Sunday, January 13, 2008

Book Publishing and First Reviews

An interesting discussion "Tactless Reviewers" has started on Lulu. I thought author Sylvia Semel, writing about her experience with BEING A TWIN, made a good point about how a community of authors should handle initial peer reviews.
I have responded saying that the first few public reviews for the web page of a new self-published book need to be positive else readership and therefore discussion can be severely damaged. If the reviewer feels negative about the book then IMO a private message to the author is the best way to handle that. I know there is a controversy about authors and their friends stacking online review pages with patsy reviews. I suggest the best way for authors and publishers to handle this is to start the page off with reviews from test readers but with statements like this: "Publisher-posted review from John Doe, one of our test readers."
More...

No comments: