IndieView with Danielle Forrest, reviewer at The Eternal Scribe

That means paying somebody to make a professional cover, paying someone to edit the book, and possibly even paying someone to do formatting.  Almost all books I reject for review are due to a lack of proper editing

Danielle Forrest – 28 October 2013

About Reviewing

How did you get started?   

I had set up an “author” site years ago on weebly.com, but never touched it.  Then, back in October 2012, I started to get really gung ho about writing and publishing.  Started reading blogs, learning, fell in love with talking to authors on twitter, and somewhere along the line discovered that I could get free books in exchange for review.  I think an author friend, S.M. Boyce, gave me her book for free and directed a few other authors my way.  Suddenly, I’d fallen in love…

How do you review a book? Is it a read first, and then make notes, or do you make notes as you go along?

I always make notes as I go along.  It’s one of the reasons I’m such a stickler for getting either ePub or Kindle formats.  I need to be able to make notes inside the book.  When I get PDFs, I end up having to sit my laptop in my lap the entire time I’m reading – not the most comfortable thing in the world.

What are you looking for? 

Books that make me just sit up, grin, and maybe even giggle.  Mostly, paranormal, scifi, and fantasy.  Some horror.

If a book has a great plot, great characters, but the grammar is less than perfect, how do you deal with that? 

Groan?  If it’s sporadic or systemic (systemic meaning the person is always making the exact same mistake) and it doesn’t confuse the reader, I make a note of it in the review, but don’t really count against the author for it.  It’s basically impossible to make a book perfect.  If I have to read the same paragraph four times, I probably won’t even review it.  I’ll probably put it down midway.

How long does it take you to get through, say, an eighty thousand-word book? 

Less than 24 hours if in one sitting.  Specifically?  Not really sure.  I know I can read the average novella in about 5-7 hours, sometimes less.

How did you come up with your rating system, and could you explain more about the rating system?

I don’t give 1 or 2 stars.  To me, those mean I didn’t finish it, and I won’t review something I didn’t finish.  3 stars is average – nothing stood out, but it wasn’t bad.  Maybe there was stuff that detracted from it a bit.  4 stars is really good, but didn’t have me bouncing in my seat with a stupid grin on my face.  5 stars?  Yeah, stupid grin.  And most likely, I went out and bought the next book in the series, even if I did tell myself I wasn’t going to buy any books for a while…  5 stars are books that make you want to shout to the rafters, broadcast it to the world, maybe blast it on Facebook and twitter…

What advice could you give to authors looking to get their books reviewed? 

Publishing is a business.  You have to spend money to make money.  That means paying somebody to make a professional cover, paying someone to edit the book, and possibly even paying someone to do formatting.  Almost all books I reject for review are due to a lack of proper editing.  And a sub-par book cover turns me off from the start.  It’s a bad first impression.

Do you get readers emailing you and thanking you for a review? 

So far?  A few times.  I’m including comments in here as well.  I’ve had someone email me once.  I’ve had several times where someone commented on the review post saying they were adding it to their To Read list, or that they were going to go out and buy it.

My advice to authors on getting a “bad” review (hasten to add that might mean a perfectly honest, well written, fair review – just bad from the author’s point of view) is to take what you can from it and move on. Under no circumstances to “argue” with the reviewer – would you agree with that? 

Yes, in fact I would go one further.  Don’t read your reviews at all.  Count them, maybe, but mostly ignore them.  Maybe use excerpts from the 5 star reviews for promotion, but all you’re going to do by reading the bad reviews is get yourself upset.  You’ll end up pacing your living room and talking to yourself (<–I’ve done that on comments on my reviews, so I guess that’s sort of similar).

About Reading

We talk a lot about writing here on the blog, and possibly not enough about reading, which is after all why we’re all here. Why do you think people love reading. We’re seeing lots of statistics that say reading as a past-time is dying – do you think that’s the case? 

I think it has become more condensed, but also it has changed.  I think the people who read novels are fewer, but they read more.  I think people read more, but they read different.  After all, people spend hours surfing the web.  Sometimes it’s just surfing Facebook, but sometimes it’s blog posts, or sites like ReadWave and Wattpad.  Publishing is changing, adapting to a new world order.  Electronics are becoming the new paper.

About Writing

What are the most common mistakes that you see authors making? 

Not getting an editor.

We’re told that the first page, paragraph, chapter, is absolutely key in making or breaking a book. Agents typically request only the first five pages of a novel, what do you think about that; if a book hasn’t grabbed you by the first five pages, do you put it down? 

Yes, and I think because I am a reviewer, those first few pages are even more important.  Those pages decide whether I’ll read it.  It’s quick.  It’s dirty.  I get an impression of the writing style in those first pages.  If I can’t get into the book, I’m not going to bother.  I’ve found it’s the best way of weeding out the duds.

Is there anything you will not review?

I restrict myself to a few genres.  I won’t review grade school works.  I’m not a kid, don’t have kids, don’t remember ever thinking like a kid.  I don’t know how to determine if a children’s book will be good for kids…

About Publishing

What do you think of the oft quoted comment that the “slush-pile has moved online”? 

It’s the truth.  I think the way that phrase is interpreted varies.  Some see that as all self publishing is crap.  Me?  I see it that there is a lot of good books in those slush piles that would have ordinarily never seen the light of day.  Agents and publishers just don’t have the time to go through all that.  We make a much better proving ground than a publisher or agent.

Do you think attitudes are changing with respect to Indie or self-published titles?

I do.  Traditional publishers see them sort of as the enemy.  Indies see themselves as allies in the struggle, and you’re seeing a growing respect for Indies with readers and reviewers who dedicate themselves more and more to reading mostly or only Indie books.  Readers like that they can get the books much cheaper, and the small, quick nature of these authors/publishers makes it so they can quickly adapt to trends.

Do you have any ideas or comments on how the industry can “filter” good from bad, aside from reviews? 

I think that sites like Amazon should use reviews as more of a means to bring books forward to the readers.  I think reviews are the perfect means for filtering.  I don’t really know that there is anything else that would work.   Of course, sites that give excerpts and the first chapters of a book are nice, but a simple star rating and number of reviews is a great down and dirty way of filtering things out.  Not to mention, it can be easily used in metrics and algorithms.

End of Interview:

You can read Danielle’s reviews at The Eternal Scribe.