Hi all. I have a question.
Currently authors are not told about their reviews by direct email. Mainly because I never really thought about it. I saw it as: author gives book to reviewer, reviewer gives review to reader. If I am going to suggest a more mercinary reason it might be that the author wants a review, the webmaster wants hit.
I am not sure what I want the hits for, but if I didn't want them I wouldn't have a blog, right? So unconsciously I might prefer authors to be checking the blog rather than sitting back and waiting for notification.
Do you think authors should be notified when the review goes up?
17 comments:
No. As an author who has submitted to you folks in the past, I believe it is our responsibility to check the blog, if not to escape our own narcissism, then to discover our review has been posted. It is errogant to believe that a review service who posts reviews in a blog should notify the author the instant it is posted. Anyway, that is this author's opinion. I will continue to check your blogs and reviews to read up on all the latest POD material, not just to boost my own ego.
It doesn't take much to convince me to take the lazier option ;)
But I would guess there is a case to be made for sending an email, at least on request?
I don't believe it is a case of 'boosting my own ego'. If I submit a book for review then it is my expectation that I would be notified when that review is done. Otherwise what's the point? Even if you email the author and give them the link to your blog that will lead them to your blog - I think it's a matter of courtesy to let them know when it's been made available.
yes, because you are missing out on hits, the author will tell all their friends and sundry to go see...
but they should have RSS/Newsfeed aggregator anyway, no excuse these days
Most places who have reviewed my work have, at the very least, provided an email to let me know when the review posted, and in some cases, they also provided a tear sheet or the offer to cross post to Amazon or where ever.
I like to notify the author's I have reviewed, especially if I solicited the work, and it did not come from a query.
I am on vacation all week next week, so I made sure to tell the horror authors to keep watch on the site that week, as I wouldn't be around to let them know.
But if I review an unsolicited work, something I simply stumbled upon and felt like reviewing, I do not generally communicate with the author.
"but they should have RSS/Newsfeed aggregator anyway, no excuse these days"
A cursory glance should demonstrate that we do indeed have an RSS feed clearly displayed using the usual orange symbol.
So, is emailing necessary in addition to providing a feed? I assume you raise this as a substitutable method?
The more I think about this the less sure I am. I did a check of my own (third party published) books' reviews. Over the last year I have received 27 reviews for 5 titles, I was notified by email for 6 of them. It never occured to me to expect notification. But then only 2 of these were submitted by me personally rather than the press and in both of those cases I did get an email. So perhaps author email should be in the reviewer package, and the reviewer encourage to contact the author.
My resistance (and yes I know I am being resistant) is because an email would add a step to the posting process I go through as a webmaster and time is already becoming a limiting factor in what I can get done (cue sound of violins in the background).
However if I always post reviews the friday after they come in the reviwer will be able to pass on the expected posting date on my behalf--if I can fairly prevail upon them to do so.
Emails are nice but certainly not necessary. very few of the people who reviewed my stuff notify me. Google offers a free "alert" service as well that an author can and should set up.
I like to let an author know when something I've reviewed has been put up. It shows them that they didn't send their book into a black hole of reviewing.
Of course, I also expect they'll have a Google Alert, at the very least, set to their name and they'll see it themselves. But I've met a few well-published authors who don't seem to do this.
I think this is leaning, on the whole, to 'notification is nice'. I wuill endeavour to send at least a form notification email when I upload reviews for author-submitted works.
Well, if it wasn't a self-published book, you'd turn the review tearsheet into the publisher, right? At least that's what most do. They use reviews in publicity and on websites and whatnot. I usually get cc'd on those review e-mails.
In this case the publisher IS the author. They might like to do the same.
Just a thought. At least e-mail the link :)
"Well, if it wasn't a self-published book, you'd turn the review tearsheet into the publisher, right?"
Um, no. See this is a blog. A blog about self-published books that I run as a hobby and goodwill gesture. I've never generated a 'tearsheet' in my life and could only guess as to what it is.
This is kind of a corner I end up in. By donating my time to running a review site for self-published books I am somehow seen by some to be discriminating against them?
I will try to make an extra effort to make my voluntary efforts more satisfactory because honestly I want to help authors. I will certainly look at emailing the link but I sometimes feel like someone is inspecting my equine teeth.
Nice but scarcely crucial, because (as so many other people have pointed out) it's hardly skin off one's nose to obtain updates ... and also because the blog's a regular read on my end@
Well that's true, Em. I send review copies to a lot of review sites, not so many blogs. Genre sites, YA book sites, etc...I usually do get a note about a review from the sites though.
So it's different, since this is a blog, but kind of like a review site.
I don't mean to be defensive either. I am looking at the best way to massage this step into the process without requiring to much thought on my part (it's a limited commodity).
I read blogs (over a hundred) in my newsreader of choice now, and perhaps comment less but when I do, I track them in cocomment, but which didn't really work this last time... oh well,
I try to remember to tell each submitting author who gets reviewed that his/her review has been posted and supply the link. I'm not always going to remember, but I have tried to keep up in the past. I think I owe an email or two lately.
That said, I'm don't think it's a necessity.
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