Crime Fiction Dossier

How to solicit reviews

I like it when people write to suggest books to me. I consider the recommendations I receive to be an important part of my tracking system. Given the outrageous number of books published every month, it's not only impossible for anyone to read but a fraction of them, it's nearly impossible just keeping up with what's available.

Case in point: Walter Mosley, one of my favorite authors, had a book (Cinnamon Kiss) released last month. This is something I'd be very interested in knowing. I read just about everything Mosley writes and would be likely to review it. (As it turned out, it would have been featured in my Chicago Sun-Times column, except the paper had already assigned it to someone else.) Despite my interest, I didn't even know the book was being published until it was on the shelves.

So recommendations can be very valuable to me. They're especially valuable when they come from people I know. But even if I don't, I still welcome the information. That's one of the reasons I recommend authors get to know who the various reviewers are and make sure those people know when you have a book coming out.

It's important to keep in mind the nature of your approach, though. Recently I received an email requesting that I review a book. Here is the message, in its entirety (only the embarrassing details, such as the book's title and the author's name, have been changed):

Please review Book X by Author Y, published by authorHouse.

Please email [email protected] to interview Author Y.

Can you imagine a less helpful email or a more useless review solicitation? And does it come as a surprise to anyone that AuthorHouse is a vanity publisher?

Such a message will, obviously, be ignored -- or else it will wind up being the object of a teaching lesson on someone's blog. You decide which is worse. What it won't do is get a review. There's no chance in hell of that.

Rather than just point out how silly this approach is, though, instead I'll use it as an opportunity to discuss what authors and publicists should do when soliciting reviews.

1. Include the relevant information.

The email should contain all the necessary information to help me decide if the book is something I might be interested in. This includes: the author's name, the book's title, the publisher, the publication date, a brief synopsis of the plot, and (briefly) anything else I need to know. (For example: it's the 3rd book in the series; the author was just nominated for an Edgar, etc.)

2. Be personal.

I tend to be underwhelmed by emails addressed to "Dear Editor." If you don't even know who I am, why do you want a review from me? It's not very hard to discover my name and who I am, so if someone doesn't even take the time to do that, I'm skeptical of how conscientious they are about other aspects of their work.

Your email doesn't have to be chatty. It doesn't even have to be complimentary. But it should demonstrate that you've done your homework and aren't just emailing every reviewer you come across. If you know who I am, or if we met once, or if you're familiar with my work, or you have similar taste in books, it couldn't hurt to reveal that. (Don't say it, though, if it's not true. My bullshit detector is state-of-the-art.)

3. Keep it brief.

The email should be as brief as possible and still include the necessary information. It should not include the information as an attachment, nor should it direct me to a website to get this information.

4. Don't include blurbs from other reviews.

A lot of publicists do this and I find it annoying. I don't care what other people thought of the book; I only care what I think of it. I'm not looking to jump on the bandwagon and review a book just because Kirkus loved it. If anything, I'm going to see that the book has already gotten several reviews and doesn't need my help.

5. Send the book right away.

If I say yes, you should be prepared to send the book promptly (or have a copy sent by the publisher). If the book isn't currently available, then hold off on contacting me until it is. If you're having the book sent by the publisher, make sure they send it. Pester them if necessary. (You wouldn't think this would be necessary, but sometimes it is.)

6. Don't pester me.

If you want, you can check with me after a week or two to see if I got the book. If I say yes, your work is done. If I say no, try to fix the problem right away. Once I get the book, though, that's it.

Don't follow-up to see if I've read it, or if I'm going to review it, or if I liked it, or anything else. Once you get the book in my hands, you've done your part.

7. Tell me if the book is self-published or from a vanity press.

Most newspapers will not run reviews of self-published or vanity press books, so this is information I need to know. Some self-published authors try to hide the true nature of their book in an effort to mislead reviewers. I don't recommend this. Be honest and straightforward about your work and let the chips fall where they may.

8. In sum: Be polite, be brief, be helpful, be honest.

After that, let it lie. If it works out, great. If not, you took your best shot.

Love is Murder 2006

Love is Murder, Chicago's annual mystery writers and readers conference, is coming up next February 3-5 at the Wyndham Hotel out by O'Hare Airport.

This is an excellent gathering for anyone interested in mysteries and thrillers, either writing them or reading them. Love is Murder has the advantage of being small enough that you can actually meet and talk to the people in attendance, but still large enough that they attract an interesting crowd.

They have an excellent line-up of guests scheduled, including David Morrell, Judith Guest, William Kent Krueger, Barry Eisler, Kevin Guilfoile, Libby Hellmann, J.A. Konrath, Robert Walker and others.

I attended the conference in 2004 and will be there again in 2006. Hopefully I'll be seeing many of you folks there as well.

Aspiring authors beware

Earlier this year, Xerox and Lulu.com (a Print-On-Demand company) sponsored an "Aspiring Authors Contest" to find "the best work of unpublished fiction" from an author willing to publish their book POD. Their goal was "to demonstrate the power of digital print-on-demand as a smart alternative to traditional book publishing."

First prize was 250 copies of the book and $5000. The judges were a well-respected pair: Maureen Corrigan of National Public Radio and Emily Chenoweth of Publishers Weekly.

The winner was Tenure Track to Mommyville by Barbara Grosh, the story of an academic who is denied tenure and returns home to care for her child and try to save her marriage.

The purpose behind this contest was to legitimize the self-publishing or vanity/POD "alternative" for writers unable to break-in via the traditional route. If the sponsors could come up with a great book, one of the alleged many that languish unpublished due to the elitism and ignorance of New York publishers, surely this would be a triumph for aspiring vanity authors everywhere.

So let's see how they did.

Frank Wilson, my editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, is more open to self-published books than most review editors. (He's one of the few I know who'll even consider then.) He decided that Tenure Track to Mommyville might be an interesting book to include in the newspaper. So he gave it to Tanya Barrientos, one of the Inquirer's writers and a novelist herself, to review.

We often hear that the only thing self-published and POD books need is a chance. Given that, they'll be able to prove that they're just as good as the commercial books coming out of New York. So this one got a chance. Great news for all the self-published and vanity press authors out there, right?

Well...not so fast. Unfortunately, it turns out that the book wasn't very good. In Barrientos' judgment, it was not worth reviewing. She reports that:

In the publicity material, Corrigan is quoted as calling the novel "a picture of the trials and tribulations of 21st century motherhood."

But a well-crafted picture it's not. The story is serviceable, as is the prose. But there was nothing about Mommyville that made me think the self-publishing world is bubbling with undiscovered gold.

(Barrientos has some other things to say, too, so make sure to check out her comments.)

Wilson accepted her assessment and the book will not be reviewed in the Inquirer. So much for the POD alternative. If even their contest winner isn't up to snuff, how bad must the rest of them be?

(For more thoughts on things writers should be wary of, including vanity presses, check out J.A. Konrath's excellent piece "Writing Scams" over on his blog.)

Mayhem, guts and gore -- oh my!

David Hiltbrand, columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and mystery novelist, wrote a thought-provoking article recently about the trend in pop culture towards more gratuitous expressions of violence and brutality. Sarah Weinman linked to the piece and touched off an interesting discussion about it, focusing on the literary world.

When it comes to television and film, relaxed standards have clearly, I think, allowed filmmakers to depict content on-screen that previously would not have been allowed. (Note that this is true regarding violence, but not sex.) Furthermore, advances in technical sophistication have made it possible to show things in a hyper-realistic manner that wouldn't have been possible even twenty years ago.

With regards to the themes involved, whether torture, mayhem, serial murder, etc., I don't think much has changed. And I believe this is true for books as well. If anything, there are some themes, especially those involving violence towards women and children, that might even be a little harder to deal with these days than before. (Mickey Spillane, for example, got away with some real nastiness towards women that probably wouldn't fly today with a mass audience.)

However, if the themes have remained largely the same, I do think that the descriptions of and attitudes towards those themes have changed. The language and imagery used in mainstream books is stronger than it once was. Previously, you might have found such material in an obscure pulp novel, but now we're seeing it in highly-promoted and publicized books that land on the bestseller lists.

Now, I'm the farthest thing from a prude. I don't think I've ever read anything in a book that shocked or grossed me out. So for my purposes, I don't particularly mind it. But I do get peeved when I see an author who appears just to be throwing that stuff in there for shock value. It might make for a nice marketing ploy -- "Look at the nice woman writing the awful things!" -- but it doesn't necessarily make for good storytelling.

Another thing I have a problem with is when novels take too much pleasure from dwelling on their blood and gore. When you start to feel the author lingering over such a scene with almost reverential (or sexual) glee, it definitely becomes a turn-off. (This is how many people felt about Thomas Harris' Hannibal.) I don't mind it because I'm offended. I mind it because it's bad writing. Such passages are not storytelling; they're voyeurism, cheap and lurid. And I'm no more interested in reading that than I am in peeping in someone's window.

As always, talented writers use their themes, images and language in service to the story. They don't do things simply in an effort to shock the reader. Even if the purpose of the story is to shock, a skilled writer will still ensure that what happens in the story is an organic and necessary part of the story. The content might be shocking, but the author will have earned that reaction, and the story will be stronger as a result, not diminished.

It's easy enough to write passages filled with murder, mayhem and mutilation, all dripping with blood, guts and ichor. But if it's not a logical outgrowth of the story, fitting in with the book's overall tone, style and theme, then what's the point? It's not going to shock; it's simply going to bore. Such a writer isn't worthy of outrage. Just throw the book away and move on to an author who cares about the story they're telling.

Email woes

It turns out that Yahoo has being doing a particularly vigilant job lately of filtering out some of my legitimate emails, mistaking them for spam. So if you've emailed me lately, but not received a response, you might want to send your message again.

The importance of cover

It turns out you can judge a book by its cover. Consumers do it all the time.

Writer Paul Guyot did an informal survey of consumers to get some idea of what motivated them to buy books. He approached people in bookstores to ask them a few basic questions about their book-buying habits and strategies. (You can see the complete results on his blog.)

Of the 47 people he spoke to, an overwhelming 43 of them said they would buy a book based on the cover. (That’s 92% for those of you keeping score at home.)

Of the 30 people who said they browsed for books based on the author’s name or word-of-mouth, 27 of them said they would put a back if they didn’t like the cover. These are potential buyers who are already favorably inclined towards a book or author, and still they would not buy it if the cover was dissatisfying.

These results may be unscientific, but they still provide support for what I have long believed and observed.

Cover matters as one of the most important factors in the book selection process because it is the first thing the consumer sees, the first chance to make an impression. Considering how many stimuli are constantly vying for our attention, a book is lucky to get one chance to catch our eye. And the cover is probably 90% of that.

Think of all the books available at the bookstore. Tens of thousands of them, all crying out (mostly in tiny, muted voices) for our attention. Unless you have a specific book in mind, how do you make the decision as to which one you pick up?

If a book has a dull, lifeless or lackluster cover, will that be the one you look at? Will it even attract your attention at all? Probably not. You’ll never even notice it. When you do pick up a book off the shelf, you’re probably spending 10 seconds evaluating it. How much of that is based on the cover? Considering that most consumers aren’t going to start reading the book while standing there at the shelf, the cover matters a lot.

It works the same for me, as a critic, when I get books for review. When I open all those packages and start sorting through the books, I’m just like a consumer. The publisher is trying to sell me on the book, and a great cover will make me take a second look.

Obviously I’m considering lots of other factors as well, but a well-done cover is only going to help the book’s chances. On the other hand, a lousy or amateurish cover can’t help but taint the book. As a professional reader, I look beyond that. But for consumers? Forget about it.

ThrillerFest -- calling all Superfans

Regular readers of this blog know that I'm in charge of programming for the ThrillerFest writers and readers conference to be held next June in Phoenix. This will be the inaugural conference of the International Thriller Writers and will feature a lot of interesting activities, including the presentation of the Thriller awards.

It looks like it's going to be a very interesting conference, with some great writers, including several who don't ordinarily attend conventions like Bouchercon. So I think there will be a lot of opportunities for fans to meet writers they might not ordinarily see. The hotel (The Arizona Biltmore) is also supposed to be great, which might partially offset the unappealing prospect of visiting Phoenix in the middle of the summer.

As I mentioned a while back, I'm interested in involving readers in some of the programming. So this is where you come in! I'm looking for 4 people to be part of a panel where fans (you know, the people who actually buy and read all those books) are the stars.

Instead of listening to authors talk about their books, this will be a chance for the readers to talk about what they like and don't like, what impresses them or turns them off, what makes them buy books, who they're reading and why, and a whole host of related topics. The moderator will be an author, hopefully somebody fun and cool, although I don't know who yet.

If you're planning to attend ThrillerFest and that sounds like the kind of thing you'd like to do, please email me and let me know. (Note: You do NOT need to be a member of ITW to be on this panel.) There aren't really any qualifications for inclusion, other than a love of books, reasonable knowledge about the thriller genre, and the willingness to share your opinions about both.

On the other hand, if that sounds dreadful, but you have a cool idea for what you'd like to see, you can email that to me, too.

You can visit the ThrillerFest website for more information.

Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in.

Okay, so my retirement from blogging only lasted two weeks. Turns out I’m such an opinionated bigmouth that I couldn’t resist sharing my wisdom with everyone. Who knew?

Actually, there are some things I want to say, and some books I want to share, and there’s no better forum to do it than this one. (I also appreciated the fact that so many people wrote in to say they missed my writing. Be careful what you wish for!)

I had a very generous offer from M.J. Rose to blog part-time on her site, but it just didn’t feel right. If I’m going to spout off, I should do it in my own house and not mess up the carpet at somebody else’s place.

Don’t expect me to post as frequently as I once did. I’m planning to write when I have something to say, and stay silent when I don’t. The focus will remain largely the same (books, authors, reviewing and publishing), but I hope to concentrate on more substantive topics within those categories. There’s already enough fluff out there, right?

This new iteration of the Crime Fiction Dossier will not have the comment feature enabled. I find that the “discussions” that erupt on most blogs are counter-productive and too often negative, so I’ve decided to eliminate them. If you have something to say, you can always email me.

We’ll see how it goes this time around. Thanks for joining me!