January 2013 and a resolution.

Heavens, I keep saying I must blog weekly but then I slip up. Life is too busy to waste time woffling a load of words with little meaning. if I can't blog with sense why blog at all?

So pick a topic and go for it. That's the advice my blogging friend are giving. A new one found for each week, scan the newspapers or keep on blogging about your favourite things, they say. There isn't the time. However the PR work for Writer's Choice has led me to Goodreads.com. This is mainly a place for readers to brag about how many books they've read, discuss what they are currently reading and review and chat.

I've not spent time at Amazon - I have ethical problems dealing with a company which is trying to set itself up without competition - but I have heard the complaints about reviews. Not just about the 'sock puppets' giving themselves lovely reviews and booing and jeering other writers' novels, but about shoddy reviews which are hurtful to sales. Those reviews where either it is all important for the reviewer to be seen airing opinions or the reader shows little or no grasp of what s/he's read.

Many of the reviewers are readers only and not writers. They have no idea what has gone into getting that story onto paper and into book form. I'm still very new to Goodreads so I don't know if they have a suggested format for reviews and comments. But a little polite consideration would go a long way to stopping some of the vapid, mouthy or just plain rude reviews. Some reviewers seem to have found books in genres they hate and then written bad reviews. I dislike intensely the trend for vampire/werewolf novels so I don't read and review them. My dislike is my personal opinion and it should not be shouted across the internet in a review which I have not been asked to do or paid to do it. There is nothing wrong with a review in which the reviewer explains why they didn't like a book, but it had better be good honest criticism backed up with examples from the book and not just someone shouting disparaging comments because they can.