Tag Archives: Quill & Quire

Review copies don’t get returned, and other facts of life

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During my days as the Literary Arts editor for my school newspaper, The Link, I was initiated into the exciting world of book reviews. As a book geek, the idea of reading free books was a big deal to me, and once I discovered that pretty much all of the publishers throughout the U.S. and Canada would send me stuff from their current catalogues for free, just because I told them I wanted to review their new book for the paper, I was hooked. Paying for books became almost a thing of the past, overnight, as I was able to get my hands on most of the hot new titles I’d been anticipating for years.

This is but one of the perks of working in the publishing industry.

Now, on the flip side of this equation, you have independent publishers and print-on-demand publishing, where the budget for sending out review copies is limited or non-existent. With POD publishing, the author typically has to pay for each copy he or she chooses to send out, and I’ve read many articles from small and independent publishers who say it’s not worth their time and money to send books out for review at all. Fair enough. I would think the same might apply to the big houses as well, who are sending out books to bloggers who may or may not ever get around to writing about those books, and whose reviews don’t make much difference in terms of jacket blurbs (i.e. those glowing words of praise from big-shot writers like Margaret Atwood and whatnot) anyway.

All of that aside, there are still rules to requesting review copies of books, as well as etiquette involved in actually completing the reviews so that the publisher doesn’t write you off as a twit, a thief, or worse. For instance, you should always ask for books you actually intend to review, and preferably the types of books that fit in with your publication’s mandates. At Black Heart, we review mostly books by indie publishers or authors who have chosen to self-publish, along with anything we feel has a theme of rebellion or being an outsider. Although I might really want to request a review copy of a new book that falls outside those parameters, it would be dishonest for me to misrepresent these intentions and get a free book that I never intend to review, even if I will actually read it. Ya dig?

Secondly, if you don’t ever write the review, the publisher probably won’t want to send you any more books, so write the damn review! It doesn’t have to be nice, but it does have to be your honest opinion. I, personally, also prefer to abide by the Quill & Quire standard of book reviewing, which holds that while “bad books happen,” this isn’t something you should take to a personal level. Go ahead and say you didn’t like it, but don’t make it into a vendetta against the author, and certainly don’t review books by authors you have personal relationships with (positive or negative), as this will bias your review.

Finally, most publishers like to see “tear-sheets,” or copies of the review once it’s published. If you publish a blog, all you have to do is send them an email with the link to the permanent URL and voila! Done. It’s just a common courtesy to follow up, particularly if you really enjoyed the book and wrote a nice review. This will show that you’ve done your job, and if you’d like to request more books at that time, it’s a good way to reconnect with the editors and publicists in charge.

Now, on the flip side of things, if you’re an author sending your book to a publication with the intention of getting some glowing words of praise to use on your book jacket, there are also rules. The first and most important of these is this: Book reviews are not necessarily going to be positive.

Yes, I would LOVE to write positive, happy reviews of every book I’ve ever read. But I can’t, because not every book I’ve ever read has been worth reading. (For instance, I would really like to get my time and money back for having read all of those terrible books by Heidegger when I was a Philosophy student, but I suspect ol’ Nazi-lovin’ Heidegger and his estate aren’t going to be coughing up any time soon.) That’s just the way the cookie crumbles, and even if some people think your work is brilliant, there will always be someone out there who reads it and thinks it’s crap. People are weird that way, so don’t take it personally, but do understand that it’s all a roll of the dice.

Secondly, and equally important to remember is this: Books sent to publications for review will never be returned.

Why? Let’s put it this way: your book is going to be beat up by the time it’s been read through, because most reviewers like to take notes, stuff them into bags when they go to work in the morning, fling them across the room when they’re mad at their significant others, and occasionally have to use them to prop up wobbly table legs.  (The books, not their significant others.) And, frankly, once you send the book in for review, it’s no longer yours. You will never get that copy back because that’s life. You can’t go around giving people stuff and then asking for it back; this is not a borrowed copy that you lent to a friend, it’s a work copy you gave, with no strings attached, to a professional reviewer to use for his or her work. That work involves reading and commenting on your work, and therefore the material in question now becomes the property of the reviewer.

So basically, don’t ever ask me to send your book back to you. Not only will I be irritated and delete your email, but I’ll also never look kindly on any of your work again. It’s just not done, and it’s actually quite rude to insist that the reviewer do you this kind of favor when it was assumed that you understood the rules of play from the beginning.

And now that you do, there’s no reason to ask, is there?

When freelancing sucks

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“I hate my job, and I don’t think I’m gonna go anymore.“
“Are you going to quit?“
“Nah, I’m just not gonna go anymore“
—Office Space

I don’t know what to write anymore. For the most part, I’m frustrated with my current employers, who either give me terrible assignments, pay me less than I’m worth, or just straight up don’t respect the work that I do for them. (Except you, Quill & Quire; you are the only employer I actually like. Wanna go steady?)

On the one hand, I feel like I shouldn’t complain, because being freelance means that even when my assignments suck and I make shit money, at least I’m my own boss and get to set my own rules about when and where—and what—I will write. I like that part of my job a whole lot, and I’m not sure I could ever deal with doing a “real” job again.

But on the other hand, yes, goddamn it, I am dissatisfied! I hate making shit money, I hate getting all the worst assignments, and I hate feeling like I am just wasting my time doing busy work rather than making some kind of difference in the world. I like to learn new things, to talk to interesting people, to write things that matter—even if those things ultimately only matter to me. Currently, most of my employers don’t do diddly-squat in the way of helping me to learn or to grow as a person. They certainly don’t care about nurturing my soul, and they aren’t doing nearly enough in terms of nurturing my physical self, with respect to fair wages that pay my (very freakin’ minimal) bills.

So I’m fed up, and I’m not sure what to say about it, because I feel like freelancers aren’t supposed to bite the hands that feed them, no matter how many times those hands also slap them in the face. I keep writing and erasing notes to my bosses–the ones that keep on asking for more and more, while giving me less and less. I keep wanting to call bullshit, to stand up for myself. Because, honestly, who else will? And yet every time I tell my husband when I’m doing, he tells me not to burn my bridges.

But I ask you: If I’m on a bridge to nowhere, what does it matter?

The Gazette’s bitchy review of Jon Paul Fiorentino’s Stripmalling

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Have I ever mentioned the maxim “If you can’t say anything nice, then shut the fuck up?” I think it requires reiteration today, in light of The Gazette’s particularly bitchy review of Jon Paul Fiorentino’s novel, Stripmalling, published earlier this week.

stripmalling

Now, to be fair: I haven’t read this book yet, though I do have plans to review it myself. As far as full disclosure goes, I know Jon Paul, though only slightly. We once read at the same Words and Music event, back when it was still happening at Casa del Popolo, and I found his poetry entertaining. He teaches at Concordia University, where I was once a student, but I’ve never taken any classes with him. I wrote a review or two for Matrix Magazine, where he’s the editor-in-chief, but our interactions have been limited. In short, I really have no reason to stand up for the guy, except for this: reviews should not be needlessly bitchy.

This is a guideline given to anyone who writes reviews for Quill & Quire, Canada’s magazine of book news and reviews, and I think that it applies equally well to reviewers more generally. Or, as Dave Eggers’ literary magazine The Believer puts it, “Thou shalt not slag anyone off.”

“But Laura!” you may be saying, “Aren’t some books just BAD? Shouldn’t we write snarky things about them and put their authors in their places?” Okay, yes: some books are just bad! Maybe Jon Paul’s book is truly terrible. But even if it is, why would you make it personal? Why write mean things, in public, about the author himself? As the Gazette reviewer writes in his first sentence, “Jon Paul Fiorentino’s ‘novel’ Stripmalling should be the final nail in the coffin of literature’s most pernicious aphorism, ‘write what you know’ (a phrase that actually occurs in the book).” Not so snarky? Allow me to emphasize the scare quotes. Yes, the ones around the word NOVEL, implying that Jon Paul’s book doesn’t actually qualify as such. This is the first sentence of the review, and frankly, it raises some eyebrows.

Just who is this Claude Lalumière, and why does he seem to have an ax he’d like to grind into Jon Paul’s back? For starters, his bio at the end of the review notes that he “is the author of the forthcoming collection of short stories Objects of Worship.” This, in and of itself, makes me wonder. I mean, isn’t it a little bit impolitic of a writer to be so venomous towards one of their own, especially when said writer has a book coming out that will obviously need to be reviewed? It just doesn’t make good business sense to write nasty things about someone in a review when you’ve got a book that will be undergoing a similar process in the near future. After all, what if Jon Paul Fiorentino ends up writing Lalumière’s review?

Granted, Jon Paul is a bit higher up the food chain than Claude Lalumière (as judged by the all-knowing, always-impartial Wikipedia, who doesn’t recognize Lalumière’s name at all but at least offers a stub on Fiorentino), and probably doesn’t waste time writing pithy book reviews, but I think the point remains. You don’t stab people in the back if you want them to think well of you, or—by extension—your books.

Here are the phrases in this review that I found particularly spiteful:

  • “It should never be enough to simply regurgitate one’s lack of a significant life.” Sorry, but how does Lalumière know whether or not JPF has lived a “significant” life? He’s reading a work of fiction and conflating Fiorentino’s characters with his real life. Furthermore, what makes him the judge of what a significant life is?
  • “That his narrative alter ego is explicitly aware of these weaknesses is not funny, as Fiorentino seems to think it is, but insulting and disrespectful, giving the impression that the author cares so little about either his writing or his audience that he can’t be bothered to at least try to create a work of some ambition.” Whoa, nelly! JPF has created a work of no ambition? Okay, Claude, just out of curiosity, what have YOU written? According to your blog, you’ve got some online fiction, zines, and a few stories that have been included in anthologies. Wow, that’s really ambitious! You haven’t even written a novel, much less a full volume of poetry, and your only publisher so far has been… you. Oh, and someplace called ChiZine Publications, who will be publishing your very first work. Which is an anthology of 12 stories that will be premiering at a science-fiction convention, as opposed to JPF’s novel, which will be premiering at the internationally famous Blue Metropolis literary festival. No offense to lovers of science-fiction or self-publishing authors, both of whom certainly have interesting things to say, but I don’t think Claude should be tossing around the word “ambition” here like he has that market cornered. Or, for that matter, as if every book ever written has to be ambitious, as opposed to fun, funny, entertaining, cute, ridiculous, whatever.
  • “Stripmalling also suffers from the significant problem of not really telling a story; of amounting to a more or less random jumble of vignettes that ends up petering out awkwardly.” I’m sorry, but I was under the impression that fiction was whatever the author made of it. Since when do we all have to tell stories the same way? What exactly does Lalumière mean by “not really” telling a story? Obviously, if Fiorentino has published a novel-length work, he has told a story of some kind. Perhaps it’s not the kind of story Lalumière would like to read, but that is hardly a sin. There are plenty of things I don’t like to read, but it doesn’t mean that the writers writing them are at fault. Furthermore, vignettes are still elements of a story; they are scenes that focus on a particular moment or person. If they are “jumbled” or “awkward,” that is certainly a criticism, but then again, Fiorentino is pretty famous for writing about awkward characters. Perhaps Lalumière is confusing Jon Paul Fiorentino, the man (whom he has already personally attacked, and conflated with his character), with “Jonny,” his character? Again?

All in all, I found this review to be distasteful. While I don’t believe that one should praise books that are undeserving of praise, I also don’t think negative reviews ought to attack the writers themselves. The point of a review, after all, is to discuss a literary work. Good or bad, the work itself is the issue. Whether or not the writer is (or could be) a good writer is not the debate; it is whether or not the book in question effected you, and how, and why. This review seems to me to be the work of an envious wannabe, although I will admit that this comment is purely speculation on my part. If nothing else, it was done in poor faith. Shame on you, Claude Lalumière.