How does one regard bad reviews? An author who recently received one examines the review.

I would imagine every serious writer sends off review copies of their books with trepidation and tries to suppress those inevitable feelings of uncertainty and fear while awaiting the promised review. Many times the author spends his or her own money to purchase copies to submit to reviewers who, for some reason, don’t seem to have the time or money to request review copies themselves from the various publishers.

After spending considerable time and money to write a book, each author feels that he or she deserves a good review. But, heavens forbid, what happens if the expected review isn’t as good as hoped—or isn’t good at all? Is the writer’s career over? Are sales no more?

This happened to me recently. After spending a year of research, a year of writing and waiting another year for the publisher to release the book, I submitted my book, Menhirs, Dolmen and Circles of Stone to a reviewer that requested a review copy. I felt confident that I would at least receive a luke warm review. After all I had traveled around the world to do research, took many photos of unusual artifacts and locations and perused hundreds of research books and journals to complete my book. I had also worked as an archaeologist in the past and I am a member of the American Folklore Society. My publisher is a well-respected academic press, which, according to Writers Market, “receives 1,500 queries and 800 manuscripts a year” but publishes only 25 of those submissions. Surely, I thought, the publisher doesn’t publish just anything like so many do.

Months and months had passed since I submitted my book for review and I couldn’t find out when the review was to appear. Then, a few days ago, I looked on the reviewer’s website and saw it. And felt my writing career crumble.

The first line said it all so eloquently. “This is the kind of book readers want to love. Who doesn’t adore standing stones? Who isn’t interested in the lore, the mystery, and, yes, the magical aura of stone circles and barrows and other megalithic constructions? This is not, alas, the book we’ll love.” And it only got worse.

I was taken to task for using two spellings of “fairy”. I used “Faery” simply because it is one of those antiquated spellings that create a “feeling” for the “little people”. I also, however, used the regular spelling of “fairy”—for a reason. What she didn’t say was while I used “Faery” 28 times and “Faeries” 19 times in the book, the words “fairy” and “fairies” appeared only 5 and 3 times and were all the result of quoting or citing other sources. I was not guilty of inconsistent spelling.
I was also roundly criticized for using “dolmen” instead of “cromlech”—for we all know that the “OED” (that’s “Oxford English Dictionary” for us common folk) states that cromlech “is the proper word for dolmen”. Hmmm, the Websters New World Dictionary appears to prefer “dolmen” and doesn’t even have a separate entry for “cromlech”, but then I can’t afford a copy of the “OED”.

What seemed to really rankle the reviewer (Barbara Ardinger who supposedly has a PhD in English Renaissance literature by the way) was the use of footnotes that actually appear on the bottom of the page that contains the footnoted entry. She kindly pointed out that “The more common approach is to start again at 1 with a new chapter and most books these days use endnotes.” I wonder how many books the reviewer has read that utilize footnotes. While many do, in fact, use endnotes many others don’t. I have in front of me a scholarly book called Religion and the Decline of Magic published by Penguin and another titled Mithras: Mysteries and Initiation Rediscovered published by Samuel Weiser Inc and yet another written by Joseph Campbell called The Mythic Image, which have the same footnote system that my book has. I suppose the reviewer would ask of their publishers as she did of mine, “Don’t they know how to format footnotes?” The simple fact is that there is no one way to use footnotes. My publisher, as well as others, believe it is more reader friendly to have the footnotes close to the item in question than have to flip through several pages or to the end of the book to find the reference.

I guess what hurt the most was the following: “This book is not friendly to pagans, witches, or those who worship the Goddess. The author quotes old sources (often citing only 1990s reprints without giving the original date of publication) that frown on “pagan rites” and evil witches.” I frankly was shocked! The book I wrote is not one of the many fluff books on New Age Paganism (which, by the way Ms. Ardinger seems to produce) that treats every witch as the Good Witch Glenda. History and folklore universally treats the witch and sorcerer as “evil” and “pagan rites” received bad press from the Church that also enforced the evil witch image. History and folklore are not friendly in many ways and history is all too clear how people on the edge of society are treated. My book is factual, based on history and folklore and it does not gloss over or “make pretty” that which isn’t. My work is not fictional nor do I rewrite history to fit my mood.

Some of the sources I used were reprinted as the reviewer noted. I am thankful that they were, as the original texts are more than likely not easily found. However, every source was identified in the bibliography as to the original publication date. And only a fraction of the sources were reprints. In fact, only 15 of the 181 references in the bibliography were reprints. I used references from the 1800s through 2003. I guess the reviewer didn’t get to the end of the book to check. The reviewer also noted, “Stone circles and rocking stones and stones with inscriptions and energetic stones are all visited, sometimes in several countries in the same paragraph.” She’s right. When I discuss and examine a particular type of site or artifact that may be found in several areas of the world, I will write about them in the same paragraph. I guess it’s the academic training I received in college.

I was obviously very upset until I remembered that a prominent British historian, writer and curator had reviewed the same book and found none of these horrendous problems. I then looked at the reviewers site and found that she had a few books too, the most recent a novel in e-book version only and the others having to do with women’s rituals written in the mid-90’s. Now I firmly believe that books on ritual are important but not necessary written in any form that requires academic research since the normal Pagan ritual book focuses on self-created chants, prayers and spells.

I also found a few excerpts from her books, one in which she ties Miss Piggy to the Goddess: “Who can forget the Busby Berkleyesque underwater ballet sequence in The Great Muppet Caper where The Pig rose to perfect balance atop the fountain of life? It was a porcine apotheosis.” Another of her books tells of two “found goddesses” that she calls Compuquia and Nerdix—two goddesses of the computer. Now that’s serious writing that doesn’t require footnotes or an index!

So anyway after rambling on here what is it I am trying to say? Don’t take reviews seriously! Write the best that you can and get your work published. But please choose the review source carefully and stay away from those that may appear to be qualified but really don’t know as much as you do. Sadly, book reviewers have writers against the wall. They can tear your work apart but there is no forum available to the writer to exchange opinions with them or to question their attack.

However, it would have been great to have a “good” review. Now excuse me, I have another book to write.