Current Issue

“Now What?”

Welcome to the second column for “Mouth Full Of Bullets.” With BJ’s permission and subsequent hard work, I have added a couple of new features for the site. More about that later. In the meantime, if you have a question or suggestion for a future topic then by all means send them to BJ or myself at kevin_tipple@att.net

In my first column, now archived, I suggested you should get to know your reviewer. By that, I meant know what the reviewer you are interested in reads and reviews. As I discussed, in my case, I don’t do the horror genre at all. Despite making no secret of that fact, I am still receiving several requests and queries a week asking me to review horror books. It simply isn’t going to happen and I no longer bother to respond to such items. The delete key is a wonderful invention and I use it heavily.

I used to politely respond to such queries and an amazing amount of time would get a very hostile reply back. Instead of being grateful that somebody who has no knowledge in the field took a pass on the book, often the author would instead open fire with both barrels. After asserting I was an idiot (amazing the number of folks who think that and yet want me to review their book), and making a few snide comments about my latest review or whatever, the author would then let it rip about how I dared turn down his or her book.

The same is also true of a surprising number of folks who do write in the genres I am interested in and yet, I have to tell them no at least for now because my TBR pile is huge. TBR is a quick way of saying TO BE REVIEWED or in other words, I have a huge number of books TO BE READ AND REVIEWED. Yes, it took time for you to write your novel and it takes time for the reviewer to read it. Time that could be used for other things, maybe even paying writing work and instead is being used to read and review. While some reviewers make money reviewing, I don’t and neither do the vast majority of folks who read and review. Getting upset when the reviewer tells you no because the stack to be done is huge is absolutely not a commentary on the merits of the author or the work. It is a commentary about how big the work load is. My current TBR total is sixty-five and as such, I am not accepting any books at this time unless they fit a very narrow niche. On a good week, I can read three books a week. On a bad week, like when I had the stomach flu and yes, I will spare you the details, I didn’t read anything. Not even the newspaper.

So, you can see that in my case, its going to be awhile before I get everything done assuming I don’t have still more stuff show up unexpected. I’m not alone in this. I know a few reviewers that get about twenty books a week and actually review maybe one or two. In my case, if I asked for it to be sent (as opposed to drop shipments unasked for from publishers) then I make every effort possible to do the book. Still, some authors expect that the reviewer should not only say yes but instantly drop everything and read their book.

I still remember the author who tracked me down last June after my near stroke to demand her book to be read and reviewed in three days since the postal service had confirmed I had gotten it the week before. She called long distance, which is no mean feat, as we are unlisted and then said after I explained that I simply could not see (double vision and dizzy spells don’t do so well reading wise) told me that I had five extra days.

Amazingly, she called twice more over three days to see if her book was done yet. She will remain nameless and her book will remain unreviewed by me as it was donated to the local library. It’s not in the system so I don’t know what they did with it and I don’t care. The basic fact of the matter was she was unbelievably rude and no matter what I had done, she wasn’t going to be happy.

But, at least she didn’t just send me her book as an e-book. I know a lot of folks have high speed whatever and can get downloads faster than Superman can cross the country, but I can’t. I’m on dialup. And this is about the worst blunder you, the aspiring novelist who is sure your book is the one this year can make. If you forget to check out the reviewer, if you forget everything else I have said, don’t forget this.

I guarantee you, right along with finding out that my opinion was so valuable you are one of 30 or more people that were spammed in mass about the book, is that hideous discovery when the download bar slows to a crawl and then stops and I know somebody sent me a book. One such author, who will remain nameless, sent me his thousand page e-book nine times over three days. In fact, he sent it seven more times after I told him mo and then asked why not?

I guarantee you he will never get a review or anything else from me. His book could be great, but, as a human being, he was amazingly rude. And that’s the thing. Rudeness is not cool at anytime and something that should be remembered is that reviewers often have plenty of other things to do. If you are rude, they will go and do those other things and ignore your book. If that happens you have no one to blame but yourself.

So, what should you do? What you should do is send a nice e-mail offering your book for review and a brief synopsis of it. Please don’t ask the reviewer to go look at your website or whatever to get the synopsis. Again, you are asking the reviewer to jump through an unnecessary hoop. You know you want this reviewer to read your stuff so make it easy on him or her and tell him a little bit about the book and basic information such as ISBN, Publisher, formats offered, publication date, etc. Be upfront and don’t try to call your horror novel a “dark comedic mystery.” You know who you are and yes, I won’t name you either. Then, sit back a few days and see what happens. No answer and you are sure the reviewer reads in your genre? Then, a brief follow-up is perfectly okay.

And by the way, it should go without saying, if the reviewer responds it is a really good idea to reply back. I said before I had sixty-five books in my pile. There are probably another twenty out there somewhere that I said yes to and sent mailing info and never heard another word. No thank you and its on the way or anything.

Does make one wonder.

Well, as you can see the old soap box is starting to break and I blame the holiday food. So, I am going to step off the lecture and suggest that you take a look at a couple of new items we have for you. One is a new feature that will briefly cover some of the big names with small thumbnail reviews, magazines when I can get them and the occasional small movie review. Hopefully, by doing so we can give you, our readers, a better sense of the overall mystery scene.

The other deal is that we are adding a small feature based on what I do for the print newspaper SENIOR NEWS. As some of you may know, I write a monthly book review column for the newspaper aimed at senior citizens and edited by Michael Bracken. The column is focused solely on books about Texas or written by Texans. I approached BJ with a spin-off of that idea and suggesting that it should be aimed at books on Louisiana or Louisiana authors.

BJ loved the idea and I was left with my foot in my mouth. I knew of James Lee Burke and that was about it. So, I did what many a better person than I am has done and put out a call on the DorothyL list and was absolutely deluged by the response. I thank those posters who helped once again and you, the readers, will soon see the fruits of that labor. Hopefully, because I am not limiting myself to current brand new books, I will be able to introduce you to series that you haven’t heard of before in columns to come. In the meantime, I can showcase a couple of very different books written by some obviously very talented folks for this issue.

Which is one reason my TBR pile is so huge. Time got away from me and as such less got done for this issue than planned. Still, I am working hard and more reviews are sure to follow.

As I said at the opening, if you have any questions or suggestions or just about anything else, please drop BJ (my boss) a note or write me directly at kevin_tipple@att.net. I look forward to hearing from you!