I mentioned this guy before, a novelist Anne and I had coffee with back in Boulder. In the course of a long conversation I asked him if he ever heard from his readers. Not very often, he said. It’s not surprising. How would you go about getting in touch with a writer whose book you liked – or didn’t like, for that matter? This guy has a website, but no blog and no email address to be found anywhere. I once wrote to a writer c/o his publisher, but since I never heard back I have no idea whether he ever got my letter.
He said that most of the feedback he gets from readers is Amazon reviews. I looked at his Amazon listings: maybe three or four hundred online reviews per book. Helpful? Not really. Mostly he thinks the reviewers are showing off, trying to get readers for themselves.
Amazon has a frequent-reviewer recognition program. You can become a Starred Reviewer, a Top Ten Thousand Reviewer, a Top Thousand reviewer, and so on – these might not be the right titles, but you know what I mean. Earning this recognition is based on how many times someone who read your reviews found them to be “helpful.” Amazon regards this vote count as a proxy for “quality content.”
Which of course got me to thinking. If you write high-quality reviews, and a lot of them, you might get widely recognized as helpful. But what else might get you there quicker? First, you’ve got to get your review seen by a lot of people. That means reviewing books that people are already interested in. Best sellers are the best bet. Books climb the best-seller lists quickly, so get your review posted quickly so lots of people can see it. Next: are positive or negative reviews more likely to be seen as helpful? After a quick informal survey I concluded that 5-star reviews are regarded the most helpful. People want to latch onto popular memes – it makes you popular by contact. If you’re deciding whether to buy a best-seller, you don’t really want to hear bad news about it. You want to be persuaded to get on the bandwagon quick. So: write upbeat reviews about already-popular books and you’re well on your way to becoming a popular reviewer.
Meanwhile here’s the poor writer. What impact is my book having on the readers? Look at the sales receipts. But popularity isn’t the same thing as quality. What do the readers really think of the book? When even the reviewers are trying to get popular, the writer may never know. Just like Marx said: capitalism alienates the worker from his own work.
Interesting. I just wrote my first Amazon.com review recently. It was a five start review. I honestly thought the work was good so I gave it five stars – I think it is a really good read. However, before you think my motivations were pure I also put in a plug for my blog. Why? Because I have reviewed several articles in the book and I want people to read the book and come over to my site and comment on it. If that happens it is a win-win scenario, of course. The book sells more. The readers have fun with comments. The writer gets attention and royalties. I get the fun of hosting the conversation on my site. And we all gain knowledge by discussion, which is in my opinion the greater of all goods.
Question (please read aloud with your best New York Bronx accent):
You got a problem with that??!??!!!?
Secondarily…
I’m curious as to how the Marx quote applies to this scenario.
What you are talking about is feedback on the work, not the work itself. It seems as though if there is alienation it is the writer from the reader, not the writer from his/her work.
Comment by Jonathan Erdman — 18 January 2007 @ 8:19 pm
I wouldn’t worry — Hermeneutics at the Crossroads is ranked 1.9 millionth in sales, so I don’t think you’re going to benefit from a bandwagon effect. Plugging your blog in the review? Kind of tacky, but I don’t know how you get anybody to know you’re out there otherwise. Though how likely is it that people are going to comment on your old blog threads? Aren’t you hoping maybe they’ll start following your blog prospectively because you’re such an interesting reviewer? And aren’t you also perhaps hoping that the writers of the book will notice your review, maybe remember you next time you get in touch with them, maybe boost your stock a little with the big boys?
I’m saying the writer is alienated from the work. If you think work contributes to the greater social good, then what you do isn’t work until it makes its impact in the world. That’s a position Marx would hold, I think. How do you know whether your work is having the desired effect on society? You have direct exchange with the beneficiaries. If you’re a baker, you need to hear from the people who eat your bread. If you’re a writer, you need to hear from the people who read your books. When there’s a secondary market in literary feedback mediated by a broker that takes a cut off books sold, that secondary market is going to be skewed in favor of positive reviews heaped onto already-popular books. The work value is distorted by the market value.
Comment by ktismatics — 18 January 2007 @ 10:44 pm
So I just went over to Open Source Theology and saw that my post about True Myth has generated something like 500 readings. There’s no doubt I get a certain satisfaction out of that. I also attribute the hitrate to the excellent job I did with the original post and have done so far with responses. Is all this sort of thing corrupt? I previously put the same true myth posts on this blog and it generated 2 comments (one by me) and maybe 30 readings. When I posted at OST I felt some sense of responsibility to the post-evangelical community to offer up what I thought was a helpful evaluation. But I wanted to show off a little too. The comments have helped me push my thinking and improve the overall quality of the ideas — which is a big part of what blog exchanges are about. But the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?
Comment by ktismatics — 18 January 2007 @ 11:17 pm
Ok, I see your point about Marx.
On Amazon the purity of reviewing a book is spoiled by the self-centered, self-promoting reviewers who begin reviewing not so much to provide a review that is worthwhile, but merely for the sake of having a review that gets good ratings. To become an all-star reviewer.
I’ll have to make sure I get over there and provide some negative reviews!
Interestingly, many of the really negative reviews often times reflect ignorance on the part of the reviewer. An example is a conservative Christian who reads something that they don’t agree with – maybe some “relativistic postmodern thing” – and they give it 1 star. Why? Because they can’t understand it. Why can’t they understand it? Because they don’t really take the time necessary to get into it. (I recently had this experience with a paper I turned in for class. I was “reading postmodernism into the text.”)
There are games within the games. Layers and layers of meaning and purpose to be found within the world of literature. No clearly pure motives. But for most people their motives are not purely evil, either. It is somewhere in between pure self-promotion and unadulterated love for writing.
Indeed….the heart is deceitful…..
Comment by Jonathan Erdman — 19 January 2007 @ 1:59 pm
Games within games, layers within layers, mixed motives. That’s partly why it’s hard to pin down authorial intent, or speakerial intent, or whatever. We’ve all got so many voices clamoring for attention you never know which version of yourself is going to grab the microphone next.
Comment by ktismatics — 19 January 2007 @ 8:07 pm
I’m comming back here because I find I can truly learn something here.
We are authors and share enough same ideas also about publishing, we end up sharing more time with each other’s writing than we would with someone who is busy with something completely different. It is a very real need to express oneself and to share information, and there is not much opportunity to do so in the world around. If I leave a criticism at Amazone, I choose a subject that relates to my interest, however loosely. When I write or speak, a process of learning takes place. It is growth of consciousness, sometimes one thought reveals another.
And I end with a practical addition: to get more traffic on your site, there is a tool called ‘Ping-o-matic’. This sends your blogtitle and bloglink to a list of searchengines. I’m trying it out since this afternoon. I will tell you if it helps increase traffic.
Comment by Odile — 22 January 2007 @ 6:17 pm
Yes, it’s a difficult and lonely path. I think I’m often too bitter and pessimistic to make much progress in getting published. It’s good to know that someone else is making the effort too.
Pingomatic — I’ll have to look into it.
Comment by ktismatics — 23 January 2007 @ 1:05 pm
I have done a few ‘ping’s and found new traffic did come to my site, it is not much, but if they come back, I’m satisfied. But google is the most important refferer to my blog. Google prefers content (keywords), this is why I like google a lot. I have tried other ways of finding blogs that share familiar topics and the good old snowball used in research is the best way. Participating in forums is good too if you really have something to add. Everytime I write at a forum I get traffic to my blog. Do you want another practical idea? I bookmark blogs and forums to have a list ready when I’m ready to publish.
Comment by Odile — 26 January 2007 @ 2:04 pm
That’s good. You seem to do a lot of exploring on the Internet, which is why you’re able to put up such interesting resources on your blog.
Comment by ktismatics — 26 January 2007 @ 4:29 pm