I met John L. Monk via Twitter after taking advantage of Kindle’s “Free Today” offers. From the first page, first chapter of his indie novel KICK, I knew this is an author to expect more great things from. (Yes, I end sentences with prepositions.) John will get a whole blog post about him and KICK, the series, but until then, I’m sharing his personal rules on reviewing indie novels because I have broken all of them. For all authors (indie or traditionally published) who have sent me ARCs or gifted me copies of their novels, in hopes of getting a review, I apologize if you never heard from me again. Sometimes the right mood or mindset determines whether a story engages me and holds my attention. Even John’s novel got set aside in my ADHD flurry of sampling a dozen novels a day. Once I got into it, I couldn’t put it down.
And now for the “OMG, no wonder so many authors hate me” revelation that came when I read John’s Rules:
- I won’t tell anyone what I’m reading unless I end up liking it…and, therefore, if I don’t like something, nobody will ever know.
- I won’t post anyone’s book that I’ve had regular, previous contact with through facebook/email. I’m trying to avoid the natural pressure to “help my friends”.
- I won’t post any books by mega-indie authors like Hugh Howey and Russel Blake. Because they don’t need my help.
- I won’t take any free books from people, nor respond to lobbying efforts. I will probably build my reading list from the billions of indie authors over on kboards.com. If anyone replies to this post with books that they want me to read, more power to you, but I can’t respond.
- If I like a book, I may put a review here or on Goodreads, but not on Amazon. It’s complicated…
NOTE: I have no idea how John manages to post pictures of books he’s liked on the left side of his blog wall. I have so much to learn about blogging, tweeting and messaging, not to mention formatting, editing, promoting and publishing my own novels, I’d best stop right here and get to work.
