James M. Lowrance

Disclaimer: I worked very hard on this review, guys, so please don't comment on it negatively or disagree with me because that we be unfair and obviously you're all just jealous.

/sarcasm

Here we go.

With all the discord going on between authors and bloggers/reviewers, I thought this title could be a relevant voice to add to the discussion. I was wrong.

The author writes about "unfairly" negative reviews, but from what I've gathered, he genuinely doesn't think any negative review he receives is fair. His arguments go as follows:

1. Reviewers writing these unfavorable and unfair reviews are authors or aspiring authors or possibly friends of other authors. They purposely seek out books to review negatively and effectively derail competitive titles.

2. Reviewers should not be able to review based on price v product, formatting, or grammar.

3. The abundance of positive reviews is evidence that any negative review is wrong.

I'm going to try to tackle these point by point to retain coherency.

1. Reviewers are jealous.

According to Lowrence, more often than not the writers of these negative reviews are actively seeking out titles comparable to their own books, and giving out negative reviews, so their books shine better in the category.



I've heard this before. We're all soooo jealous of these successful authors and we are so unsatisfied in our own lives that we must tear down others of whom we are envious. This is flat-out wrong. I don't know where he's getting his information from but the reviewers that I know are gracious and nice people. When someone in the book blogger circle gets a book deal we celebrate her success. We do not strive to tear down people. We expect quality books and love to share them.

He goes on to say that book reviewers who create their own book-review sites (read: book blogs) should only be professional reviewers. This irks me for two reasons: he is a hypocrite and an elitist.

Lowrence is the author of a number of titles, many of them in the medical field. He writes books about medicine, but he is NOT A DOCTOR. He is not a professional physician and yet he feels like he is qualified to write books on chronic diseases just because he has been diagnosed with them. You read that write. A book blogger cannot comment on a book she has read but a patient can author an entire book on an illness without actually going to medical school.

Also, he is an elitist. We have all seen the attitude before. I don't think I really need to delve into this too much, because any sane person knows that one may have an opinion on something without being a professional in its industry. We can tell whether a dish tastes like crap without going to culinary school, right?

2. Reviewers may not review books based on grammar, formatting, or price.

I find this outlandish. We consumers may dislike something based on any number of criteria. Especially price. If we feel that we have overpaid for something, then we have the right to say so. We have the right to tell other potential buyers that this particular product was not worth the cost. You would tell your friend not to buy those shelves because they are cheaply made and do not last long, and to instead buy a different set that is of a high quality. I'm not sure why this isn't the case with books.

Formatting is a major issue with ebooks and poor formatting can really take away from the reading experience. I recognize that it is not always the author's fault, but that does not take away from the fact that my reading experience was disturbed because the writing wasn't centered, pieces were missing or spliced onto different pages, or the text was illegible. If we recognize these problems and are book reviewers, I think it is our job to let potential readers know about these issues.

Finally, Lowrence asserts that we should not review based on grammatical errors. I don't think Lowrence realizes that commas and hyphens serve a purpose and dictate how we interpret text. He says that authors may feel free to take artistic liberties in their writing. I would counter that with: sure, but not when writing a nonfiction title without a story line. But that's just me.

Basically, an author is someone who is paid to write well. If an author does not have a basic grasp on the use of punctuation, I do not think they are very good at their craft. That simple. If you don't know how to do something correctly, you are not good at it. Writing is a skill, not a talent, and you should learn the rules and machinations of it before asserting your "artistic liberties" all over language.

3. The abundance of positive reviews is evidence that any negative review is wrong.



Look. Nearly the entire population of the world once thought the earth was flat. But they were wrong, even if they were the majority. I would suggest Mr Lowrence researched argument ad populum.

He also goes on to say that reviews should not be allowed until a certain length of time after the book has been released. I guess this just shows that he hasn't worked with any type of traditional publishing before. Advanced copies are sent out to book sellers, librarians, reviewers, and bloggers all the time before a book's release to generate reviews and create an early buzz. That is part of the marketing process. He asserts that book sellers should wait until they can gauge how many times the title has been returned and use that information to see if the negative reviews are fair or not.

Basically, he wants online book sellers such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, etc to screen reviews for unfairness. Ludicrous. On top of this, he also wants the same booksellers to filter through what he calls "trash titles" so that only arbitrarily 'good' indie titles make it through this process and his indie titles don't get a bad rep because of them. I find it ironic, because this title is one of the many that are giving me my bias against indies. (Sorry indies.) Also, isn't one of the perks of publishing independently the lack of rejection letters? There are plenty of books out there that the average person in the industry would not think was publishable, but are actually good. This weird process that Lowrance has created in his fantasy land could potentially (definitely) harm indie authors.

Other things Lowrence wants screened from reviews:

-Swearing
-"Don't waste your time/money"
-Recommendations of other similar or better books… (mehr)