Please DON’T review my books and stories

Now that I have your attention, humor me for a couple hundred words or so and I’ll explain.

I’m a purist. Perhaps I’m too idealistic for my own good, but I trust the system. I voted absentee from Uganda in the last election even though my guy was, well, not the odds-on favorite in the state I’m registered. I stopped watching basketball when I realized coaches sometimes instructed players to foul intentionally to stop the clock and get a free time-out. As a kid, I had such a hyper-attuned sense of fairness my parents worried I was setting myself up for a lifetime of disappointment. Good thing I also have a hyper-attuned optimism.

So imagine my disappointment when a friend published a book. A decent book; not without its problems, but good enough to get a prestigious agent and a top-notch publisher. A valiant first effort. That wasn’t the disappointment. The disappointment came when I went to Amazon and saw seven or so reviews, all of them five star, and all of them posted by variants of the author’s parents’ names. “Andy S” was one. “A. Smith” was another. “A. Robert Smitty” was yet another. Good grief.

I’ve heard that stuffing your book’s review page with planted reviews is a good way to get your book noticed. Is it, though? I can hear some authors responding “Yes! It is! This is war, and you gotta pull out all the stops.” I’ve never been in the military, but it seems obvious a good general won’t simply throw everything he has at the enemy. Some modes of attack are so unprofitable, even if successful, as to not be worth it. Don’t spend 90% of your resources getting 10% of the result. Don’t be penny wise and dollar dumb.

There are many reasons I think planted reviews are not a good idea. First, it’s just plain dishonest. Call it God, karma, short-sightedness, “wow, I guess I didn’t think that through,” whatever, there are consequences for dishonesty (see my third point below). My next objection is I can’t see how a handful of planted reviews are going to make any difference in sales. First off, many readers say they shoot for the middle in reading reviews, ignoring the one- and five-stars and looking at the threes. If a book is doing so poorly that 90+% of the reviews are planted, that might tell me something (this is not an absolute, of course. There are many reasons a successful book might not have many reviews. But that’s another issue). And if the book takes off and does well, then eight or ten planted reviews aren’t going to make any difference. Finally, the adage “a rising tide floats all boats” can come back and bite us. Let’s say I run to Kinkos, photocopy the last ten years of my phone bill, self publish it, then get ten reviews from four friends with multiple accounts. How are my ten planted reviews going to raise my book above your book and its ten planted reviews? This is one of the consequences for dishonesty; my dishonesty negates any advantage your dishonesty gives you, and vice versa. Nobody wins.

Therefore, let me add a few words to my title. Please don’t review my books or stories unless you mean what you say. If the book is only suitable to line a bird cage (I’d like to see you do that with an ebook), say so. I would rather have five reviews the reader relates to than twenty where the reader says “man, what were those other reviewers thinking?” As those other reviewers, I hope you feel the same way.

Don't let the sun set . . .

. . . on a form rejection.

I am not the most aggressive submitter in short story land. I have a really bad habit: when I get a “thanks, but no” on a short story, my impulse is to lick my wounds and hide for a while. Let the disappointment heal. Figure out what went wrong. Revise and rewrite. I need to break this habit.

The problem with this strategy is that when we get those (as my Dad used to call them) “Dear Asshole” letters, it’s just about impossible to know precisely what the editor didn’t like. Was the climax anti-climatic? Did the dialog tank? Would the story have been better in first person than third?

I’m not an expert, but I suspect if the reason had been as concrete as these examples, the editor would have let me know. Those are tangible, fixable problems.

So what is so horribly wrong with my “thanks, but no” response stories? (It could be worse, you know. I saw on a forum that, back in the days of SASE and monster postage expenses, one author got her story back from an editor with “BURN IT” written in red pencil across the top. No other input was provided).

Chances are, nothing is horribly wrong. Go to a restaurant. Look at the forty items on the menu. Pick one. An editor (or an agent for novels) does the same thing with stories. There might be nothing wrong with the pecan-crusted catfish fillet (trust me, there isn’t!), it’s just the editor thought the shrimp alfredo pasta fit the day better. The customer has no reason to explain why the other thirty-nine choices were not selected. The chef doesn’t have any reason to think anything is wrong with the pecan-crusted catfish fillet, and is going to continue to offer it.

And so should you. I don’t let the sun set on a form rejection; I send the story back out that day. No revisions. No rewrites. No regrets. In the absence of specific feedback, I assume that all is well and the previous editor is enjoying his alfredo. My story “The Sonic Tomography Experiments of Dr. Ira Taylor” in (the now-defunct) Port Iris Magazine got three form rejections before Port Iris said they’d take it if I made some changes. Which I made, and they accepted.

Now, what if this happens four, or six, or even ten times with a story? In the short story world, it can take several years for a story to accrue this many rejections, so by then it’s probably time to take a critical look at it anyway. Maybe that story was stylish when written, but enough time has passed to make it seem dated. Or maybe I’ve changed as a writer enough that I can tell the same story better. That’s when it’s time to revise, rewrite, but hopefully not regret.

The world of publishing moves slowly enough. I can’t afford to make it slower by constantly hemming and hawing over what I suspect an editor might be thinking if only she would have told me. She'll probably love the pecan-crusted catfish when she tries it.