It's A Reciprocal Thing

Many years ago I declared myself a no review zone. I had a lot of friends – from various writing sites and spoken word nights – who were prose writers and poets, many of whom went on to to be published or to self-publish novels, short story collections and poetry collections. Obviously, the quality varied and there was - sorry, really, really sorry – a tendency towards angsty, awful poetry that even the Vogons would have refused to read. Poets who had clearly never read any poetry, ever, were putting out collections that amounted to nothing more than opening a vein and bleeding onto the page and asking to be praised for their bravery.

I bought them. I bought them all. I supported them all. They were nice people. They may not have been hugely talented poets, but they were lovely and I wanted to support them in the only way I could – financially. But I couldn’t, in all conscience, write glowing reviews. Hence the no review zone.

Later, several friends released excellent short story collections, poetry collections and novels – but I couldn’t review them. I was the non reviewer. The no review zone. I was stuck. While I had lost touch with the majority of the really not very good poets, I had made this declaration and felt I had to stand by it. It was a blessing in some ways, but when I read something wonderful I really wanted to say so, to shout out to everyone: BUY THIS! IT’S AMAZING! AND I KNOW THE AUTHOR!

But I couldn’t. I didn’t do reviews.

And then I brought out my own collection and things got a bit more difficult.

When you buy a book, do reviews matter to you? They matter to me. I find myself looking at reviews on Amazon and I’ll read a 5 star review, then I’ll look at a 1 star review, then I’ll look at those reviewers’ other reviews. If the 5 star person is giving great reviews to everyone, I ignore their opinion. If the 1 star person is just a nippy wee git sniping at everyone, I ignore their review. But if those people give a variety of reviews over several books, I’ll take their opinions a bit more seriously and they may influence my decision to buy or not.

I wanted reviews for my book. But how could I ask for reviews? I’m the non reviewer – how cheeky would it be to ask other people to do what I was unwilling to do?

But I asked, and they did, and they were lovely. But now I know I have to do the reciprocal review, and what if I read their book and I don’t like it/think it’s badly written/come face to face with Vogon poetry? Do I have the courage to be honest if they’ve given me a 5 star gushing review? What’s the protocol here?

Well, we know, don’t we? We see it every year in those ‘authors pick each other’s books as book of the year’ in various newspapers.

But if I do the obligatory, you gave me 5, I'll give you 5, my credibility is shot.

And it sucks. But it’s what we do.

There is no such thing as an honest reciprocal review. Is there?

P.S. Here are some wonderful things I would have reviewed had I not been the non reviewer (seriously - buy all of these): A Man's Hands, A Documentary About Sharks, Somewhere to Start From, Spit, Melons and Memory, Ordinary Domestic, Dot,Dash

and loads more. TUT.