Message to authors

If your book is as good as you think it is, then you shouldn't instruct your fans to spam Amazon with uninformed 5-star reviews. Yes, SPAM. "I've had this book for 12 hours and I already love it!!!" is of no more value than "Penny stocks and V1agra!!" when it comes to deciding whether to buy a book. How about a review from an expert or a doctor (or could you not get an expert?) instead of:

• "This is a great book that is definitely large and full of data."
• "was blown away first of all by the physical size of the book"
• "You know sometime genius only appears in their first work, but with his second book [author] DID IT AGAIN!"
• "I've been looking forward to this since I first heard [author] talking about it, and expected it to be amazing"
• "Thanks for devoting so many years of your life to researching this so meticulously and sharing that with the world."

Now, I have been asked by authors whose mailing lists I'm on to contribute a review on Amazon, and I have not, mostly because I couldn't be bothered. But there's a difference between a thoughtful review and a raft of fanboys. What that practice says to me, the book-buying public, is that you, Author, think I'm so stupid that I'm going to buy the book off those reviews, when in reality I will probably just borrow it from the library and hate-read it. And maybe get carbs all over it. That's right.

TIME Magazine: Buy our Haiti book for "relief efforts"

Oh, this makes me so angry:


Look, I get it. TIME is pouring a lot of money into its Haiti coverage and wants to make money off it without seeming like the bad guy, so the book division repurposes some magazine content for a book and promises to throw some change towards the subjects. In theory this isn't any worse than helping out Haiti by buying a celebrity-designed handbag or going to a party hosted by someone whose 15 minutes are up. The "share" (how much? Five percent? Ten? One?) probably won't pay out immediately, meaning that the most urgent relief efforts won't be funded, but Haiti will still need help in 6 months, a year, or longer.

No, it IS worse, because this is a news organization and as such I hold them to a higher standard than Scarlett Johansson or any of Tiger's mistresses. I don't think that's unfair.

The reason I even got this e-mail is because I subscribe to TIME. I've been a subscriber for years. The division that puts out these books is separate from the content creators anyway, so sending Richard Stengel a poison-pen letter (poison-keyboard e-mail? Phrase fail!) won't be effective. But TIME, how about sending the hundreds of thousands of dollars it will cost you to print and distribute these books directly TO a reputable charity organization. You can even put out a press release if that will make you feel better and call a news conference with Anderson Cooper in his stupid black T-shirt and the Utah adoption brigade and repeated plays of "We Are The World 2010: We Are The World When It Suits Us To Be Part Of The World, Which Is When It Will Look The Best."

I'm going to go breathe into a paper bag now.