Reading various tweets and posts over the past few months has made me reflect on what visitors to book review blogs want to/should know about the blogger. What makes a blog visitor trust the reviewer’s integrity? Are there factors which visitors feel are important for a blogger to disclose regarding their hobbies, professional interests, and relationships with authors/editors/publishers/agents?
I’ve compiled a list of factors which visitors might feel are important for a book review blogger to disclose, plus my thoughts on each.
Receiving ARCs or other free books from authors/publishers: I know that bloggers in the US are now legally required to disclose the receipt of ARCs, but I’d like to broaden the discussion of this issue to bloggers worldwide. Personally, I like to know if a blogger receives ARCs. Unless they only seem to award high grades to the books they review, it doesn’t affect my perception of their honesty, but I think it’s important to mention it. I’ve been around the blogs long enough to assume that the vast majority of reviewers receive ARCs, but I didn’t realise this at the beginning.
Friendships with authors/editors/publishers/agents: This, for me, is where it gets tricky. I’ve exchanged tweets with authors, plus the odd email. Does that make me their friend, or affect my ability to grade their books honestly? Not as far as I’m concerned. When reviewers are genuinely friends with an author, I don’t think they should review their books. At the very least, they should mention this fact in their review. The same applies to critique partners.
The book review blogger also writes: Once more, this factor is not straight forward, and I’m referring exclusively to those writers who are not yet published. If a review blogger has at least one completed manuscript and is actively seeking publication, but fails to mention this on her blog, I can see that this might affect visitors’ perception of her ability to review fairly. On the other hand, if the blogger has the vague notion of writing a book some day and occasionally writes a page or two, I don’t think this is relevant. And what of all the people who fall somewhere in between? Some only write during NaNoWriMo; others write regularly but don’t feel comfortable discussing their work publicly; yet others write in fits and spurts, sometimes leaving years between manuscripts.
For the record, I do write, and I have mentioned this on the blog before. I didn’t put it in my bio when I set up the blog because it never occurred to me to do so. At any rate, I was going through a writing slump at the time. I would put myself in the “in between” category of writer reviewers: I’m not at the stage of actively seeking publication, but I’ve been writing regularly and now have a critique partner. In other words, I take it seriously, but I’m not yet at the point of submitting to agents/editors.
The reviewer is a published author: I take published author book recommendations with a pinch of salt if they are of books from the same genre or subgenre in which the author writes. The cynic in me always checks to see if they share the same agent or publisher. On the other hand, I don’t see a problem in an author reviewing books from other genres. Authors, after all, are also readers.
Reviewer is employed by an author/publisher/agent: I definitely think that the reviewer should be forthcoming with this information. As a blog visitor, I’m likely to be interested in what they have to say due to their inside knowledge of the publishing industry. If, however, they chose to conceal this from their visitors, and it somehow came out at a later stage, it would definitely have a negative impact on my perception of their honesty and integrity.
Self-proclaimed expertise on a subject: If a blogger presents themselves as an expert on a particular subject, I like them to mention their credentials. While I find the anonymous agent/editor blogs amusing, I don’t take them seriously as I have no idea whether or not they are the real deal.
Ads on blogs: I ignore ads on blogs. I understand why some bloggers choose to run them in order to cover postage costs, etc., if they run a lot of contests, or post books to other reviewers. However, I don’t care for them. (Thanks to Janet W for the reminder!)
Some Questions to Ponder:
- What factors do you think a book blogger should disclose in order to circumvent potential accusations of conflicts of interest?
- Does it alter your opinion of a reviewer when you know that they also write? (Yes, I review and I write, but I welcome honest opinions, so feel free to disagree with me.)
- Can you think of other factors which would alter your perception of a reviewer if you knew of them?
{ 13 comments }
Interesting. I wasn’t sure about the blogger/reader/writer intersect when it was raised on Twitter, but I’ve been wondering recently whether it hasn’t made me an even crankier reader. I don’t review books precisely, but I am now consciously reluctant to say bad things about books I feel cranky about because I don’t know what drives my crankiness. Maybe being a writer is part of that. I just don’t know.
Similarly, there are authors I like as people (because I’ve met them or just interacted with them in Romlandia) whose books I’m reluctant to write about online: if I compliment the book, I could be convinced that it was an unbiased opinion but it might still have the “appearance of impropriety.” If I am feeling cranky about a book, then I have two reasons not to share — I’m not sure what’s driving my crankiness and I don’t want to upset someone I like.
Understand, I don’t think “proper” reviewers have to engage in a lot of navel gazing. A modicum of common sense should sufficient to tell a reviewer if their review is influenced by extraneous factors, or could appear to have been influenced by extraneous factors.
I’m just glad I don’t review books.
I had this long drawn out comment but will condense it to say this: The bottom line is how I perceive the blogger. Are they someone I trust? That should take into account all the conflicts of interest, and anything else that needs to be disclosed to their readership because I trust the blogger to be open and transparent when the need arises.
I think it should be disclosed if a blogger/reviewer is “good” friends with the author. Nowadays it’s so easy to interact with many authors on twitter and such, but that doesn’t necessarily make you “good” friends. That’s a fine line, but at any rate, it should be mentioned.
I don’t care how the reviewer got the book. It’s a moot point for me. And I don’t care of a reviewer is an author or not, as long as a review is honest.
What I do care about is if the reviewer only gives great reviews. If I only see rah, rah reviews I discount the reviewer pretty quickly as someone whom I can trust. And to be honest, if I read a few reviews and they don’t say much, I discount those types of reviewers pretty quickly as well. I want to know what they liked or what they disliked. Not, “oh this book was so kewel, you should get it.”
Review sites like Two Lips, Coffee Time Romance, and Fallen Angels, I never take seriously. They usually offer one or two paragraphs of a synopsis and then one paragraph of why the reviewer liked or disliked the book. I don’t trust that and it tells me nothing usually.
I think it should be disclosed if an author is reviewing for another author’s books with the same publisher. I usually take those worth a grain of salt as well.
So what it boils down to really, for me, is how the reviewer reviews and disclosures of being close friends. Outside of that, I don’t care really.
I could blather on and on about this topic, but just want to make a couple of points. 1) The Author Is Not Their Book. I’ve read countless books that I wasn’t wild about written by authors who I think are truly wonderful, lovely people (and vice versa). Also, while it’s easy to focus on Authors Behaving Badly – I think most authors “get” that not everyone is going to love their books, “bad” reviews happen, and life goes on.
2) What Keishon said. Exactly. Of course this does make “work” for the blog reader. I tend to lurk on newbie blogs for a while, to get a “feel” for the blogger. And sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn’t. But hey, that’s the Internet. Not every book blogger is one-size-fits-all.
I don’t worry about most of this stuff. When I find a new review blog, I tend to look at the past reviews of books I’ve read. Do they match my thoughts on the book (for the most part). Or is this reviewer someone who has entirely different tastes than me. That’s what I look for most of all. I don’t care if you’re a writer, if you got an ARC, or whatever. Do your tastes match mine? Ok then.
For me it’s about perception and taste. If I feel the reviewer/blogger has similar “tastes” in reading material and viewpoints I’m more likely to trust their reviews. I don’t really care if a review is “friends” with the author as long as it is somewhat mentioned in a review so I can understand why the review might be a bit more “rah rah rah” than usual.
I do not like published popular author’s reviews of other authors. This seems more of a marketing plan vs a well thought out review. Great food for thought!
@Magdalen: I never gave any of this stuff thought when I started blogging. I enjoy reviewing, so I can’t see myself stopping. If I ever get published, I’ll reassess the situation, and probably stick to reviewing non-romance books.
While I honestly can’t see how my writing affects my impressions of the books I read, I respect the fact that it’s important to some visitors to know that I also write romance.
@Keishon: Well said, Keishon. Most of the review blogs on my blog roll are ones I’ve been visiting for a while. I’ve gotten to know the bloggers’ tastes and interests, and seen how they grade the books they review. I agree with you that it all comes down to how I perceive a particular blogger. When I spoke about being sceptical about published authors who review books, I’d forgotten about Lynn Connolly, one of the reviewers at The Good, the Bad and the Unread. I know Lynn is a published author, but I’ve always enjoyed her reviews. As you said, it all comes down to the person.
@LVLM: I’m also wary of sites which never seem to give below 4.5 stars, for example. Perhaps their policy is only to review those books which they enjoyed, but it definitely puts me off visiting them.
@Wendy:
“Not every book blogger is one-size-fits-all.”
So, so true! And those who try to please the masses rarely succeed.
I’m also with you re: authors who behave badly. Unless I discover an author I’ve previously enjoyed is a convicted paedophile, or something equally heinous, their personality rarely affects my enthusiasm for their books.
@Lori:
“I don’t care if you’re a writer, if you got an ARC, or whatever. Do your tastes match mine? Ok then.”
That was pretty much my thinking when I started visiting review blogs and started my own. Recent discussions on Twitter and elsewhere got me thinking more deeply about this topic, but ultimately, shared taste in books is what really matters to me.
@K.C. (Smokinhotbooks):
“I do not like published popular author’s reviews of other authors. This seems more of a marketing plan vs a well thought out review. “
Exactly. Unless the author in question has a proven track record of providing reviews with a variety of grades, I can’t take them seriously.
Gosh monkeybear, all of the above and nothing … if I enjoy a site, I am not particularly critical. Bad me.
But if I get a bit slapped about, if I think there’s a preponderance (sorry, is that spelled right?) of books by one publisher rather than another, or there’s “an agenda”, well then I get hypercritical.
Let’s spell this out in brass tacks: one site could review nothing but HQN titles but if I respected them and their reviews, well whatever … I’m there and I take them at face value. But that wouldn’t/doesn’t necessarily hold true across the board for me. I guess I prefer lots of info: like are you reviewing someone you’re really close to, a critique partner, oh, you’re a writer … you get the drift. I really don’t really care or think about this stuff until something extraneous raises a red flag and then I go all ovaries to the wall. Not really very analytical eh?
I’m very choosy in how I take books recommendations. I usually go by trust and personal experience of the person recommending, be it blogger, reviewer, or reader.
Also, I tend not to go by reviews much. I find it blows the story for me too much. However, if I enjoyed the book and like the reviewer from elsewhere in Romancelandia, I’ll read their review for the pleasure of a well-written piece.
Having gotten to know people over time, I can spot their biases and so take their recommendations with the appropriate grain/pinch/shovelful of salt.
And then of course there are the review sites that will simply not rate a book lower than 3.5 and mostly in the 4′s and 5′s. I distrust them.
And duh, forgot to reply to the blog questions on hand: I do want reviewers to come clean with where they stand: their current status, how they acquired the book, and their relationship to the author. Personally, I don’t see why a reviewer wouldn’t want to have this be above board. After all, being honest increases readers’ respect for integrity about reviews.
I don’t care about any of that stuff. I’m not sure I even care if a blogger is 100% honest. I read romance blogs for the fun of sharing a common interest. It’s not Consumer Reports for Fiction. If I buy a book that you loved and I hated, I’m not going to demand that you fork over $7.99 in compensation. You as a blogger have no fiduciary responsibility to me.
Whether or not I buy a book rarely– actually, I’m going go out on a limb and say NEVER– depends on what one single blogger has to say. For a new author, I still rely a lot on the blurb, a sample page or two to get a feel for the writing, and sometimes overall reputation or buzz. And sometimes just because it has a pretty cover.
I don’t really think about any of this stuff when I’m reading reviews, either. Besides, I think you can sense when most people are being disingenuous.
@Janet W: It’s all about trust, isn’t it? That takes a while to build. I’m also far more positively disposed towards bloggers who make their visitors feel welcome and value their contributions to discussions, even if the views expressed run contrary to their own.
@Keira Soleore:
“Personally, I don’t see why a reviewer wouldn’t want to have this be above board. After all, being honest increases readers’ respect for integrity about reviews.”
Exactly. After all, what’s there to hide?
@Nicola O.: Like you, I usually read several reviews of books I’m interested in buying. If a book is liked by a few reviewers whose taste usually mirrors mine, then I’m inclined to buy it.
@heidenkind:
“Besides, I think you can sense when most people are being disingenuous.”
Very true.