carolyn kellogg

I can’t decide which is more offensive about this ad from Craigslist in Los Angeles: that they want to pay book reviewers a whopping $5 per 350-word review (about 12 cents 1.5 cents per word) or that they “only do recommendations, no negative reviews.” 

OnceWritten.com, a website dedicated to promoting the works of new authors is looking for regular, contributing book reviewers for our site. We are passionate about trying to give our readers alternatives to the “best-selling, sounds-the-same-as-the-last-book” authors out there.

Particulars:

We pay $5 per review (which is woefully inadequate, we know, but still better than what most of our competitors are paying) for a 350+ word book review. Because we pay, we do not want material that has already appeared elsewhere, including Amazon.com. We also don’t want a re-hash of the book jacket description, plus a “highly recommend this book.” We expect you to give details about what you really liked about the book.

We only do recommendations, no negative reviews. If a book isn’t worth reviewing, no problem. Don’t lie, just don’t review it. We’re trying to give people an idea of what they SHOULD be reading.

You don’t have to be experienced, but please have a passion for reading and ferreting out exciting new authors.

You can either review books in your own “To Be Read Pile” or we can send you books that authors/publishers have forwarded to us.

To get an idea of what we’re looking for, you can visit the site directly at www.oncewritten.com/BookReviews.htm, to see what our current editorial looks like. To apply, send us ONE previous review (either a real one or a sample) to the craig’s list email address listed above.

· Compensation: $5 per review

What these people want are not book reviews. To “review” is “a: to go over or examine critically or deliberately (reviewed the results of the study) b: to give a critical evaluation of (review a novel)” — that’s how Merriam-Webster puts it, anyway.

So this site will pay a reviewer less than 1/4 the cost of a hardcover to review it, with barely enough words to wipe the book’s ass. The reviewer can only write nice things. And then the reviewer is supposed to be grateful for the five bucks, because that’s more than they would get from the site’s “competitors” — which would be who, exactly?

It appears that OnceWritten gets its money by charging authors for placement on their site. By the looks of things, these are aspiring self-published authors trying to get exposure, who’ll cough up $75 for two months of being a “featured author” on the homepage. There is no distinction, on the site, between content and advertising — because it is almost all advertising. Aspiring authors should be highly skeptical of the traffic numbers OnceWritten claims.

Because I can’t let this go (let it go, let it go) I decided to see what the site’s reviews are like. Luckily, the second-most prominent review was of a book that I knew had been widely reviewed elsewhere. (It’s got a cute cover.) Here’s the first paragraph of the OnceWritten review of “Beginner’s Greek” by James Collins, reviewer’s name withheld (by me).

As a frequent traveler, I read the blurb for BEGINNER’s GREEK with interest. Seems that Peter, the lead character, has always fantasized that his dream woman will one day sit in the empty seat beside him on a flight to somewhere. And that’s exactly what happens. However, rather than being the “happily ever after” part of this romantic comedy, that’s the place the story begins. Peter does, in fact meet Holly, the woman of his dreams, on a flight between New York and Los Angeles. They bond over literature and soon both feel their romantic expectations building.

Woah. That’s really awful. That first sentence is so awful that when I try to parse its badness my eyes hurt and my fingers turn away from the keyboard in shame. I have now deleted seven separate rants from this place in this post. I could run a full Seminar in Composition class on that first paragraph alone. Thankfully, I never had to, because my Comp students wrote with more verve and clarity.

By contrast, here’s how the NY Times review begins:

This is a deeply strange book. In fact, it is, to the best of my knowledge, a nonesuch: a 400-plus-page first novel by a 49-year-old American male, dedicated to the highly dubious proposition that such a thing as perfect romantic love is possible in these doomy, gloomy, over-psychologized, terminally ironic, post-humanist, post-postmodern times. Part comedy of manners, part chick lit in male drag, James Collins’s “Beginner’s Greek” is a great big sunny lemon chiffon pie of a novel, set, for good measure and our sociological titillation, among the WASP ruling classes, people who work at white-shoe investment firms and own villas in southwestern France and can instantly tell the difference between fine Bordeaux and plonk.

Wow, now that’s saying something! We’ve got zeitgeist and this book’s place in it, we’ve got wine and love and sociological titillation. Language! Ideas! And positioning – if you find WASPy ruling classes enchanting, you’ll want more; if you don’t, you’ll go to the next book review (it’s possible you’ll finish this review, seething about wine snobs, but you’ll only have yourself to blame — the reviewer warned you).

Entertainment Weekly gives it just a one-paragraph capsule review, and again, manages to position the book according to expectations, and to telegraph what kind reading experience the book provides.

Beginner’s Greek has a classic romantic setup: Kinda awkward young financial type Peter meets girl-of-his-dreams Holly, loses her phone number, then spends a lot of pages trying to prove his fantasies really do match fate. As such, James Collins’ debut relies on a stunning number of familiar tropes — the meant-to-be lovers thwarted, the hapless romantic in love with his best friend’s girl, the treacherous boss. But he makes magic of it all by infusing those would-be clichés with so much old-school charm that you want to believe, and with so much patient detail that you actually can.

I encourage new entries in the online world of reading and writing and literary discourse. I am all for passion, for bringing light to alternative books, and for making room for novice book reviewers. But not at OnceWritten.

That is not book reviewing. It is not a good place for writers to “promote” their books. It is a sad scam on all fronts — especially, I think, for people who consider “book reviewing” something worth doing well.