What I Think About Michael Chabon's "Telegraph Avenue"

Here's my review of Michael Chabon's new novel, Telegraph Avenue, in the Washington Independent Review of Books. Short version: I like it.

Reviews: Amazon vs. Barnes and Noble

Considering the importance everyone attaches to Amazon, obsessively checking their book's Amazon sales ranking, etc., I find it interesting that in my case at least, I've had a lot more reviews of Tainted Souls posted on Barnes and Noble than at my book's Amazon page. (Also, far more reviews and ratings at Goodreads. Only two reviews at Smashwords, despite almost 200 downloads.) Moreover, reviews continue to come in at B&N, but there hasn't been a new review posted at Amazon in ages.

Curious. This is rather the opposite of what I was expecting (to the extent I was expecting anything). I just assumed that Amazon, being the superpower of retail, would attract more readers. Is it possible that B&N attracts more "real readers" (let's call them) than Amazon?

Does anyone know if this is the pattern, B&N reviews outpacing Amazon ones? Or is this just a case of my life experience, as usual, being outside the mainstream?

Book Reviews For Sale

This story in the New York Times about the selling of 5-star reviews, and the importance of reviews in getting your book noticed, read and purchased, is interesting and tells us something about how e-publishing is changing the fundamentals of book publishing.

I argued in my last post that a few bad reviews to balance out the good will lend credence to your reviews overall. But one individual in the article argues that he pays attention only to the bad reviews, since he assumes all the good ones are fake.

Which leaves the poor author where? Stuck between a rock and a hard place, as usual.

So -- would you ever pay someone for a good review? Would you pay someone for any kind of review?

Why Bad Reviews Are Good

I've gotten a couple of so-so reviews over the last few weeks (along with a couple of nice ones) and while my initial reaction to these affronts was a rich mixture of crap and harrumph, I quickly came to realize these were blessings in disguise.

If nothing else, a two-star rating (at Goodreads) and a three-star rating (at Barnes and Noble) lend credence to all the four- and five-star ratings left by other readers of Tainted Souls on those sites and, where applicable, the nice things they had to say in their reviews of the book. Considering the lengths to which some writers go to get every relative, friend, neighbor or passerby to write a sterling review of their opus, the presence of a couple of clunkers here and there ought to give some testimony that the other reviews are also real, even the somewhat goofy five-star review at B&N that reads, "I real like reading this book."

After all, you can't please everyone.

Do you agree? Or do you still just cringe when someone gives your baby as less-than-perfect score?

How Dumb Is Too Dumb?

Kathyrn Lilley over at The Kill Zone has an interesting post on whether writers are being encouraged to "dumb down" their work be avoiding unfamiliar or highfalutin' words lest they turn off the mainstream audience.

It'll be a sad commentary if we're condemned to confine ourselves to a sixth-grade vocabulary and eschew -- sorry, avoid -- the panoply -- I mean whole bunch -- of wonderful words that English offers. One of the strengths of our language is how it has drawn from so many others, fashioning words to allow precise description of unique things and situations.

What do you think?

Why I Hate Facebook

Here are just a few of the things I hate about Facebook:

1. Posts that you've killed off with the "Hide Story" function resurrect themselves from time to time. Listen, if I've killed it, I really don't give a hoot about someone's new comment.

2. Posts are not in chronological order of their original posting. This is related to (1) above.

3. Some posts by my FB friends don't show up till days after they originally post 'em. WTF kind of tech savvy is that? How much was that IPO worth again?

I could go on. But time for you to sound off. What do you hate about FB?

My First Obscene Review!

A reader -- possibly a reader, possibly just someone who didn't like a comment I left on some website somewhere -- has left a one-star review over at Barnes & Noble, complaining about the author's "political agenda" (as if authors can't have political agendas, though in fact Tainted Souls doesn't really have one). Just to show how articulate he is, the reviewer used a homophobic obscenity to describe the alleged political agenda.

My, my.

How about you? Ever had someone so mad at your "agenda" or story that they skewer you with obscenities.