Tag Archives: books

It’s All In The Review–Maybe Not!

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Sebastien WiertzPublished in The Albert Lea Tribune week of May 25, 2016. Something About Nothing by Julie Seedorf

Do you leave reviews for your favorite spaces and places? In the olden days we had to rely on newspaper advertisements and radio advertisements to find if the places we wanted to shop or dine were good establishments to visit. Or businesses had to rely on the word-of-mouth of customers who had used their establishment.

Things have changed and now businesses and other venues can be reviewed online by those who loved their services or did not have a good experience. Places such as Yelp.com, Angieslist.com, tripadvisor.com and many others, along with the buzz of Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and the other gazillion sites out there will tell you the ups and downs of places and products. And if you are a business in a small community and think you are safe from these reviews — well think again — you are probably listed somewhere out there.

Most businesses now have their own websites and Facebook pages and customers also leave reviews on these pages. Can you rely on these reviews?
Recently a friend and I were in Shakopee, and we were dining out. We chose a restaurant in downtown Shakopee. We checked out the reviews and most were positive. Many stated fast service.

We arrived and the place was packed and very busy. We were on a tight schedule and thought perhaps we wouldn’t be served and out in time to make our movie. The reviews were right. We had excellent, fast service and our waitress was outstanding. She earned a big tip. In that case the reviews could be trusted.

In the olden days when we wanted to check out a product we possibly would buy the Consumer Reports Magazine. These days, if we want to investigate a product we can go online and find the reviews for the model we want to buy. I always check the reviews before I buy. As an author, book reviews on my books by my readers are very important to me. If I want to advertise my book on a book site or in a magazine, the key to acceptance in many places are the reviews on your books and the number of reviews you have. So for me and other authors, reviews are important.

Bigger companies take reviews seriously. I have a friend who reviews products for companies that are sold on Amazon. The companies send her products; she reviews them on Amazon honestly and reveals she has been given a product to review. I know I can trust her reviews.

When you are reading reviews on anything, please take the time to consider those reviews and the person making the statements. A product, website or even books that have 100 percent five star reviews are not always what they seem. Can all people love the products? A few bad reviews are not necessarily a bad thing. It means the reviews are by real consumers and not a paid review. Yes, there are places where you can pay to buy reviews.

When reading a bad review, take time to investigate who is leaving the review and why; there are people out there who leave bad reviews just to leave bad reviews. There are people out there who don’t like any products. Also a review is one person’s opinion.

For instance, two and three star reviews on movies and books do not always deter me. I look at the reviewer’s history of reviews and see perhaps the items this person gave three star reviews to be because their taste was of different genres than the movie or book being reviewed. They have different tastes.
I myself would not give a five-star review to a bloody, gory movie or to a graphic book. It is not my cup of tea. But my review would be constructive rather than destructive. Always remember there is a person behind the product and they have feelings too especially if you are reviewing a book or a blog.

Reviews are also a way businesses can improve their services if the review is fair and constructive. For instance, I have had some landscape work done and I am not exactly a happy camper. I feel I am not being listened to. When all is said and done I will leave a review online but I won’t trash the people or the business but I will leave constructive comments that may help them improve other people’s experience with this company. The thing to remember is this is my experience; someone else may have had a great experience with the same company.

The same can be said for other businesses that get a bad review — perhaps the business was just having an off day or the customer was having an off day.

If I positively do not like a book and don’t finish it I don’t leave a review at all. It might not have been my cup of tea but someone else will love it.

The best negative review I received on one of my books was this, “The author must have scrambled eggs for brains. She writes like Dr. Seuss.” I loved this person’s negativity.

Review away, make someone’s day. Be positive or constructive but don’t be destructive.

– See more at: http://www.albertleatribune.com/2016/05/be-constructive-not-negative-in-reviews/#sthash.7LF7o4LH.dpuf

Goodbye Bookshelf Books! NO I Can’t Do It!

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bookshelfRecently a friend of mine started packing her books for a move. There seemed to be many books left on the bookshelf. She explained, “These are the books I can’t bear to pack away yet, and be without them for even a little while.”

I love to read. I have managed to manage my book obsession and get the books down to one book shelf, only because I read more Kindle books these days. I still love the smell of bookstores and have to glue my credit cards to the bottom of my purse so they can’t come unstuck when I want to make huge purchases in the bookstores. I still finger with reverence the cover of books and close my eyes in pleasure at the feel of them in my hand.

Having said that, the Kindle makes my life easier when I travel. I only have one bag now instead of two extra to carry my books and magazines. I can have a new book at the touch of my finger to my Kindle screen. I fear that my Kindle is becoming my bookshelf because I have hundreds of books on my Kindle.

After viewing my friends bookshelf and wanting to simplify my life some more I thought perhaps I could empty my bookshelves.

The top shelf is lined with books by Catherine Coulter, http://www.catherinecoulter.com/, Kristin Hannah, http://kristinhannah.com/content/index.php, and Max Lucado,  http://maxlucado.com/ . The rest of the shelves are a mixture of books my friends and my daughter  have given me that are quirky and fun and speak to the creative person inside of me. There is also a shelf of bible studies that I have never done, most are by Women of Faith, http://www.womenoffaith.com/.

I positioned my chair to climb on so I could reach the top shelf and start purging the rest of my books. As I touched each book by Catherine Coulter I could not bear to move it off the shelf. I moved on to my Kristin Hannah books. I touched the first one to move it to a box. My hand would not move. I could not take a book by Kristin Hannah down either. Nor could I move the Max Lucado books to a box for good will. I arranged them neatly by author on the shelf.

I moved down to the Bible Study books by the Women of Faith and the books I have by Patsy Clairmont, http://patsyclairmont.com/, and Barbara Johnson. I reminded myself that I should start a Bible Study books so the books stayed on the shelf too along with Patsy and Barbara.

Next were all the filled journals, empty journals, and quirky books my friends and my daughter had given me. It was a funny things but those books seemed glued to the shelf.

I now understood what my friend meant by not being able to part with her books yet for the move. I could not part with the books on my shelf. My favorite authors, my quirky sense of humor books especially those by SARK, http://planetsark.com/ had to stay. Looking at the books alone without reading them gives me hope for the future that perhaps someday my writing will be cherished by someone the same way I cherish the books on my bookshelf. I did not find one book that gave me a ho hum feeling. These books were all on this certain bookshelf because they speak to my heart.

If you are feeling guilty about those books collecting dust, ask yourself what part of your heart they move. Keep the ones that do because they are not dust catchers, they are heart catchers.