Interesting insight from pro writers - too many reviews
921532
Interesting book with great insight from professional critics. However, it takes a lot of space in showing you different examples of reviews, which is useful to some extent, but some of them are extremely long and you tend to feel you are reading a compilation of old reviews. Again, buy it for the professional advice, but be aware that you may get lost in a sea of reviews that you may not feel so excited about.
4851486
As for the book, I found it fascinating and informative.  On a different note, I would like to comment on the "review of reviewers" a certain Wendell J. McGinness Jr. posted elsewhere in this book review column.  Please note, if you will, that Mr. McGinness scathingly derides other reviewers for their grammatical and spelling errors.  Ironically enough, his second sentence reads, "It strains the intelligence of some of us to understand how a company trying to sell books (among many other products) and survive as a net business pioneer, could allow so many uneducated, ignorant, pseudo reviews as I have read."  The comma after the word "pioneer" is completely unnecessary, as any good English professor would confirm.  Mr. McGinness should practice some of what he preaches.  As for everyone else, please do not allow sophomoric and pretentious people to taint your enjoyment of life.
3421558
James B. Stewart appears to be in love with himself. But weed out the self-glorifying comments. Harvest the tips, ideas and fruit and you'll find a helpful a step-by-step plan for writing an interesting feature story.
The six page introduction has between 90 and 100 references to himself. He explains why he is qualified to write this book and walks the reader through the events in his life that led him to become a writer. He was the editor of the Wall Street front page.
Nearly every illustration in the book is from his work. The 60 page appendix is three stories that he wrote. His most frequent statement thoughout the book is, "In my opinion" or a variation of that. I can see my high school English teacher cringing and shouting, "Who else's opinion would it be?"
But skim the book with a highlighter.  Marking the sections that are instructional, the step-by-step writing processes. Of the 300 actual book pages (excluding the appendix), you'll be left with about half the book. Read them carefully. If you're looking for a good instructional feature writing book, what's left is worth the effort.
Stewart begins the writing process with curiosity. He then shows how to turn that curiosity into idea hunting. He teaches how to gather information, form a lead, and decide on and follow a structure. According to Stewart, the type of question the story is answering tells the author what lead, structure and ending to use. Possible types of questions: What's going on? What are others are doing? What is a certain person really like? How could that have happened? How should I feel? What should my reaction be? What caused such-and-such? What happened? Each of those questions suggests a different story type and requires a different kind of structure and response. Once an author knows the question, the story writing process is basically determined and the author knows how to proceed. This practical guide for feature writing is a very practical guide for the author asking "How?".
I would have rather read a book already edited into just the practical information and a variety of examples (skipping the self glorification). But I haven't found one yet.
73583
This is more of a collection of the details of individual authors' lives than of their writing tactics, lessons learned, or other habits, but it does include all of the above. If nothing else, it shows us that writers, even the ones we recognize the names of, are regular people, all of various backgrounds and brought to the "call of writing" by different means.

The various essays help us beginners to remember that we are not starting out with any less advantage than those that have preceded us...or beat us to publication. There are also useful excerpts from authors' daily lives, showing us how they battle writers' block or just fit in a personal life with their writing life.

All in all, the book takes more of a literary slant than a very down-to-earth and practical one, but that does vary by the included authors. It would've also been nice to have short bios or publishing histories of the authors listed in the book for those that come across as particularly interesting or are unfamiliar to the individual reader. But, we do have Amazon.com for that info., don't we? :)
501195
One can learn a lot from this book. On the other hand, one can read a few chapters and say - "I knew all that already!"

The second was my original reaction after I've read the opening paragraphs. There are literally hundreds of "How-To" books for self-publishing on Amazon alone so, if you've read a few of them, you most likely already know some of the material included. Not to mention that some of the books cover the basic topics in much more detail.

However, as I kept reading, I realized that this book is not actually written by a typical writer. This is more of the "Ideas on how to increase sales of your book from a point of view of a professional marketer."

Just a couple of examples - "Gamification" and "Antic Advertisement", that are described in some detail in this book, are probably worth a price of admission here by themselves. The chapters on "Creating a marketing plan" for different budgets is also a dead giveaway that this book was written by a marketing pro.

This is like an "All-you can eat" buffet where the authors can pick and choose what strategies might work the best for them. Sometimes it's not that difficult - a good friend of mine, a philosopher, translator of ancient texts, and a writer of a considerable talent, just emailed me today that one of his books became a "Bestseller" in its category. He concentrated on the basics - cover, description, editing, and submitted his book for reviews. He sounded somewhat surprised when he told me how many copies of his book he sells a day now.

But it's not really a surprise. One needs to pick a strategy, persist in it, and with a bit of luck it is possible to move some units.

However, if that is a no go for you, this book might have some ideas not usually found in other "How-To's" for authors. If you already read some of the more mainstream books on the topic and are looking for a fresh perspective, this book just might be it.
4326944
Despite the title, How to Get a Truckload of Reviews on Amazon.com is about getting reviews from a range of sources, including traditional media, book bloggers, blog tours, and Amazon reviewers.

Some of the advice seems a little over-the-top for the average self-published author, such as compiling review packets to submit to newspapers and magazines in the hope of gaining a review. Sending unsolicited books in the hope of getting a review will rapidly get expensive (especially as I suspect the books will typically end up in the circular filing cabinet rather than being read and reviewed).

Some of the advice was excellent. As a book blogger, I absolutely agree on the importance of thanking bloggers who have participated in your blog tour. Its a simple matter to send a quick email, tweet, or even comment on the blog post, but so few authors do it. I believe it improves your chances of being featured on the blog with your subsequent release. I also agree that its dodgy (she says unethical) to offer incentives for positive reviews, and that offering to edit a review (or write one) for a reviewer is less than honest.

However, I absolutely disagree with the recommendation to thank Amazon reviewers by commenting on the review, even if Amazon do suggest it. Thanking every reviewer looks needy if you have a small number of reviews, and stalkerish if you have a lot. It looks self-serving if you only thank the positive reviewers, yet condescending if you thank the critical reviewers. This isn't just my opinion: its one shared by a lot of the Amazon Top Reviewers (although, as stated above, thanking reviewers on blogs is appreciated, especially when the author has personally requested the review).

I also believe her advice to gift ebooks to reviewers via Amazon is outdated. A number of reviewers have recently had their reviews deleted, and many of these were reviews where the book had been gifted via Amazon. Its a lot safer to either email the mobi file directly to the reviewer, or gift via Smashwords. Scuttlebutt is that Amazon sees gifted Kindle books as compensation, as the gift can be declined and the value credited to any other purchase on the site.

While the good advice more than outweighs the bad, its likely the authors who are interested in buying a book like this aren't themselves experienced reviewers, or experienced at dealing with reviewers. They don't know all the ins and outs of Amazon, and are at risk of unknowingly following bad advicewhich is why I cant recommend this book, despite all the good advice.
2346118
The good: You're getting advice from several successful self-published authors (not just the ones on the cover! several others also contributed to the book) on what it REALLY takes to make a living self-publishing your writing. Basically, you need to look at yourself like any independent small businessperson: your writing is your product, and you need to create the best products you can, but you also need to find your customers, let them know about your product, and engage them so that they stay interested in your products. This book will tell you how to do that in the self-publishing business. The book also dissects a lot of common mistakes and commonly believed fallacies about the business (such as the beliefs that all selling/marketing = scamming, or that the gestalt of Business is inherently inimical to creating), and then explains how to avoid them. It's very no-nonsense and direct, and recommends lots of additional resources to consult. It's a very solid and fairly comprehensive starting point for anyone who wants to self-publish and make real money on it.

The bad (or possibly extra good, depending on your perspective): The sucker punch at the end. In the last pages of the book, the authors overtly state that they wrote this book to elevate their public speaking careers and to persuade you to read their fiction. This is immediately followed by the authors saying they've got even more great advice for you, but you'll have to come back and buy the next book to get it.

On the one hand, this is open practice of their own advice -- set up your products so that one feeds into another (or multiple others), so that your readers keep coming back to you and your products (and buying them). And they might have been going for persuasion through radical honesty ("see, you got all this useful advice, but it also serves to advance our careers.") On the other hand, having such a blatant hard sell at the end of an advice book feels disingenuous -- especially when they reiterate multiple times that gimmicks and tricks may spike sales in the short run but will only hurt you in the long run.

I like useful products, and this book is a very useful product with a lot of excellent advice. But I don't like feeling like I've been tricked into falling for something, and unfortunately the end of this book left me with that feeling too.
2376483
I'd recommend that writers read this book and take notes and/or mark it up with a highlighter. Nuggets and chunks of information are scattered throughout.

The main problem is one that lies in "Poetics," by Aristotle, as well. Both books were written so long ago, that they reference extremely outdated material and, at times, use long passages from these old plays. The result is a struggle and a chore for the reader to get through what is mostly boring, unusable, and unhelpful dialogue and scenes for screenwriters and novelists of today.

The techniques and theory behind what Mr. Egri preaches is on point and pretty sound, though I find it ironic that most people consider this book and "Poetics" to be two books that all writers should read, yet Lajos Egri disagrees with Aristotle on may points. Interesting. Very interesting.

Writing, as in any creative art, has many teachers. No one is 100% correct. You can learn something from anyone, and you probably have something you could teach to other artists too. Pick out the best from this, and other books, and use the information to write something brilliant. "That Art Of Dramatic Writing" can definitely help you do that.
3211605
I'm a long-time King fan. Recently, I read his solid, somewhat literary collection of short stories, "Everything's Eventual," and was blown away by his foreword to the book, in which he talks a lot about how he has tried to stretch the boundaries of the short story, the novel and the serial novel.
If that wasn't fascinating enough, he went on to talk about how he has also tried to experiment with the marketing of his work (he goes into detail about the unsuccessful Internet-only marketing of "The Plant").  Imagine -- Stephen King, bestselling writer, talking turkey about marketing. Very interesting indeed!
I expected "On Writing" to include more of the same information about how King writes and how the books get sold. In "On Writing," King certainly talks about his process, as well as some nuts-and-bolts aspects of writing, but the book is quite personal and never goes into the business aspects of writing and publishing. That's not the point of "On Writing."
So what is the point? Well, look at the title. The book is primarily a memoir. The first section of the book is full of anecdotes from King's childhood -- the events that made him a writer. They're fun and not terribly profound, and he tells the readers to expect as much.
The  section of the book that's the how-to-write section is, I feel, full of things you can read in other books about writing. King is aware of this, and keeps it short and sweet.  My grammar is far from perfect, but I really could have done without the section about grammar. Does anybody read a Stephen King book for the grammar?
The value of the how-to-write section lies in the metaphors King constructs to illuminate for the reader why certain conventions of writing work the way they do; why they are important. These metaphors are down-to-earth and just might mean something to a new writer who's struggling with the basics.
The last part of the book is a wrenching account of the accident that nearly killed King in 1999. This part of the book held my interest most completely, because it was the only part that didn't already seem familiar to me.  King long recovery included a writing crisis, which is why the story of the accident is included in "On Writing."
In general, I think there are better books about writing/becoming a writer/living the writing life, but this book is certainly a must-read for any King fan. I particularly appreciated hearing how King's wife, Tabitha, has been so supportive over the years (without taking any B.S., either!), and the list of King's favorite books.
4277391
This is more of a conversation with Ray Bradbury than a book on writing.  What you glean from Bradbury's essays will vary, but what he does well is instill a sense of wonder, a child-like need to explore, and a steadfast insistence that you must enjoy every bit of being a writer or you are doing something wrong.  You get a good look inside the master's head here.  You gain a better understanding of this literary giant's process and what writing MEANS to him.

I think this book is an inspirational read for writers.  It may provide the impetus you need to get up and pound on those keyboards.  Unfortunately, it will impart little technically useful.  No tried and true methods.  Just the correct mindset.

While this is valuable, it is incomplete.  More of a supplement than a manual.  You SHOULD read this.  Especially if you are a genre writer.  Then you NEED to read other, more specific and careful guides like the books below:

1) Successful Novelist: A Lifetime of Lessons about Writing and Publishing by David Morrell
2) On Writing by Stephen King
3) Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Second Edition: How to Edit Yourself Into Print by Browne and King
4) Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success by Weiland
5) Now Write! Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror: Speculative Genre Exercises from Today's Best Writers and Teachers
6) How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction by J. N. Williamson
7) Dark Dreamers On Writing (Necon Non Fiction Book 1) by Stanley Wiater and Jason Wojtowicz
8) Dark Thoughts on Writing: Advice and Commentary from Fifty Masters of Fear and Suspense by Stanley Wiater
9)  The Courage to Write: How Writers Transcend Fear by Ralph Keyes
10) The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White

THEN take a trip to Anne Rice's Youtube channel and Chuck Wendig's blog for excellent writing advice.  And, of course, read Bradbury's fiction.  His short fiction in particular.

Hope this helps.  Write well.  Write for you.  Write to make Bradbury proud.
3918529
There are a lot of very interesting perspectives in this book, and for the most part everyone takes a different outlook on the same question.  Some people put a lot of thought into their answer and considered exactly what they wanted to explain about the subject, but some essays seem like they were written as an afterthought, 10 minutes before leaving the office on a friday night.  Not a lot are like that, but considering that there are 150 people writing on the same topic, I supposed that it's easy for some of the authors not to take it that seriously.  In any case, it's a very interesting read.
4310172
Dan Savage is a great writer as well as a creative thinker.  The book is purposefully wacky and entertaining, but has some very serious points.  Whether you agree with his perspective or not, he makes his points skillfully.
I'm perplexed at the reviewers who say that Mr. Savage is a poor writer just because they disagree with his views.  It seems to be endemic among right-wing reactionaries to spew vituperative criticisms of books with which they do not agree, and which they probably have not even read.  When I read books from differing viewpoints, I try to review them in a balanced, objective fashion.  Just because I don't agree with the author's perspective doesn't mean the book is badly written or that there is no value to the book at all.  The reviewers who engage in these unbalanced polemics and who can't seem to keep their fanatical views to themselves succeed at nothing other than undermining their own credibility.
1936353
It is amusing to look through the lists of individual writers and see their favorite works, and see if they connect with the writer's own kind of writing. Two examples. Norman Mailer had the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky on the top of his list, and one can see where his ambition to write the Great American Novel came from. Joyce Carol Oates whose love for the dark and the criminal pervades her work puts 'Crime and Punishment' on the top of her list and has a place for Kafka also.
So that is one interesting way of reading the work. And this when one might question the list of one- hundred and twenty- five noted authors also. As could be expected there are top writers with one's far lower down on the totempole. And there are many absences. I would have loved to have seen Philip Roth's favorites but he apparently did not respond.
As for the top of the top list I was surprised to see 'Anna Karenina' there. If one were to choose Tolstoy as one's greatest novelist one should certainly choose the far greater book 'War and Peace'. ( As I understand it by the way this was meant to be a list of Novels. Otherwise how explain the absence of the 'Book of Books' certainly the greatest book of all times.
I also was surprised that 'Don Quixote' was not in the top ten. If the question was asked of Literary Critics my suspicion is it would be the first.
In any case there is a lot of room in this work for pleasurable speculation and conjecture.
Very good and enjoyable if not taken too seriously.
4173599
While I agree with the previous poster that one has to do a certain amount of mining with this, and other Writer's Digest anthologies, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I actually had an opportunity to talk about the book recently with Sue Grafton, who edited it, and she said her goal was to take readers from idea through publication, employing the voices of experts in each area. For example, the chapter on series characters is written by Sara Paretsky, whose V.I. Warshawski is a classic demonstration of what she's talking about. In all, I enjoyed and appreciated the disparate voices perhaps more than I might have appreciated the same advice in a monolithic voice.
2675936
The author's tone throughout the book is one of disapproval of 'fake' reviews, until the end when he suddenly finds some of them amusing and appears to admire them. This left me a bit confused.
I am sure that most readers would agree that 5-star reviews which have been swapped with other writers, sometimes in large circles, or bought from disreputable sites, often in bulk, are unethical and Mr. Hofstee should be commended for bringing this to our attention. However, I am also sure that most readers would feel that writers using the same tactics - swaps, circles and paid review sites - to post nasty one and two star reviews on books written by other authors is even worse. He mentions this briefly, then seems to forget all about it, taking a general position of 'fake 5-star' and 'true 1 and 2-star' reviews, as though the latter are more reliable when they are not. If people believe that they are, thanks to books like this, they are even more dangerous and can have devastating effects on the writing careers and general well-being of the innocent authors being targeted.
The novel 'Purgatory' by the British author Morven Lloyd gives a very moving account of this kind of trolling. By combining the writer's story with that of a child being bullied at school it makes a very clear point. 'The Review' by Jilaine Tarisa, although it takes a different stance, also uses fiction to show the personal effects a negative review can have on an author. Perhaps a work of non-fiction which uses graphs and charts cannot have the same emotional impact, but I would have liked to see some discussion of this aspect of the review system in a book which claims to tell 'the truth' about reviews.
1575262
Rather than describing the different ways into publication, this book is made of ten quite different accounts, by published authors, of their personal routes into the public realm  self-publishing, small press, showcasing their work through a short story competition.  What it shows is, not that one method is better than another, but that it pays to find out as much as you can about our market, and maybe adapt your writing to fit it, so you can find the best way to reach it.  Having each author tell his or her own story made it a pleasure as well as an education to read.

I received my copy via Authors Publish, an online bulletin.  I was invited to write a review but the copy was free whether I wrote a review or not.
3282946
A well-written collection, but it suffers from one major flaw: a lack of diversity in the voices represented. I'm speaking of diversity in ambitions, not racial diversity (which it mostly has). Simply said, there are too many writers & academics that make up the bulk of these essays, and they all sound the same.

There are few professionals here--a spare lawyer, one Silicon Valley developer--and a handful of interesting outsiders such as a dog sled driver and a butcher. But ultimately the majority of the book is written by writers who have seen successes and failures on the professional writing track. (None of them, oddly, seemed to mention side-hustles--perhaps indicating a lack of economic diversity as well.)

As a twenty-something with aspirations to start a business, I felt the questions I want answered were not represented. In an essay collection that tackles such an ambitious topic, greater diversity is essential to meeting the experiences of the reader. While there are gems here ("Becoming Meta" is my favorite), it starts repeating itself halfway through.

All that said, this book has left me with something. I plan on using it as a prompt, and writing my own essay. It may be the best way to get my questions answered.