[caption id="attachment_808" align="alignleft" width="152"] photo c. Grizelda Holderness.[/caption]

By Nimue Brown

“Nimue...did you read it all?  If not can I ask that you do so?  If you have read it can you speak to it as if in reference to what it can do for folks waiting for it?  You know the ones of your audience on the ascension trail. :)  In fact a reviewer does not look at hat it can do for you personally but for what it can do for others who read it.”

I’d read slightly under half and said it was not a book I could review or endorse. That should have been the end of the conversation. The first rule of reviewing is that it has to be fine for people not to like your book. Some people won’t like your book. If the people who don’t like your book offer not to review it, they’ve just done you a kindness.

Don’t tell a reviewer how to review. That’s not clever or polite. Unless they ask for your opinion on their review, at no stage should you do this, aside from at the end when they have reviewed, and you say thank you, and if their review is awesome, you say so, and if it’s a bit short, you say ‘that’s great, thanks’.

You also don’t argue with reviewers about what they think, how they feel and how they express that. Most reviewing is unpaid. If someone gives your book time and attention, be nice to them. They are doing you a favour. They have no reason to be nice to you. If you are a git, they will not review you, or not review kindly.

It helps if you know who your reviewer is – just a vague idea of where they are coming from may help you work out whether to ask them in the first place. I hate formulaic plots for the greater part. I’m a Druid, not a New Age person. I’ll read Pagan texts, I hate dogma. Send me a dogmatic book and I’ll hate it. Ask me and I’ll tell you upfront that I hate dogma, and save us both a lot of time. Reviewers are good like this because three hours reading a book you find is utterly wrong for you is three hours of your life that you never get back.

No, you can’t ask me or any other reviewer to read the whole book. Whether I read any of it is up to me. Whether I can comment on it is also my choice.

Many reviewers are purely reviewers but my situation is a bit more complicated because I am an author. If I give a book a positive review I am, to a degree, associating my (admittedly small) reputation with that book. Therefore I only give reviews that are heartfelt. If I recommend something on my blog, it is because I think it’s awesome and that anyone who likes my stuff could well like it. To do less would be dishonourable. I owe it to the people who follow my work to be honest with them. Why would I compromise my reputation in any way for a book I don’t like by someone I don’t know? No sane person is going to do this.

If you don’t know who you’re talking to when asking for a review, it’s worth remembering that you could be talking to anyone. How many followers they have, what influence they have, is unknown. Don’t piss people off needlessly. I’m busy, I get a lot of demands on my time. If I like your project, if I like you as a person then I’ll support you in whatever way I can, but treat me like something you are entitled to, expect me to like your stuff, expect me to support you... and you’ll find that doesn’t work well.

(Because I could have named both the author and the book, but I didn't, but plenty of people would if they were feeling as annoyed as I am right now.)

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