These days, I'm attempting to keep my rants to a minimum. You've got enough of your own trials and tribulations. You probably don't need to hear any (or many) of mine. But oh, my god. Do you want to know what gets my llama? (I was looking for something a bit larger than a goat, but smaller than a rhino.) Truly? Reviews that bitch-slap an author for something completely out of her (or his) control. Cuffing Kate, which is a novella I'm totally fucking proud of, received a 2-star because... wait for it... it's a short story.
Can I get a "What the fuck?"
The cover of Cuffing Kate says on it: Spice Briefs. Doesn't say Spice Longs. Spice Marathons. Spice Up-All-Nighters. Spice Eternities. No. Spice Briefs.
Here is the review:
Short story May 30, 2012
I purchased this after reading it recommended in an article. It is a very short story. Just be aware when you are buying it that it takes about 5 minutes to read! I need to be a little more careful when making Kindle purchases!
First off, it's not *that* short. The story is a solid 10K. Second, that's like giving a phone book a bad review for containing a lot of numbers. Or the ocean a poor mark for containing water. I think I'm fuming because this happens a lot. Readers buy anthologies of 60 short stories and make comments like, "Yeah, there wasn't a lot of character development in each piece." Or, "Well, the stories were only five pages long, so the plots were thin." Um. Yes. That's all I can say. Yes. You're right. You're not going to get a lot of character development or heavy plotting in five-page stories. That's why authors write novels, too. So you can choose.
Deep fucking sigh.
XXX,
Alison
5 comments:
I feel your pain, Alison. I get soooo many reviews that comment about the story being too short. But short stories are well, short, aren't they?!
I even put all the word counts on my website to make it obvious to people what the story lengths are... but I can't do much else than that, as not all the retailers have an option to categorise titles based on their length.
Ah well, at least it was a complaint about the length, rather than your writing, huh? Look on the bright side :)
Some people expect the world. I recently put out a (mainstream) short story on Kindle and got the same basic response. Too short, though thankfully the review made some other minor points to justify the star rating.
I also noticed that a lot of people I've talked to only pick up something on Kindle if it is free. Never when they had to pay for it. I'm somewhat guilty of that, but I usually buy a copy if the author interacts with me (support my associates and all :P).
Related to that, Lulu had a contest a while back to write a story that was no more than 500 words and publish it. I did, it was a steampunk romance, and followed their directions. I honestly wasn't planning on seeing it show up on B&N. I also wasn't expecting the five star rating of: "this is short. Like someone took out a middle chapter of a very good book and just published it." And *then* ranted about it being short. I took down the story after that, mainly because that really needed to be a novel.
Alison, allow me to introduce you to one of my favorite blogs: http://leasthelpful.com/
You will see that you are far from alone in the "unclear-on-the-concept" reviews.
I can top that! I have a short-short story up for free. I clearly say it's a short-short (although I do get that people download stuff and then don't read it for a long time, so they might have forgotten the description). But it's free.
I got a review that said the story "wasn't worth it."
Worth what>?! The zero amount of money you spent on it? The five minutes (maybe - if you read slow) you spent reading it?
Hi Lucy, I try not to take things too seriously. But every once in awhile, something ruffles my feathers!
t'Sade—saying a short story is, um, short is just so baffling. Yup. Short stories. They tend to be short.
Oh, man, Dayle. That is too effed up! Still, I laughed (with you, not at you) reading what you wrote.
And aftergadget, I practically fell off my chair after perusing some of the reviews on the link!
XXX,
Alison
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