Sunday, June 22, 2014

Book Reviews on Amazon

I love, love, love to read book reviews, especially the 1,2, and 3 star reviews. I love a good critical review of a book. What I don't love is when a reviewer who absolutely hates a book just has to knock those who like the book. I get that you may hate the book and cannot believe anyone could like it. At this point, I just shut down and can't hear the constructive criticism from the reviewer who slams other reviewers. It's like a door slams shut.

Just a bit of advice to reviewers out there: 
Don't belittle or attack the character of other reviewers.
Don't attack the integrity of the author or publishing company.*

It's totally okay to say you don't understand how anyone could ever love, much less like, the book in question.

*Disclaimer: 
I am not saying that authors, publishers or their various agents never buy reviews. I know some do. It's just tacky to attack them without substantial proof.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Tip for Kindle Readers Who Like To Read Series Books

I love to read books that are in a series. Some of my series are quite long 15-30 or more books in series. I like to buy several of the books at a time. The problem is I am not always able to remember which book comes next. I solved that problem by creating a Word or Google document with the reading order, then e-mailed the document to my Kindle e-mail address. No matter where I am I can easily find the name of the next book and start reading.

  1. Create a Word or Google document with the reading order for the series. PDF, RTF, TXT work as well.
  2. Create a new e-mail.
  3. Enter your personal Send-To-Kindle e-mail address; this ends in @kindle.com. 
  4. Add document as an attachment
  5. Put Convert in the Subject line if you want the document to read like a Kindle book. Leave blank, if you like the original form better. (Try it both ways to find out which is easier to read.)
  6. Download to your device. I use Wi-Fi only to download my personal documents like this. If you have 3G or 4G, it could end up costing a Service Fee. I'm cheap and Wi-Fi is also faster :)

I tend to create a different Personal Document for each series. This why I am not having to thumb through several to find the series I am interested in reading. 


If you have never used the Personal Documents/Send-to-Kindle address, you can learn about it here:
http://amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200767340

If you need help, you an always call Amazon Kindle Support at 1-866-321-8851. Those folks love to help with this stuff!

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