What Not To Do

Open-books-664x442

I recently read something by someone who seems to have sold their soul to the devil for the sake of their reputation as a reviewer. When I mentioned that to point up formatting issues, inferring that it only happened with ‘Indie’ books, was to say the least ‘extremely bad form’ not to mention incorrect, I qualified my statement by pointing out that even some mainstream published books contain errors. The person tried to justify their action by saying that the review site they contribute to expect errors to be pointed out! They went further by saying – “I also think that some critical observations are helpful to deter some readers who 1 star books on such minor issues.”

I could not disagree more! If anything, comments of this nature by those who believe they are doing all authors a favour, inevitably attract the wrong kind of attention to the book in question! The reviewer doesn’t care,  but the author most certainly does!!!

I would strongly urge anyone who is contemplating setting themselves up as a reviewer, to avoid such sites like the plague if you wish to be taken seriously by all writers, whether Indie or Traditional. Its bad enough that we are already subjected to these kinds of finger pointing ‘reviews’ by Amazon’s trolls.

It always saddens me when someone forgoes decency for personal ambition…