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August 20, 2008

Comments

Claire

I don't look at review sites. I look at Amazon. I've found that the user reviews are generally good at giving you enough information WITHOUT giving away plot details. I hate reading reviews that say, 'it ends with a twist' because I'll spend the entire book figuring out what the twist will be before it arrives. Twists should be surprises!

Mysterious Reviews

We have three regular contributors at Mysterious Reviews (http://www.mysteriousreviews.com/) including myself. We accept books from authors, publicists, and publishers. We do have an FAQ page (http://www.mysteriousreviews.com/faq.html) that provides contact information. Visitors can add their ratings of books on the book review pages. We also publish our reviews at Mystery Books News (http://www.mystery-books.com/). Any and all comments, suggestions, and/or alternate points of view are welcome!

Jim

I agree with Claire. Amazon gives good reviews. I just bought four books and read their reviews before I purchased them.

Jim

Also, all of the links posed in the second comment are broken. I shrugged and moved on.

Mark Troy

It's sad when newspapers drop their review sections. When it comes to mysteries, I rarely read reviews whether printed or online. Instead, I get the information I need about new books from the community, i.e. listservs, other writers, cons, magazines and ezines. For non-fiction and genres other than mysteries, the printed reviews are a source of new discoveries for me.

Mysterious Reviews

I just noticed the broken links myself. I typically add a slash at the end of URLs but apparently when the comment was posted, an additional slash was added.

Here are the links without the extra slash:

Mysterious Reviews: http://www.mysteriousreviews.com

Mystery Books News:
http://www.mystery-books.com

Thanks for mentioning the original links were bad.

Brandi

I don't actively seek reviews. Sometimes a website I visit, usually an agent's site, will mention a book and I'll check out the author's site.

Claire McManus

I tend to go looking for reviews more when a book has captured my interest, rather than reading a review site or magazine per se. DorothyL is a good place to get ideas, but you have to take them with a grain of salt because there's a lot of self-promotion and cross-promotion. What I tend to like are reviews that are featured in places other than book review sections. For example, if there's a summer section in the newspaper, often they'll have a subsection called "Great Summer Reads," and I always enjoy that. I belong to a book club, and everyone brings in a lot of books they've been hearing about, so I get ideas that way, too. I'll read a few reviews on Amazon to see if I want to buy the book, but not too many of them, because I don't want to be "swayed" one way or another before starting the book. I enjoy your blog a lot; you always have something interesting to say!

Lesa Holstine

I regularly review books on my blog, http://www.lesasbookcritiques.blogspot.com. I review a little of everything, with an emphasis on mysteries. My reviews have been frequently syndicated through Reuters and usatoday.com, probably because newspapers are cutting back on their regular review sections. I also do author interviews on the blog, but the interviews have been with authors who write women's fiction more than any other genre.

Dana Stabenow

I recently asked the Danamaniacs where they get ideas for books. Their answers were all over the place, so long as it was the Internet: each other online, the 'maniacs website's forums, all of them read at least one of the online reviewer websites. They subscribe to bookstore and author e-newsletters and they read the reviews at amazon.com. (I write the occasional review at Amazon myself. She said humbly.)

The Anchorage Daily News announced last year it would no longer do book reviews. This isn't a matter of choice, it's a matter of economics. Newspapers everywhere are increasingly moving to an online presence. Where they go, where the fans go, we must follow. Or, preferably, lead.

Jen Forbus

I review books on my blog (http://jensbookthoughts.blogspot.com) - mainly mystery/crime fiction, but others as well. I avoid spoilers, but if I ever think anything could possibly be a spoiler, I'll alert the reader. I also include interviews with authors, discuss book-related topics, and give links to book-related sites I've found that I enjoy. I'm also always looking for feedback on other things people might enjoy seeing on my blog.

Jen Forbus

Sorry, the link caught that paren at the end of my blog address, so the link won't work. It should just be:

http://jensbookthoughts.blogspot.com

L.J. Sellers

My favorite reviewer is Bloodstained Book Reviews. Lillian is thoughtful but concise.
Lj
http://ljraves.blogspot.com

Jersey Jack

ReviewedbyLiz, Bloodstained Reviews, and Armchair Interviews are the places I look. Many online sites refuse to review anything that's not from the majors, so I don't go to any of those, nor do I read any newspapers. It's all the same people reviewing the same kind of books.

Lauren Roberts

At BiblioBuffet, we review and write about any commercial book that captures our attention, though we specialize in smaller and university presses who issue books that often go unnoticed. Our motto is "Writing Worth Reading, Reading Worth Writing About®. Submission guidelines and reviewer preferences can be found here: http://www.bibliobuffet.com/content/view/14/36/

I recently wrote about the demise of the print version of the Los Angeles Times book review section; that can be seen here: http://www.bibliobuffet.com/content/view/842/289/

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