The Extra Cool Group! (of people Michael is experimenting on) discussion

A couple people have mentioned using LibraryThing in addition to Goodreads. If you do write book reviews on other sites as well (or in a blog, or some other context I'm not thinking of), where?

Do you approach the review-writing process any different there?

How did you end up using both, and why do you continue to?

Here's another thread where something like that was discussed.
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/4...

I also review at http://fantasyliterature.com.

I do approach the writing process differently there. Because it is sort of a platform for reviewers, I write more formally there than I do here on GR. I also read ARCs for FanLit, so I feel a stronger sense of responsibility to write in a way that I think is professional. I don't consider myself a flippant reviewer on GR, but I take care not to come across as unfairly dismissive on FanLit.

I ended up using both because I found that I used to love SFF but wasn't reading it as much these days and didn't know where to start. So I figured FanLit would be a good idea. Also, it offers me a chance to contribute to a team rather than to interact with a network.

Which is perhaps an important distinction that explains why I continue to write in both places.
Ryan

I'll sometimes talk about the books I'm reading on my livejournal, but that's a completely different format, and books are far from my main focus there. Anything I would write there about my reading is bound to be more personal, diaristic (possibly not a word, but whatever), and informal.

Other than that, me and Goodreads are totally monogamous.

I have a LibraryThing account, but basically I just copy and paste my GR reviews over there. The only reason I am over there is because I know some people who are over there that aren't over here. And they have some forums that are interesting as well. And one last reason: their statistics/memes are very interesting, they can really analyze what you read, which I find very interesting. I wish GR had that. But I spend 90% of my time over here.

I like saying... Shelfari...

teehee!

I used to be deep in the Yelp community, but it got too big and lame and wasn't as much fun anymore. This is the only site I really spend a lot of time on now. Haven't tried any of the other book sites, because what if they're great? I don't have enough time for another GR.

For any of you that write reviews elsewhere, including Aerin, Ryan, Jimmy and everybody else: would it be alright if I read some of the reviews you've written in other contexts? If you wouldn't mind, could you send me links? Being able to do that kind of comparison would be very helpful.

Here's a few livejournal posts I wrote when reading the Chronicles of Narnia a couple of years ago (I wouldn't really call them reviews, though):

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

As I said before, I just copy/paste my GR reviews onto LT, so the content is actually identical. But I write them on GR first... and when I get around to it I enter them into LT.

Here is my LT page, if you're still curious: http://www.librarything.com/profile/J...

Don't know the others. One is more than enough. Internet searches occasionally throw up a blog - I might read it, I won't track it. There's only so much time in the day. The loyalty of inertia.

Lazy!

You can find my FanLit reviews collated here: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...

There are a few books that I have reviewed in both locations, including:

Zero History by William Gibson
Neuromancer
Pattern Recognition
The Scar by Mieville
The Curse of the Wendigo by Yancey
Gardens of the Moon by Erikson

Go ahead.

There are a few books that I have reviewed in both locations,

Here's a few livejournal posts I wrote when reading the Chronicles of Narnia

This is awesome and helpful and awesomely helpful. Thanks a bunch!

As I said before, I just copy/paste my GR reviews

Ah, the "basically" threw me. Do the reviews over there have threads like goodreads? What have you noticed that is different about the forums over there from the groups over here?

LT reviews do not have threads. So you can't discuss the review. There IS a "like" feature, although I haven't figured out how to tell WHO liked. It just says "3" followed by the thumbs up sign. But clicking on it doesn't show you the users who liked it.

I repost some reviews on Amazon - maybe about 30% or so. When I do, I will typically make some minor adjustments, along the lines of cleaning up the language (Amazon is more prudish about "obscenity") and depersonalizing them (I may write about my emotional reaction to a book here on goodreads, am less likely to do so on Amazon). The changes reflect my different views of the goodreads and Amazon communities and the fact that I think reviews serve a slightly different purpose in the two forums. I think of the typical goodreads member as being a more committed and engaged reader, more likely to be enthusiastic about books and reading generally (and, if I'm to be completely honest, smarter) -- as a result, I feel more comfortable opening up on goodreads. I think of Amazon reviews as being primarily informational, with the main goal of helping someone who might be considering buying the book in question. I figure what's most likely to be useful to them is an a relatively neutral description of what they should expect.

As a general rule I add a star when transferring reviews to Amazon, partly because the scales are not identical, but also because it reduces the incidence of unconstructive whiny comments (a 3-star rating, which on goodreads I often give to books I liked, is apparently interpreted as a huge dis over on Amazon).

Comments on Amazon, in my experience, are rarely very interesting. For the most part I've been lucky enough not to attract any particularly virulent haters. But none of my reviews over there have generated any substantive debate. Reviews of anthologies seem to receive a disproportionately high number of helpful votes on Amazon; my reviews of non-fiction are better received than my fiction reviews (in general).

i cross post all of my reviews in 4 places.
My website, Goodreads, LibraryThing, Powells.com
sometimes amazon, but i prefer powells anyday.
-------
is just a matter of what you are looking for.
in the end though, goodreads and librarything combined equals one sweet ass mullet.

i prefer the systems structure of librarything, and the people over there are a different flavor completely. they are a bit more "business" in the front

goodreads is not my preferred system, but the folks here are more social and constructive, lively and such. very much the "party" in the back.


shelfari? hated it. -->absolute.<--

That must be a lot of work, cross posting in so many places. What do you mean the people at LT are more "business" in the front?

not that much effort, it becomes habitual.
:)
~~

like a mullet.. business in the front, party in the back?.. i love both services, but combined, they are a really bad hairstyle.

its true though. Goodreads is more of a social outlet, you have a system that is geared toward usability and discussion.

librarything tends to be more of the fanatics. they are always a couple steps behind the social aspect due to their inward looking.

a great example of the differences can be inferred from this:

GoodReads has "Followers" when you watch someone's rss

LibraryThing has "Interesting Libraries" for the same thing.

I started reviewing books I read in my LJ, and that's where I continue to do so - though my reviews there occasionally have more personal stuff.

I also write reviews on a couple of similar Russian language sites - for Russian books mostly.

Lemme tell ya ... Amazon.com is the #1 book reviewing site, in terms of reviews read. That's 'cuz Amazon plants book reviews next to the books themselves, on the page where the Amazon visitor is deciding whether or not to purchase it. Online shoppers read the shit out of those reviews!

As an author, I've learned that Amazon book reviewers have tremendous power to sell my books OR convince people NOT to buy them. And I've noticed that some Amazon reviewers know they have this power, and they trip on it like little three year olds.

A lot of Amazon reviews can be paraphrased as either "THIS WRITER IZ A POOPY HEAD DUM BRAIN" or "THIS WAS THE BEST EVER BOOK I READED." GR has much better reviews -- more thoughtful, more interesting, better use of apostrophes, all that. I wish GR's reviews showed up on Amazon.com . Alas, they don't.

Moral: if there's an author you love, especially Mykle Hansen a relatively unknown author, you'll be doing them a huge favor if you copy your GR reviews over to Amazon.

Thanks for the tip. If I'm buying online, unless i can read an extract and make up my own mind, no review on earth amazon is going to to make me buy it. Unless of course it's written in slobodian.

Since I'm a big eBook person, I use Amazon.com a lot, for reviews, wish lists, and samples of books. I've written reviews for Amazon, but they seem to disappear in the morass of reviews. At least at Goodreads, my friends will read them.

www.speakitsname.com
my blog (www.aleksandrvoinov.blogspot.com)
Amazon.co.uk

I discovered Shelfari before Goodreads. When a friend from Paperback Swap introduced me to Goodreads, I only update that other site every couple of months.

I have a LibraryThing account, even paid for the lifetime membership so I could import all of my books into it. I think the free version only allowed me 250 or something. I used it for a while, but haven't been on it in months. I just never seemed to connect to the people there & found the interface clunky. For a while I would post my GR reviews there, but I haven't even done that in ages. It just doesn't offer anything I really want, so I spend my limited time & energy here.

Aleksandr wrote: "www.speakitsname.com"

Wow! How the heck can I get my books reviewed on there?

G.N. wrote: "If I'm buying online, unless i can read an extract and make up my own mind, no review on earth amazon is going to to make me buy it."

interesting! do you use the Look Inside stuff on Amazon? or some other source of excerpts?

(i'm just asking out of pure curiosity, you understand. not for market research purposes at all, not i ...)

Petra X wrote: "I joined LibraryThing and Shelfari, but GR hooked me. I like the look of white pages with minimal graphics and plain text."

It should be noted that Goodreads is the least-redesigned website on earth! Its look has stayed the same for years and years. It's like a mirror world where Web 2.0 never happened. Probably they're about to turn everything puce and blinking, but let the record show that up until now I was enjoying the boredom.

well, not entirely true. they keep tweaking things. I've been on the site for a number of years and there are many more features now that seem FB-influenced than there used to be. Many of us oldies have complained...But, the site has stayed true to its original design, for the most part, which I find pleasing to the eye. Also, as has been said, GR is remarkably open to listening to/taking in/acting upon its users' feedback, quite unlike FB.

I LOVE the design... more so than any of the other web 2.0 sites. The thing is, even if it is an old design, it doesn't look old... it's not like one of those sites that looks obviously from the 90s or something.

In fact, I think LibraryThing has a horrible design that looks old and is really hard to use to boot.

agreed.
the core LT system is freaking amazing, but as with real libraries, they are behind the times in keeping peoples interest and accessibility.

side note: i would love to see the systems work out some kind of data share..
managing libraries in both locations is a pain in the ass, but both camps do not typically play well together so i have to manage both

Yes, although there is a pretty easy way to export your data in a way that you can import into the other website. That's what I did. But ideally I can update one and have it automatically update the other also!

Jimmy: the word ointment

no aversion?

.....in a different time zone:

You idiot! What thread do the think this is? WTF are you talking about anyway?! and to whom?!

As an author, I've learned that Amazon book reviewers have tremendous power to sell my books OR convince people NOT to buy them.

I definitely don't trust reviewers on Amazon. A couple years back, the reviewer anonymity was temporarily lifted because of a glitch, and lo and behold, tons of authors had given themselves extremely positive reviews! Also, friends and family members of authors had written glisteningly positive reviews as well. If I remember right, roughly 5% of the site's reviews were written by non-objective parties who hadn't mentioned their lack of objectivity.

that's right. not only that, there was a huge scandal in the UK recently when Orlando Figes was unmasked as the writer of several really hostile/negative reviews of books on amazon that were similar in topic to his (i.e.competitors). I forget his topic now, something in history...BUT, a prominent scholar (!) and philosopher in the UK. Initially he said his wife wrote the reviews! Can you imagine? Poor wife.

Mykle wrote: "Lemme tell ya ... Amazon.com is the #1 book reviewing site, in terms of reviews read. That's 'cuz Amazon plants book reviews next to the books themselves, on the page where the Amazon visitor is d..."

I can copy mine for you. although amazon gets annoyed with the language I use in reviews and commonly refuses to post them

I only review here. I don't have time to be posting on multiple book sites. I need time to play Facebook games.

Jasmine wrote: "... although amazon gets annoyed with the language I use in reviews and commonly refuses to post them "

Right! People are always telling me their Amazon reviews of RAMPAGING FUCKERS were rejected because they mentioned the name of the book in the review. But Amazon allows you to swear all you like in the book title if you're a tasteless attention whore famous author.

Probably you could use Amazon Listmania to spell out a really rude sentence and attach it to the page of a book you don't like. Hmm ...

Normally I only review here, but I'll write a review here & then post it on Amazon, Barnes&Noble & others, if the author is new or not well known, I've given them a good review & believe they need all the publicity they can get.

I've done the same thing for a few books that I thought were dangerous. For instance, A Million Little Pieces by James Frey which is very bad for folks trying to get sober or clean.

A friend who is a therapist and counselor for drug-addicted teens told me that Frey's book did more damage...conveying the idea that one could get clean on one's own. Without intervention or help. She could not discuss it without getting upset...

Exactly, Jessica. He says he ran his own treatment program. Pretty silly when you consider his best efforts wound up with him going to rehab in the first place. I've never known anyone who went there for fun - it's a last resort - jail, death or insanity are the other options at that point.

The only good thing about the book is that Frey does do a good job of portraying what being addicted is like in the beginning of the book. My mother, who was surrounded by drunks, never understood what it was like until she read this. He did an amazing job of explaining the disease to her, so I'll give credit where it is due. Unfortunately, he then went on to write a very dangerous fantasy, which my mother also believed, as did all of her friends in her book club.

I don't normally condone book destruction, but if I were to give a copy to anyone, I would tear out the last 2/3 of the book & burn it.

interesting. I've never actually read the book (never wanted to, either before or after the brouhaha) but I believe you.

There's no reason to read it unless you care about someone who is in that pitiful state & want to try to understand them. Otherwise, it's just depressing as hell.

Mykle wrote: "Jasmine wrote: "... although amazon gets annoyed with the language I use in reviews and commonly refuses to post them "

Right! People are always telling me their Amazon reviews of RAMPAGING FUCKER..."

well the main problem is it won't tell you why it's rejecting them. I finally figured it out when I posted a review on b&N and they yelled at me for language

Yeah, I rarely post anything to Amazon. I don't like their editing process nor the voting process which allows people to hate on all of your reviews if they disagree with one. They also hacked a few of my reviews to hell and refused to post quite a few of them.