Friday, January 30, 2009

The Frustrations Of A Book Reviewer - Volume 2: A Thankless Job?


When we started our review website, I always knew that you can't please everyone all the time. But what I'm sharing with you today just takes the cake. Please see the following email and note that this has not been altered in any way. I did omit the name of the author to protect the not so innocent.


Mr. Hubbert:

Could you at least summarize what is wrong with it? The opening page conveyed it would probably be three months or more before you even had a chance to read and review it. What exactly was it? You did not care for the plot? You found too many grammatical, errors in punctuation? How much time did you even spend reading before you even made your decision. I submitted my request for a review approximately one week, ago. How did you manage to get through enough of it to determine that it was not suitable for you website? You know what. Nevermind and FFFFffUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKK YYYYYYYYYYOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111


That email was NOT in response to an actual review that we did but just an inquiry request for their book to be reviewed. Of course the profanity was unprofessional and childish, but this person didn't follow our submission guidelines. Our guidelines state to send a chapter excerpt in order to be considered for a review. This person chose to send their entire book and for some reason thought that someone was reading their entire book. I rejected it and as always offered them to post info about their book in our Yahoo group or even to purchase advertising. This is an example of a person that obviously knows nothing about this business and won't get far in it. A part of me wanted to respond immediately with a few choice words myself, but instead I took the high road and simply ignored this person.


If this person had came to me the right way, maybe I could have provided some feedback as to why their book wasn't accepted. I don't think people understand the time and dedication that it takes to select books for our website. It also takes time to review these books too.

Thankless job? Sometimes...but I still love it!

Radiah

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