Book Bloggers

    I finally got the nerve up to send my book out to some book reviewers who so graciously agreed to read it. Now all that I can do is keep my fingers crossed and hope that they like it. I know that there will always be mixed reviews. Some have different tastes than others, but it is just so unnerving to put it out there for someone who reads and reviews for a living. Well, maybe not a living since most are doing it for free.
    I love to read, and can spend an entire week doing nothing else if I'm not careful. I just really suck at giving a review. I could never tell someone that I didn't like their book or that it wasn't well written. It's just not in me, I stumble over the words that I want to say in a review. I give everybody five star ratings. I do it because I know there are some people that will give one or two star ratings just to be spiteful. You can tell in some of the bad reviews. I figure it will help balance out. That's just me and why I could never do what the reviewers do everyday.
    I saw a discussion on someones Facebook about reviewers posting ads on their blogs. The tone of the discussion was pretty much against it unless they were ads for books. I'm not really against the idea of the reviewers putting ads up. They do commit a great deal of their time to reading our books and writing our reviews for absolutely no compensation. Most of them seem to be pretty overwhelmed with the number of review requests that they are getting. Not to mention the reviewers that do interviews and giveaways to promote our books. I really don't see the harm in putting some tasteful ads on their page if they can get a little extra pocket change out of it.
    The other side of the discussion... I chose not to put ads on my blog or webpage even though my tech savvy sister almost insisted on it. My argument was that you don't really make any money from them and that's not what I was looking to do with my site. I told her that it looked very tacky and unprofessional. Hmm.
    I guess I'm talking out of both sides of my face, but to each his own. I have not come across a book blog that I found offensive in any way. Having a few ads on the page were not enough to turn me away from any particular blogger. In fact, the few that I noticed with ads were usually Amazon or book related.
    So a special thanks to the bloggers out there for giving us your free time and putting up with the occasional writer who goes crazy over a bad review.