- Joined
- Jul 5, 2012
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- elizabethbonesteel.com
There seems to be a strong stigma or cultural taboo (almost) of writers reviewing other writers, unless it's positive and/or on the cover of a book. I like doing reviews, and I'm not published so not an issue for me, but I did wonder about how that works for published people.
FWIW I don't write book reviews, but that's a choice I made long before I published. I've done some "I read this book and liked it" things for blogs here and there, but that was more a case of choosing to discuss a book I liked rather than going in and reviewing something for other readers.
If it's a book I love, I don't want to review it because then all the other people I'm not reviewing will think I don't love theirs as much. If it's a book I didn't like - I'm all too aware of the work behind it, and that the author might be very attached to it. They don't need me piling on.
I'd probably make an exception if it was a book I thought was either genuinely transcendent or damagingly awful, and even then I'd only write a review if nobody else had pointed out the features I wanted to highlight.
I've also heard that Amazon has been known to remove reviews by authors, because of some theory that you're undermining your competition or something of that sort. Which isn't a reason not to ever write them, but still.