We Can All Learn From A Constructive Review
Back in September this post appeared on Facebook from a friend of mine.
Last weekend a fellow writer and Chili Boy Richard Nurse and I commiserated over the frustration of tracking our e-book sales. So as a personal favor to me (and I suspect to him as well), if you download one of his murder-mysteries or one of my novels, please leave a review or some comments about how much you enjoyed reading it. Novelists spend a great deal of time working in virtual solitude as a work of fiction is built, and without commentary/feedback we have no way to gauge the relative success/failure of our efforts. Thanks. Richard Finzer
Two days ago, I received a review on one of my books by a fellow author. While he liked the story and the way it was written, he took exception to the number of grammar errors within the manuscript, particularly the excessive use of commas.
My initial reaction was of being someone upset at first, especially since this particular novel had been through three rounds of editing. Then I thought of how my editor accuses me of having an oversized comma key on my keyboard. So I decided to look on-line for an app that would work with MS Office, as that is my primary writing platform. I found one that had high marks and appeared to be quite user-friendly, and even better it was free. I downloaded it, and after going through the tutorial once, I opened the file for the book that had just been reviewed and sat back and watched as the app chewed on the file.
When it stopped checking and put up the tally at the bottom of the reviewing panel, I must admit that I utter $&%#@...for the number was 658. 5 hours later, I had gone through all 658 of the issues, and I now have a manuscript that I feel is grammatically correct. I have to admit, that way to many of the issues dealt with the addition of unnecessary commas.
Rich, my fellow Chili Boy, and fellow author, I believe that this is exactly what we were talking about when we said, our only way to learn is from reviews. Mark, thank you again, for your honest and constructive review. I am now in the process of going through each and every one of my published works with this program, and the beauty of being self-published, and primarily through e-books, is that I can upload new files so that all future purchasers will receive what is truly my best.
Richard Nurse
Note - I have completed the review of three works as I write this. You can visit http://nursesnookandbooks.net to see which have been completed. Check out the published works page and look for a Red Star next to the title.
