Wednesday, 7 November 2007

Reviews and Reviewers

The first review of my fourth book, "Tribute of Death", has been posted on the Website myshelf.com. Here is the link: www.myshelf.com/mystery/07/tributeofdeath.htm
And it is a very good review!
Does it matter, though?
Most of my reviews have been good, and I usually cull them for quotes that I can put on my website - as much so that I can find them all in one place as because I think people will read them all and be inspired to rush straight to Amazon and order my books. Of course I have had the odd bad one - maybe two or three in the course of five years, out of (I'm guessing) 30 or so altogether. Curiously, I find that I don't usually mind the bad ones so much. No book is perfect, and while I'm sure I'm as prone to self-deception as anyone, I do try to learn from criticism. Where the reviewer has a point I'm usually happy to acknowledge it. Even where I simply don't agree with him or her I can accept that not everyone likes anything, if I think the reviewer has been honest.
On the other hand, what do you do with those rare reviewers who are not honest - who either plainly haven't read the book, or have willfully misunderstood it, perhaps because they're running some agenda of their own?
I've only ever had one review like that. I won't say which book it was about, who the reviewer was, what he or she said or where the review appeared - only that it seemed to me to be a clear case of someone who had a preconceived idea of what my book was supposed to be about and hadn't allowed what was actually between the covers to influence the review at all!
So to repeat the question - what do you do then?
Then - and this is the only circumstance when I'd do this - you go through the review very carefully until you find the one comment in it that looks complimentary (if you take it out of context!) and you copy it on your website. Ha! Revenge!
Now I invite you too look at the Reviews page on my website and see if you can guess which one it was...

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