The Fancy Reader

I wrote a long post about what can we expect from an ARC (Advance Review/Reader Copy), but it got kinda long and complicated. And boring. <_< So I decided to leave it for another day.

What I am in the mood is to have some kind of a PowerPoint presentation. Namely, bullet points. I like bullet points very much and that’s why I’m – or about to – going to abuse the hell out of them. You may pretend that all text in this post are in Comic Sans and that there are generic stock photos (there aren’t any here, but just pretend there are).

I’m returning to the basics of reviewing, so I’ll begin with the heart of all: the Reviewer.

A reviewer is, basically, a bridge between a reader and an author. Reader relies on Reviewer during a book-buying decision process and Author relies on Reviewer during a book-pimping process. This produces two sets of expectations for Reviewer.

However, Reviewer’s primary task is – of course – to provide reviews for a targeted audience. But why would unpaid Reviewer invest that much time, effort and money in reviewing? That very much depends on Reviewer’s major goals, but that’s for another day. It’s always another day around here, but anyroad.

What interests me are types of reviewer. Well, two types: Behavioural and Review. Let’s focus on Behavioural Types. Bearing in mind that no two reviewers are ever same and all reviewers love books, there are enough similarities among reviewers that types cannot help but surface.

As far as I can see, there are 21-ish types of reviewers or – to be more accurate – reviewing moods/modes. I’ll amuse myself by pretending to be an ethologist/ornithologist:

• Hamster - a hamster + a spinning wheel = loads of short cheerful reviews and zero opinion
• Cat – reviews whatever and whenever it likes; not that keen on interacting with visitors, but enjoys reading responses
• Labrador - reviews crowd-pleasing books only; adores interacting with visitors; gets upset if it thinks it’s in trouble
• Kangaroo - opinionated; will defend its reviews and favourite tropes to death; enjoys taking part in book debates and making fun of bad books; lively and witty, and can be embarrassingly tactless
• Skunk - treats the latest book hype or frenzied trend with suspicion; stubbornly set on being contrary with the others in anything, including reviews, for no other reason than not wanting to be seen as part of the norm
• Magpie – plagiarises (some blatantly, some not so) others’ reviews in order to get its claws on “free books”
• Pigeon – reviews occasionally, but focuses heavily on book news, book-related info or/and topics relevant to readers
• Workhorse – reviews new releases regularly and delivers book news whenever possible.
• Bat – reviews anything as long as it’s advantageous to its other career; doesn’t tend to mix with other reviewers, readers and members of a book community as it prefers to hang down with its own kind; tends to suck the others’ own expertise and knowledge dry as a short-cut to earning their own badge
• Unicorn - writes reviews it believes are unique from everyone else’s; Special Snowflake Unicorn sometimes confuses the skills of reviewing with the (usually crappy) skills of site/blog design
• Butterfly – only in it for the social aspect of a reviewer community; will review once in a while to justify its place in said community
• Sea Horse – slow reviewer and when it does deliver, it leaves an impact, but it tends to wander away – almost absent-mindedly – before anyone could engage it in a review discussion
• Peacock – reviews and writes for attention/praise/awards; tends to compete against certain reviewers; sometimes confuses a review blog with a popularity contest; obsesses with site traffic statistics; writes an editorial that’s soaked in passive aggression with a streak of thinly-veiled martyrdom whenever it thinks it’s not loved and respected as much as it thinks it deserves
• Badger – occasional reviewer; when it sinks its teeth into a book, it burrows in deep until it’s satisfied or bored; happily engages in long, meaningful book/review discussions with anyone, but doesn’t easily let go of a much-laboured point
• Meerkat – enjoys rubber-necking at a book fight or flame war anywhere and any time, but doesn’t like having a flame war erupting on own turf, not even when it reviews controversial books currently subjected to heated debates elsewhere
• Pig - reviews others’ review/blog policies more than books themselves; likes to think itself keenly observant but often missed the obvious point; sometimes can be patronising and tyrannical
• Mouse – reviews books anonymously and tends to publish said reviews on a faceless book venue like Amazon
• Cheetah – reviews highly-anticipated books and will do all it can to be the first to review them. And that includes sinking its fangs into a hapless author’s leg until it receives a copy of an uncorrected proof ARC or, better, a manuscript. Much better if Cheetah receives the manuscript before the now-traumatised author’s editor could. So be it if that means becoming a beta reader, thinks Cheetah.
• Semi-Feral Cat - there’s no other way to put it but this: “Here’s my latest review. *shrug* YMMV. Not like I care. I never pay attention to what people think, anyway. Eh? Hey hey hey, you’re too close. Back off. Back off! BACK OFF! *hisses*”
• Yorkshire Terrier - reviews and pimps favourite authors’ new releases, and will yap at anyone who dared to slag off said authors’ books. Will even nip at their ankles if it thinks it’d win favourite author’s stamp of approval
• Dodo – likes to review long-forgotten or obscure books; will have an orgasm over a rare gem that tends to make everyone rush for an orgasm a copy of their own; can be such an awkward snot a snob
• Lemming - reviews anything, but can easily get sucked into a frenzy over a book, trend, trope or sub-genre of the month
• Otter – prefers to be part of an active book review team than being alone
• Chicken - reviews positively and brightly in public, and criticises in private, to avoid hurting authors’ feelings
• Zebra - reviews books primarily to solicit recommendations of similar books from its visitors; community-oriented; tends to protect its visitors from hostile visitors by kicking them to death banning them from site