Originally hosted by Melissa from i swim for oceans, Smash & Kt took her original inspiration, and made it their own, expanding it to more than just books. Let’s get personal (but respectfully so) and learn more about one another! Each week, a different question will be posted along with a place to link up your posts and visit other people’s responses. This meme is definitely meant to bring out conversation and meet new people. So, Let’s Talk!
Today’s Question:
Reviewers: How do you handle the less than ideal review requests? You know, the ones that have clearly not read your blog or your review policy. Also, what’s the worst review request you’ve ever received?
I continuously receive unsolicited review requests that are so obviously a form letter. I immediately delete them. They may grab a few people with that kind of communication, but I think most of us want nothing to do with that shite. At the end of the day, this is my hobby and I do it because I love to read and talk about books. However, I’m not going to associate with someone who doesn’t have the time to make it personal. I know they are trying to reach as many people as possible, but they should think quality over quantity, in my opinion.
I think what I dislike most is when you are contacted by someone who tries to sound like they’ve been to your blog, but you know they really haven’t because you ARE NOT TAKING REQUESTS AT THIS TIME. Ugh. Being a phony is worse than the mass email. Dr. Smash think I overreact about this, but I’ve been at this hobby for 2.5 years and I do not have the time for impersonal interactions. I need my interactions with the book world to be meaningful. Not robotic.
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“I think what I dislike most is when you are contacted by someone who tries to sound like they’ve been to your blog, but you know they really haven’t because you ARE NOT TAKING REQUESTS AT THIS TIME. Ugh. Being a phony is worse than the mass email.”
Too true. It’s really lazy to not check out the blogger’s review policy page to even see if they’re currently accepting requests. I’m kind of glad that overall I just don’t deal with this stuff.
I have to be honest, since mine says I don’t accept review requests–I just ignore them all. That being said, back in the day I would respond once, politely and then it would go in the trash
That is the kicker! Why the heck am I getting them? They have to look up my email, wouldn’t’ they see the message that I’m not accepting requests? It’s one less email they have to type in. :p
I used to be really good about sending back a form rejection, just because I felt bad but these days I don’t have time so…DELETE. Sorry, you zillion people who self-published a book and now want me to read it. I just…no, thanks.
Those mass emails don’t even track the NOs, I’m sure, so it’s a time waster sending back a No, methinks.
With my job as a publicist, I have to send out a TON of review/tour requests. It is very time consuming. I have to say that I am guilty of the form letter, if only because we need to have our “pitch” approved before we can send them out. That being said, I do send each one in an individual email, and address it to the blogger directly. No “dear blogger” here!
Also, my database to send to is something I have personally put together, painstakingly making sure that I put each blogger in the right category so I don’t send them something they won’t be interested in due to the genre. I can’t verify the list each time I send out, but every couple of months, I do check the main list for any changes.
It can be hard to balance the time it takes vs what need to be done to actually entice the bloggers, but I think I’ve found the middle road. Are there still some bloggers that won’t respond due to the form letter? Sure, but enough respond that it works out okay in the end.
And I LOVE that you have a database set up by genre. That is the way to do it and I bet you get more response because you are sending to a blogger who reviews that genre, and at least putting their name in the email! I bet you could do a mail merge email so you don’t have to do individual emails. It takes time, I know Do you check (at the time of blog discovery) if they are accepting requests? I think that is the most irritating thing for me, but as Tanya says below, I can easily scan and delete. I’m actually thinking of setting up a rule in Outlook to have all the requests sent to a specific folder and check it once a week. I recently took a time management seminar and that was a great tip to save time on all the “extra” emails we receive. And time is scarce for us all!
Mail merge and I do not get along. I spend more time trying to make it work than it actually takes me to send the darn things individually.
And yes, before I add the blog to my list, I make sure they accept requests.
I love it even MORE when they send you one where they get your name wrong! I’m not just talking about spelling it wrong, I’m talking about something that is in no way similar, like Samantha for me, Angela
LOL
Yea, those are fun to get.
I kind of think a lot of bloggers over-react to this, like Dr. Smash. It doesn’t matter to me if something is personalized or not – it literally takes me 5 seconds to scan an email and delete it if I’m not interested. It’s just not something that I think should affect not even a minute of my day negatively. It’s someone’s job to send out hundreds of email – if it were me, would I want to stay at work late because I had to personalize each individual email? Probably not.
Yes, that’s exactly his point, too. And I totally understand that they are trying to reach a lot of people since the response is probably low, but I get more annoyed by the phonies. And I also wonder what the average is for response on mass request emails. At least take the time to see if the blogger you are sending it too even reviews that genre. They have to look up our emails, they could at least check that. But yea, I don’t do that job so I can’t speak from their end. Only from mine.
You tell ‘em, Smash! That would indeed be irritating.
Thankfully, I get very few of these bad boys, and honestly, 80% of the time when I emailed back and was like, sorry, no, the senders were effusively polite and friendly in contact.
So uh…
Is now where we talk about authors who email to request a review and then, when they don’t get the review they want, email back in a rage? Or nah?
Wow! I would never dream of sending an email to a reviewer if I didn’t like their review. I swear some people have no tact.
I’m an author myself and I just recently opened up my blog to review requests because I’m always so grateful for the reviews I receive that I wanted to return the favor. I’ve gotten a little over a couple dozen requests already. Two of them have been very memorable:
1. I have a very specific list of what I will and won’t accept. I received a request for a book that has a lot of the stuff I will read and a few things that are on my “No List.” I sent an email politely denying the request only to have the author respond with an argument as to why I should reconsider. The argument was very polite but I was a bit irritated that this author just couldn’t take my answer and be on their way.
2. I had another request for an epic romantic tragedy (over 600 pages in length) with the stipulation that if I didn’t like it to refrain from writing the review. Uh, seriously? If I’m going to take the time to read 600+ pages I’m darn well going to write the review!
I don’t know about others but I would never dream of asking a reviewer for a good review. All I want is honesty. And any other who can’t handle a negative review then maybe they need to consider a new career path because it comes with the territory.
I usually just ignore them because I know they are form letters and I really don’t think anyone who sent them is agonizing over my response. Some of them are so funny I have a folder and I save them. I do have on my policy page that I’m not accepting self published work at this time as well. And usually, the requests I get are self pubbed.
I also don’t like it when the sender gives me a spiel about how he has enjoyed my reviews and follows me on some odd social media site I never heard of.
Mostly I suck at dealing with this task on many levels. Sometimes I delete. Sometimes I think I’ll take a look at the book a little more & ponder BUT mostly the email sit buried in the inbox. By the time I get around to slugging through my email accounts most things get trashed in the end. I just delete to begin with.
I don’t get a lot of requests, but so far, the ones that I do have pretty much fit. I’m sure if I ever get to the point where I’m swamped with requests I’ll feel differently, but for now it’s manageable. I do understand the frustration though. I can’t imagine getting a request from an author who actually only requested favorable reviews. Why even request the review if you don’t want honesty?
Ugh I hate those form emails. It’s even worse when they forget to change your name….I’ve been Mel, Linda and another name starting with S in the past few months – none of which are similar in any way to my own name!
The two extra minutes it would take to look around your blog, make the request personal and therefore much more likely to be accepted would be worthwhile peeps…..
I still think the worst one I got was the author telling me that the reviews he’d received so far were terrible, and he wanted me to read it to decide whether it was worthwhile him trying to become an author…..I think he was trying to make me feel sorry for him and say yes, but I just deleted it.
Damn form emails. Such a waste of time, methinks. That author story is SO sad and annoying. Can we feel any more self-pity?
[...] Reviewers: How do you handle the less than ideal review requests? You know, the ones that have clear… [...]
Yes! I get so many review requests and I’m not accepting any. And I really hate it when people say how much they love my blog, when I KNOW they’re just saying it to say it.
I just delete requests, too. I have that written in my request policy — that if I’m not accepting a request, I won’t reply. It’s too time consuming!
We enroll them in the Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can’t Read Good and Who Wanna Learn to do Other Stuff Good Too.
http://bitchbookbake.com/?page_id=1307
This comes after years of deleting email after email of stupid fucking people not being to fucking read. We got tired of it and obviously WE DON’T ACCEPT BOOKS FOR REVIEW just wasn’t forward enough. Drastic measures were necessary.