have a new appreciation of “professional” book critics.

Although writers will smile when a reader-reviewer gushes, “I love this book!” (Isn’t that what we long to hear from everyone?) they aren’t happy when the lack of professional restraint goes in the opposite direction. Even a negative assessment in a professionally edited publication will usually have a civilized tone. A reviewer might say a book is a disappointing followup to previous entries in a series, or go further and describe the plotting as weak or unbelievable and the characters as wooden. But no respected newspaper or magazine will run a review saying a book is the worst piece of crap ever to see print, or that books this bad should carry warning labels, or that the entire print run should be burned. Online reader-reviewers are free to write any of those things – and some delight in doing so. If questioned, they might say they feel a responsibility to steer other readers away from bad books. It’s a new take on word of mouth. Word of computer?

Some of the reader-reviewers do so many reviews, though, that I have to wonder where the dividing line is between professional and amateur. You can major in English lit in college, but does that qualify you as a critic of currently published work? You can’t earn a degree in reviewing. You can’t go to trade school to be trained. Maybe some book critics have done apprenticeships under experienced reviewers, but I suspect that many of them more or less fell into the job and decided they liked it enough to keep doing it. Some are writers who earn extra money by reviewing (novels don’t pay all that well). After they have enough reviews to their credit, and provided lots of those summing-it-up lines that are ideal for book jackets and ads, they are esteemed – and feared – as professional critics.

So what about the regulars on the DorothyL mystery listserv who have been reviewing books for years or decades? They don’t get paid to do it, and that makes a difference to many people. A review written for free and posted on a public listserv may be scorned. I know of people who refuse to read DorothyL reviews because they’re written by amateurs. It’s rare to see a DL review quoted on a book jacket. Yet most of those “amateurs” are intelligent, thoughtful readers who love books and know the crime fiction genre as few others do. I consider DL the best online source of reader reaction to books, and I read the reviews faithfully.


The online reviews that make me cringe are filled with bad grammar, misspellings, typos, punctuation errors, misstatements about plot and character, and garbled opinions. I see them mostly on Amazon and Barnes&Noble.com, but I know they’re posted by the thousands on sites I don’t have time to visit. One very real blessing of reviews in professionally edited publications is that they aren’t freighted with all that garbage. (Please don’t take that as a snooty opinion from a writer who thinks she’s perfect. Like most authors, I make enough mistakes to keep copy editors employed. And that’s the point: what I publish is edited first.) Sometimes a professional reviewer will get a character’s name wrong or describe a plot turn incorrectly, but on the whole a professional review is clean and easy to read.

I have to be honest and say I have seen only a tiny number of negative reader-reviews of my own books. Maybe if I followed every link on every Google Alert, I would find them all, but that would leave me no time for anything else, such as life. I did come across one critical review of my second novel, Disturbing the Dead, that amused me. The reader-reviewer complained that I am obsessed with shoulders and she couldn’t enjoy the book because she was too busy noticing my every mention of the characters’ shoulders. I had never seen that particular criticism before (and haven’t since), but yes, it has made me aware of the way I use body language in my writing. I would never dream of contacting the reader-reviewer to argue about her perception of my shoulder obsession. I write what I want to write. She is free to interpret it in her own way.

The online world offers free expression to everyone who loves books and loves to talk about them. Readers have always talked about the books they like or dislike, but with the spread of the internet authors are now able to “overhear” that talk, and for some it’s a rude shock to realize that not every reader loves their writing. Reacting in public is almost always an embarrassing mistake. Nothing is more cringe-worthy than the spectacle of an author ranting on Amazon because some reader said unkind things about her novel. If reader-reviews bother you, I would advise, try to control your ego and curiosity and stop seeking them out.

How do you feel about the flood of reader-reviews online? A good thing, a bad thing, or a wash?

Do you read them?

Do you write them? If so, have you ever been contacted by an irate author?

Do you buy books because you’ve seen positive reader-reviews? Do you decide against buying books that other readers have reviewed negatively?

Do you take the critic’s opinion seriously if the review is riddled with mistakes in spelling, grammar, or punctuation?

What internet sites or listservs do you regular read in search of book recommendations from other readers? Did you discover any of your favorite writers in this way?

Selling Books in a Changing World

By Ellen Crosby (Guest blogger)

New year, new book. For the fourth year in a row, the first Tuesday in August is mine--the day Scribner, my publisher, officially releases The Riesling Retribution, latest book in my mystery series set in Virginia wine country.

I’m not the only writer in the country with an August 4 pub date, though it’s nice to feel unique for a day, especially that little heart-flip the first time I see my book actually on bookstore shelves. Truth be told, I’m in first-rate company for the entire month, joining fellow mystery writers like Charles Todd, Marcus Sakey, Dan Fesperman, Marcia Talley, and Jeff Deaver (among others) who will be hitting the road visiting a bookstore near you. But how will you hear about us?

Last year my local events would have been billboarded in the calendar of The Washington Post Book World. First thing I turned to every Sunday morning over a cup of coffee: Who’s in town? Now it’s gone. I freelanced for the Post for a couple of years so that loss really hurt. More Post hemorrhaging followed, with buyouts accepted by some of the paper’s most famous names, by-lines gone for good. My former editor left two years ago for a research foundation. (Why did he do it when he didn’t want to leave? “Next time they might not offer me money.”) I met Marie Arana, former Book World editor, at the Annapolis Book Festival—she’s now at the Library of Congress. Their gain; our loss.

How many newspapers have folded their tents or jettisoned their book review sections? A story on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” discussed the slow death of book reviews—back in 2007. As for newspapers, there’s a list on a cheery website called Newspaper Death Watch. In the past year we’ve lost the print editions of the Detroit News/Detroit Free Press, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and—one I truly lament—The Christian Science Monitor. Gone for good: Rocky Mountain News and the Baltimore Examiner. The Boston Globe is on the skids. I’ve only named the big guys, but trust me, it’s a much longer list.

On to bookstores, but first please put away any sharp objects. Just in the mid-Atlantic region, we lost Mystery Loves Company in Baltimore, as well as Olsson’s and Trover’s, two beloved Washington, D.C. landmarks. One stop on my book tour is a “favorite authors” final farewell signing at Creatures ’n Crooks in Richmond, which closes its doors on September 30. I promised to go if there weren’t too many tears. (She wouldn’t promise; I’m stocking up on tissues). As I write this yet another bookstore, Kate’s Mystery Books in Boston, will close on August 1.

Is it just me, or is the drumbeat growing louder for doing away with quaint twentieth century customs like reading newspapers, buying books in bookstores, and turning actual pages instead of pressing a button? What’s going to replace the institutions we’re dismantling at the giddy pace of kids leveling a sand castle? The front page of the business section of the July 22 New York Times (yes, the print edition!) featured a story called “Musician, Market Yourself.” It spoke about doing away with “the old model of doing things” as musicians create their own direct links to audiences over the Internet.

Ditto the book world. Like it or not, we’re all becoming cottage industry promoters, each of us tooting his or her own horn on individual websites, blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. Is it better, worse, or just new and different? I dunno. Right now, I’m resisting—though sure, you can find me on Facebook and I think I’ve tweeted about six times. But I mourn what we’re losing because once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.

A few weeks ago I attended a bookstore event in Middleburg, Virginia videoed by a young reporter for washingtonpost.com. Naively I asked how long the link would be available, remembering how in the past some of my news stories would drift into that hole in cyberspace where broken links went to die. He blinked and stared at me. “Forever,” he said. “It’ll be there forever.”

Later an author friend explained how to post that video to Facebook. “Go to the article online,” she wrote, “and click on ‘Tools.’ It asks where you want to send the link. Click on Facebook and, voila, it’s there on your page. Doesn’t even ask your name because it knows who you are. Scary, huh?” Yeah, real scary.

As part of this individualized promotion gig—and because there are so many of us out there—we’re reaching for what’s new and different, opening doors to our lives, places we once considered off-limits, in an effort to get you readers to pay attention . . . or just to find us. Last spring I filmed a (very) brief video for Simon & Schuster answering questions about my favorite movie, favorite place, and wished-for talent. Fun stuff, a bit of fluff, all part of S&S’s new “Author Revealed” website. But I’ve decided to draw a line beyond which I won’t go in this whole promotion thing; parts of my life are private and there’s such a thing as Too Much Me.

As August 4 rolls around, I’m excited about getting out there and spending time with folks, after a year of living in my head alone in my office. Nothing virtual: real meetings, real people. In the meantime, I’m still wrestling with Facebook and Twitter. Guess I’d better get used to it; next year could be a whole new world . . . again.

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Ellen Crosby is the author of The Merlot Murders, The Chardonnay Charade, The Bordeaux Betrayal, and The Riesling Retribution. Visit her web site for more information, and if you're on Facebook, please be her friend.

The Reviews Are Not In

Dave Rosenthal is the Sunday editor and an assistant managing editor at The Baltimore Sun and helps write the Sun’s book blog, Read Street.

Darlene Ryan was kind enough to invite me to be a guest blogger at PDD, most likely because of my Poe connections (or maybe because we're both Boston Red Sox fans). Living in Baltimore -- where Poe lived and is buried -- I've become familiar with the genius who has inspired so many other mystery and horror writers. And his name frequently pops up on The Baltimore Sun's book blog, Read Street, which I help write.

The Sun wasn't around when Poe was born, but it had been in business for more than a decade before his death in 1849. The paper has survived a Civil War and a couple of World Wars, a Depression and many recessions. But in some ways, the Sun and other U.S. newspapers face their greatest challenge today. Financial pressures, triggered by a decline in young readers and the growth of online competitors, have forced newspapers to shrink -- and that, in turn, has meant big changes in the way books are written about.

At the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Hartford Courant, full-time book editors have left and were not replaced. The Los Angeles Times eliminated its book review section and folded coverage into the lifestyle section. Other papers, including the Sun, have trimmed book coverage; we cut back from two pages to one each Sunday.

Some newspapers have started book blogs to supplement print coverage. But in a true nature-abhors-a-vacuum trend, dozens (if not hundreds) of independent blogs have sprung up. They're personal and funny and enlightening, like a conversation with a neighbor -- a counterbalance to traditional newspaper book reviews that have tended toward stuffiness. More and more seem to appear each day, fueled by publishers and authors eager to find new outlets to generate buzz.

Becca Rowan, creator of the Bookstack blog, told me in an email, "if the trend keeps up at this rate, I can see blogging supplanting the role of newspaper reviews, with the exception perhaps of the 'gold standard' reviewers like the Times and the Guardian. ,,, And though I grew up as a huge newspaper junkie, I rarely read the print versions of papers or book review pages." (She does profess to like Read Street, for which I'm grateful.)

So what happens now? I don't expect the financial pressures on U.S. newspapers to ease anytime soon, so book sections and pages likely will continue to decline. More newspapers may try blogs, which offer great advantages such as video, reader interaction and experimentation – like the U.S. map we created at Read Street of favorite bookstores. But even that will be difficult as staffs shrink, and lifestyle reporters focus on movies and pop music. And that will open the door for more and more bloggers -- and more and more independent voices.

Joshua Henkin, the author of Matrimony, may be one of the authors most attuned to -- and supportive of -- book bloggers. But he's dismayed by the decline in newspaper review sections. In an email exchange, he wrote: "The rise of book blogs is a good thing, it seems to me, but the concomitant decline of book sections in newspapers certainly isn't. It gets harder and harder for new writers to be discovered when the page space for book reviews keeps shrinking. ... So for a certain kind of book of literary fiction, book reviews are indispensable, and to the extent that book review sections are, in fact, being dispensed with, it's a loss for literary culture."