Four days ago, The New York Times exposed the practice of purchasing five-star reviews on Amazon. So far, few have offered solutions. A Reddit user explains how to properly read Amazon review graphs through the cloud of purchased hype. Erin Keane calls for independent writers to hold themselves to higher standards.
Self-Published, Self-Promoted
Top 20 Short Stories of 2010
Chris Flynn of Australian Book Review runs down the top 20 short stories of 2010 (many of them American) at his blog, Fly the Falcon.
Wollstonecraft’s Legacy
“Inspired by her governess, the radical feminist philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, Margaret King cast aside her immense privilege, cross-dressed as a man to go to medical school, and inspired a new generation of women to push against the rigid conventions of their era.” Meet Margaret King at Longreads.
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The Surreal World
Recommended Reading: Dean Young’s poem “Why I Haven’t ‘Outgrown Surrealism,’ No Matter What That Moron Reviewer Wrote” for Plume.
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Who Can You Trust Anymore?
A Russian publisher has stooped to a new low: it added “fake quotes from fake newspapers on the cover of a … novel released this summer.” That’s not all, either. Apparently the publishers are trying to bill the book as a “Swedish” crime novel even though it was actually written by a Russian under a pseudonym.
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50 Favorite Fictional Women
Fifty authors, editors, and publishers, including Year in Reading alumnae Rachel Cantor and Julia Alvarez, have come together to discuss their favorite fictional women at Brooklyn Magazine.
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The Jamesians
“A dead, white, quasi-European male was able to survive the culture wars by becoming wised up, worldly, homosexual, feminist – Henry James, our contemporary.” But who was he, really?
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Multiplicity
Flip through the blurbs on a recently published novel and you’re likely to come across a ton of stock phrases. Gary Shteyngart parodied this repetition — as well as other facets of the blurb-industrial complex — in a bit of improv last year. At The Morning News, Christine Gosnay writes about a poem that gave her a genuinely new reaction: the sense that she was “more than one person.”
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I have to say it is tempting to hire people to give your book a positive review, or for that matter, any review. So far I have resisted the temptation. I have tried the honor system and find readers myself, or authors that want to do a review in exchange for one on their book without the promise that it will be positive, but with the assurance that it will be an honest reflection of their thoughts. Unfortunately, I did more reviews than I got back from other authors, but we are only talking about very low numbers. There just are too many books out and a lot of slush…it is hard to break into the world of books as a new independent author.
Johanna van Zanten