BTT: Honesty

[fourzoas]

I missed this week's Booking Through Thursday, so I'll post it on Friday instead. It's just as well; I wasn't really inspired by this week's prompt, but I thought some of you might have an opinion.



Here's the prompt Deb posted yesterday:

I receive a lot of review books, but I have never once told lies about the book just because I got a free copy of it. However, some authors seem to feel that if they send you a copy of their book for free, you should give it a positive review.

Do you think reviewers are obligated to put up a good review of a book, even if they don’t like it? Have we come to a point where reviewers *need* to put up disclaimers to (hopefully) save themselves from being harassed by unhappy authors who get negative reviews?

I don't read reviews unless they're posted on Amazon. I realized that yesterday when I started thinking about this prompt. That means that I only read reviews for books I'm already seeking, as opposed to reviews for books I've never heard of. From time to time I'll click on a related book on an Amazon post, but even then I'm looking at books in a narrowly defined field of interest.

Honesty doesn't seem to be as much of an issue there, since anyone can leave a review. They're not always the very best written reviews, but I'm OK with slogging through them to get an overall sense of what people who cared enough to leave feedback had to say about the thing (whatever it may be).

I guess I'll add a follow-on question--where do you find out about new books you might enjoy? Do you read reviews?

Comments

Long comment is long - sorry!

[persiflage-1.livejournal.com]

I've mostly given up my book reviewing because I spend so much time in writing stories instead. But when I was reviewing regularly and used to receive books from publishers, authors and random people who fall somewhere between the two camps, I *always, but always* left an honest review. However, if I seriously hated a book - as in couldn't finish reading it, I wouldn't review it.

I have to say that if authors are too thin-skinned to accept that their book might not appeal to everyone then they are in the wrong trade. And no author, no matter how many millions of copies they've sold, has the right to hassle a reader for not liking their book. That is just very bad manners indeed.

As for where I find out about new books, well I belong to Amazon's Vine program, which sends out free copies of books (and other products) for invited reviewers to request items, and I read the blogs of several friends who share my taste in books. I also receive the booktrade e-newsletter, and e-newsletters from various publishers - because although I no longer review much, I do still read a fair bit.

[autifon.livejournal.com]

I find out from sources like Time or NPR. They will mention a book, & if it captures my interest, I will seek it out. The last 2 books I got, in fact, came from recommendations from those 2 sources. If I am looking for books on a subject, I tend to read some reviews on Amazon, just like I do for any other product I am researching.

When I was writing book reviews, I tried to do it like performance reviews of people: if you have something negative, try to sandwich it between 2 good things. :)

Once I did a technical editing for a guy (ie, I was not part of the book-writing team per se, but got a very late copy of the prerelease work to read for technical accuracy), & it was so bad that I asked him not to put my name in the credits! I made up a reason why not, but basically it was just me not wanting my name attached to anything that horrible.. (btw, I realize that I can no longer say per se w/o cracking up. I think I need to go to Hot Topic now.)