On Reviews

When Shawntelle and I gave our talk on “The Review Game: The Shy Girl’s Guide to Getting Noticed”, I declined to have our talk recorded. We also gave many caveats that what works today might not work tomorrow during our workshop.

That’s the only way to guarantee that you’ll say something that’s absolutely spot on in a lecture — by warning people that everything will change. 🙂

It seems like reviews are the everlasting lament of authors. It seems so hard now to get noticed at all and when your book is languishing with a few reviews on Amazon put there by your best friend from high school and your mom (Thanks for the three stars, Mom. Tough love, man.), it just seems like further proof that no one will ever find your work.

And there’s all sorts of advice on how to get more reviews. All of it good and yet at the same time, hair-rendingly frustrating. Street teams. Advance review teams. Netgalley. Giveaways. Lots and lot of giveaways.

And then people will review on Goodreads, but not Amazon where buyers and advertisers look.

Yes, all this gets to me too. I’ve always been neck deep in the Review Game and, I must admit, I used to love the fight. It was all part of the game, you know?

But…and I’m about to say something more vulnerable than perhaps I should. For this reason, I am closing comments off on this thread because I don’t want a string of bolstering comments from well-wishers because I’m about to say this. Thank you for those positive thoughts. I promise you, I know where I stand and I know what sort of writer I am and I feel the love in the ether — I don’t need to see it on this comment stream.

After a string of complete flops on books that I felt were some of my best work so far, I stopped playing the Review Game. And for this last book, A Dance with Danger, I felt so awful about it, I buried my head in the sand and didn’t send out or request any reviews at all except for providing a book to my chapter review program. I wanted it to just go away.

It’s…it’s gut-wrenchingly awful not to feel so proud of your work that you want to shout it from the rooftops. This is coming from an admitted attention whore.

Come on…we’re authors. We’re all attention whores to some extent. I didn’t write my books so no one would read them.

But…if you’ve stayed with me, you’ll realize this is not a mope-fest. Jeannie does not mope for too long. She just doesn’t have the time.

As I was burying my head, bloggers who had read my books in the past started reaching out to me to ask me about the book. Asking when it was coming out, how to get review copies. Reviewers picked it up and reviewed it anyway, some good, some bad.

I don’t have a hundred 5 star reviews on Amazon, so take my review advice with lots of salt, but some things are still true. At least, I still believe them to be true, from this nice dark place beneath the sand:

  • Write a fucking good book. You might not get noticed at all
  • So write another fucking good book. You’re probably still not going to get noticed.
  • So write another and another and another.

There will be a time when even when you don’t want to be noticed, people will still be looking for your next book. They’ll want to know what’s in it. They’ll want to talk about it. Maybe it’s only ten people, but that doesn’t suck.

And yes, you’ll do all the other things. You know, the teams and the review copies and the Game.  But I just can’t speak to all the other stuff very well. Except for this one thing. This one thing I used to hear everywhere, but seems to have fallen out of vogue.

It’s not sexy advice. It’s not bestselling, revenue-generating, algorithm-busting advice.

It’s just the only thing that I can bear to say right now without feeling like I’m giving awful advice.

Cause hey, at the very least, you wrote a pretty darn good book.

Update and Link Round-Up

Research

Been a busy, busy bee and am deep in research as well as trying to finish up the first draft for the next book. This may be the book that required the most research out of all of them, though you might not think it from the premise: cat and mouse adventure chase through Tang Dynasty China.

Right now I’m reading up on the salt trade and government structure. It’s actually quite fascinating — the salt, not the government. Actually even the governmental structure is quite interesting to a history geek like me. I have added a new “Places I should have visited in China if I had only known” tourist site.

The Ancient City of Ping Yao

It was built in the Ming Dynasty, but I can make some extrapolations to fill out what a Tang Dynasty city might look like. An interesting note: many popular Tang representations come from the Ming Dynasty – i.e. Judge Dee, the Peony Pavilion (which I’ve also seen described as taking place in the Song Dynasty vs. the Tang) Maybe a resurgence in interest in the Tang? It leaves us the question of whether these are historically accurate depictions of the Tang Dynasty or more likely depictions that were altered and colored by the Ming Dynasty creators. The same way depictions of the Elizabethan or Tudor eras are always colored by the period recreating them.

Bargain prices

I found out that digital versions The Dragon and the Pearl and two novellas, Capturing the Silken Thief and The Lady’s Scandalous Night are on sale for $1.99 for the novel and $0.99 cents for the novellas. The sale ends at the end of June–so if you know someone who’s been wanting to take a peek…

Amazon | B&N |Kobo| eHarlequin | Sony

Links

Some reviews and mentions for My Fair Concubine this week. Thank you to all the bloggers who have taken the time to read and review.

Booklovers Inc – Interview + Giveaway (ends June 30)  plus 5 star Review by Stella

Delighted Reader – A Review by Sophia Rose

Historical Novel Review – Review by Victoria

Eve Shi – A review by wuxia writer Eve Shi

Wendy the Super Librarian – B- Review

Romantic Historical Lovers – 3.5 star review from Lady of Misrule

Smexy Books – C Review by Mandi

I’m also happy that My Fair Concubine was reviewed by a couple of the long-standing review publications, though you need an expensive membership (which I don’t have) to access the LibraryJournal and Booklist reviews. I hope they’re positive. 🙂

Publishers Weekly – starred review & Best Summer Books-Romance

Booklist – Review

Library Journal – June issue