Why My Ratings Differ by Platform. It occurred to me last night, as I worked on a book review on Goodreads, that my rating system might be a bit confusing for people who don't understand the way that my mind works, or the way that I review books.
My full policy isn't up yet (I'll get to it soonish), but I wanted to cover this ground with you because I think that it's important to understand and important for reviewers to understand the way that their review affects such things as the author's sales. I generally review books on several sites, but always make sure to post a review on Hubpages, Amazon, and Goodreads. Soon I'll be adding reviews to my blog as well. This is a lot of work, but I do each of these reviews for different reasons. The reviews on Hubpages are written as a message to the author and to potential readers. On Amazon, I review books in order to help the buyer decide whether or not the book is worth buying. And on Goodreads? (By the way, is Goodreads down for anybody else?) It's pathetic this week. Why I Can't Define a Niche. I've been thinking a lot over the past few days about niche.
That is to say, about how much I can narrow down the singular topic about which I write here on my blog. In the past I've created niches on other sites, including Hubpages, Zujava, Squidoo and Wizzley. While I write about several different topics, I've carefully cultivated niches on these platforms in order to boost my traffic and function. I'm actually pretty good at this. It's easy enough to do when you're using mind-mapping to work through ideas and to establish what goes where in terms of niches.
This blog is something different. Thank Goodness it's Friday! Finding Time to Read. Comparing Warm Bodies to Twilight. Last night I finally finished my review of Warm Bodies (by Isaac Marion).
I've read the entire novel as well as seen the movie at this point, and I feel that it's fair for me to jump on the comparison bandwagon. Fair warning: I'm going to be doing quite a bit of comparing books to Twilight in the next little while, in large part because I'm ticked off by the treatment that the Twilight Saga gets from the people who dislike it, and the way that people tend to compare everything to the Stephenie Meyer series and the series to everything. Before I say anything else, let me tell you this: I think that these comparisons are stupid. Stephenie Meyer didn't "rip off" Anne Rice or J.K. Choosing a Favorite Fiction. I'm sitting here tonight drinking (something that I almost never do, so the rum is a rare treat) and contemplating books, wishing that I had more time to read them, and finding myself a bit lost and sad that there cannot possibly be enough hours in a day in which to read.
And, truth be told, I'm also contemplating why it is that Beautiful Creatures just isn't doing it for me. By rights, I ought to be very interested in this book. If horror was the genre that I enjoyed growing up, and the paranormal genre seems to have grown out of that (thanks to Anne Rice and others), then I ought to be devouring paranormal romance. Happy Monday Bloggy Buddies. Welcome to another week, bloggy buddies!
It's been kind of a hectic week, and I have to admit that I haven't done nearly as much reading as I wish that I'd done. It started out well, with finishing off Warm Bodies, and I got a good start on Beautiful Creatures, but it was kind of downhill from there. Part of my problem, which is probably obvious to anybody who actually knows me, is that my obsession with teen fiction is only slightly less embarrassing than the fact that I'm enjoying all of this paranormal fantasy that I've been reading lately.
This is not my reading style really at all, and I'm having to convince myself, going forward, that Young Adult is probably the fiction genre that I read the most, and the one that I most ought to be blogging about. Everything I Don't Know About Blogging Could Fill a Book.