Why I do not review books for free

Recently, an author with a book warm and fresh from the press mailed me. He wanted me to review it. Came down straight to the point in a two-lined mail 1 itself – ‘Where should I send you a copy?’ No, he did not ask me what the procedure is, he did not want to know what I charge as a fee and he certainly seemed to assume it’s going to be a ‘yes’ from my end, as if Richard Gere were asking for my hand in marriage! 

Is this because he thought he was sending a copy of his book, free, so which sane woman in her write mind would refuse an offer such as this?

When I mentioned that I do commissioned reviews only, he sent a shorter mail saying ‘Sorry, I’m not comfortable with paying for a review.’ If he had explained more, I wouldn’t have said a loud Punjabi ‘Hain?’ to denote anything from ‘Why in Jupiter’s name?’ to ‘What the Pluto does he mean?’ Since he did not, I felt free to call him stingy, secretly, and then sit and simmer over it. 

Simmer. Simmer over the fact that some writers, who themselves must have ranted against doing free assignments all their lives, are not ready to pay for your date with their book – reading it, reviewing it and then expectantly so, sharing it in their social media networks. They are, ahem, ‘uncomfortable’. 

Their view, I assume? If we pay you you will write a biased review. And we want an honest review. (Another assumption that the soul is sold if they pay in cash for our glass of lassi!)

Okay. But then – 

- A free book may be reward enough for someone to sing your praises?

- The possibility of a contact for a fancy literary fest could be incentive enough to call your book            a best-seller? 

- That overuse of ‘dear’ and ‘I love your writing’ and ‘lovingly yours’ may make someone fall in            love with your book as much as your nature, enough to make the love flow cover-to-cover?

- They may admire your nose and ears combination and may translate that 5 star attraction into a            10/10 review?

My story. 

When I began reviewing on my blog, I did a handful of reviews without charging a fee. I was a new name, no one had read my reviews before and I had an old-school idea of ‘let them get a sense of how I review and then I’ll charge a fee’. In short, I wanted to earn my right to ask for and earn my buck. I was testing the waters in the blogging world while giving a taste of my wine to prospective authors.

I was putting in everything I could to review in my own way. To be different, successfully or not. And to be independent of popular schools of review methodology, very successfully. But ‘different’ is not an idea which gets accepted too fast. While writing the reviews was enjoyable, hearing ‘your reviews go over my head’ or ‘who are you reviewing for?’ or ‘give a star rating, please’ from readers was so discouraging I would feel conscious simply thinking about charging a fee. 

Till some friends (and one husband) took me by the shoulders, shook me awake and told me to not do any book reviews for free, or any writing either no matter how much you enjoy it, you idiot! Not in the name of friendship or family friends; not in the name of their God or your dog. This is your work. This is what you do! So, there were 3 and a half people who pushed me off the sagacious cliff of ‘let me earn (read justify) my buck’ to the waters of ‘you have earned your buck, crazy!’ And that was that!

Looking back, I thank them for that plunge, even though the first time I mailed my fee to a commissioning author I didn’t breathe for a while. I am glad for the push because subconsciously I was becoming what so many authors and publishers want book reviewers to be – Professional but unpaid means of publicity, which they politely call ‘feedback’. 

They convince you they trust you, implore they value your feedback, they assure you they cannot do without it before their next book and then they knot their brows in incomprehension, clear their throats and shuffle off if you say ‘Okay, I charge 1 million dollars per review.’ Or so the numbers seem to them. ‘We’ll find someone else. There are plenty around’ or worse ‘I thought she was my friend. Sob sob’. 

A friend who should not dare to contribute to her family income, or collect funds towards her next hair cut? Hm. 

Why I do not review books for free?

1. Time – Just like you, I don’t have a big slice of this cheesecake just to myself. Of course, I have no office to go to, but there is a reason I work from home, right? A book review typically means reading the book 8 am – 11 am (apart from bathing, minding house, managing maid, getting ready for school to pick up my kid) and then 3 pm – 5 pm (fighting bone-tiredness, sleep, heat, lethargy, season’s vagaries, empty stomach sometimes since after feeding kid who wants to cook for oneself?). I have tried to read post-dinner, but I have a family. And I never can extricate myself from the bed-TV madness that we like to indulge in. It's valuable "personal time" to me. One book may take three days to read and another three to write review. Weekends included! That is a lot of time, considering I could have written a few articles for my column, done some posts for the blog or simply trimmed my nails, shaved my head or joined a meditation camp and laughed my lungs out. I did not. I had a book to review. And I spent a good amount of time at it. 

2. Effort – c.f. Point 1. Add a few thousand units of Horse Power to it.

3. Respecting another’s worth – And this is the most important thing we are missing in our lives. Even if we recognize another’s work’s worth, we don’t want to respect it. Yes, I am linking respect to money because a fee acknowledges your talent and encourages it too. Some authors who mail sing my praises, but zip it up when I say ‘all reviews are commissioned’. They go away, feeling ‘uncomfortable.’ There are many who do not even respond to the mail mentioning the fee. Why do we want services for free, when we ourselves wouldn’t sit on a television panel like a famous authorial voice on human liberty without asking ‘Do you pay an honorarium?’ Is the idea of availing cheap/free labour so built into our systems that we cannot acknowledge worthiness over nothing? Or is it, rather disturbingly, that we have created invisible pyramids of socio-professional hierarchies in the writing world too where the author is just below the publisher but far, far above a puny book reviewer. And grass can’t be a tigress, how dare she roar and decide to be a chooser!

[I look at that poor sarkari driver my neighbour feels comfortable to call, even on Sundays, assuming he has nothing to do with his own family, but take the officer's out for a picnic in the Lodhi Gardens. All day. Assuming he doesn't need personal time. And then, what compensation can suffice for taking a husband or a dad away from his chutti at home, or a man away from his bed? I look at him, and I empathize. He's not expected to ask for that compensation. It rings a bell.]

Authors are putting in sacks of money to promote their books. They forgo royalty, pay literary agents to polish and pitch their books, hire digital media experts to promote it and sell a few family heirlooms (or wear them) to stand behind their books like a mother would behind her chick running the first race in KG. I can understand that pride, and wish someday my pen gives me the opportunity to feel it too, but I cannot fathom the ‘discomfort’ in paying for another’s time, effort and worthy work to do with something so dear to them.

Am I trying to convert those book reviewers who, like me once, are too afraid to ask for a sum? No. But do I wish them to get converted to this side of the fence, where remuneration for writing and reviewing should reflect the effort, time and even talent that they put in? Yes! 

The season’s or its end’s sales are in the malls. Your souls won’t read ‘sold’ just because you asked for a fee. Let there be no ‘discomfort’! 

On either side of the fence. 

Masters in my Room

With a loud ‘Oh God!’ I begin this post, as serious as it may be,

An invocation you may call it, or frustration, to put it simply.

I stood before my book shelf watching spines just newly born,

Thinking what my favourites think,  the ones now dead and gone.

From one genre to the next I went, (did I pronounce that right?),

To talk to the masters about book trends, and what was on their minds.

To see how books and writers have evolved into something new,

To see if we have grown new wings or bid them a quick adieu.

I noticed in a corner Chaucer stood with a knowing smile,

Could he have read the latest Humour best-seller on the vine?

He shook his head from side-to-side, confused me, then he said,

‘Winne whoso may, (my child) for al is for to selle.’

Amused I stood musing, when Dryden to Pope did say,

‘An immortal War with Wit’ wages the King of Satire today.

‘All Arguments, all arguments, but most his Plays perswade,

That for anointed dullness (nothing more), he was really made.’

Just then lovelorn Donne glided in, and a hand by his heart did lie,

Was this about the Love story readers swooned over, now swore by?

‘While I just managed to write an Elegie, to my Mistress Going to Bed,

Such love the writers must now know, to bring lovers back from the dead!’

The talk of Love disturbed his reverie, by the gurgling stream,

In walked Wordsworth, took a seat, ho-hummed to then proceed-

‘What Love you speak about, I just know not what you mean,

No trees, no sun, no Abbeys divine, of Nature books are clean.’

So many Thrillers abound today, who has space for a cherry tree?

Shakespeare looked as if he knew, adding mystery to the scene.

‘Oh mercy, droppeth from the Heavens now, and fall upon her head,

I saw that book’s end coming right after line 1, page 1 was read!’

Kundera’s political eyebrow shot-up in brave support,

Kafka in complete profundity said reading's ‘a trial’, no more.

Amitav Ghosh and Anathamurthy in a whisper together said,

Heads bent, shoulders down, a frown and then ‘Is literary nearly dead?’

While Lawrence winked and asked ‘So, they think they know all about sex?’

Premchand, Manto and Chugtai moaned their own legacy’s death.

Virginia Woolf woke-up from her dreams, only to think anew,

‘Why have writers closed all windows in what was once a room with a view?’

In flowing robes Homer sat till now - quiet, blind, unseen.

Till he roared ‘How epic! How epic! This glorious sea of mediocrity!’

Yeats wanted the gyres to turn, a ‘Second Coming’, a beast we need,

But Eliot, out of patience, shouted ‘Shantih Shantih Shantih’.

From me alone with my book shelf we had grown to quite a few,

Confirmed it was that Classic once may never again come true.

Alas! They vanished, one-by-one, those masters from my room,

‘Oh God!’ I sighed with loss once more, before I picked up the broom.

What you see below was a wise young owl, creative and with craft,

But in such pressing hurry to print, this smile he called his art.

What happened next is sad, so, so sad oh tragedy abound!

Just a wide-eyed face was left of what was once a wise young owl.

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was - It builds character - Tell us about a favorite character from film, theater, or literature, with whom you’d like to have a heart-to-heart. What would you talk about?]

Of Mangoes and Mango Chutney

Stories are like mangoes. You pick and pluck at will. Then, you eat them the way they taste the best to you.

Some use a spoon and as objective eaters experience the taste without getting their hands and heads too involved. I want to have some light fun. Plus, it’s just another mango!

Others trust and thrust their teeth deep into it; pull, gnaw, chew and with the first bites still in their mouths say ‘That was so sweet. Brilliant!’ or pucker up their faces instantly and spit out a ‘Hey! Sour and unripe.’ Quickies, so to say.

   

Often you find people chopping them into tiny pieces, then poking tooth picks into each geometric piece, tasting them that much longer, trying to understand the mango to pronounce verdict. I’d like to believe they know what they are doing!

  

One category does buy the mango just to prove the tree wrong. To prove that the guthlee is bigger than the juicy yellow part and the fruit a failure. They would pay just to prove that. Rich, but so poor. I wish them peace.

So strange how much I can metaphor-ise on mangoes and stories, isn’t it? I must be missing them a lot as autumn dawns. Or maybe, I was simply waiting for the noise around ‘Mango Chutney’ to die down. After months of being the cynosure, the first short story anthology I am a part of is resting – away from Facebook clamour and Amazon glamour. However, sitting snug and smug on a pedestal of pride, in my heart and mind. My first you see, as dear as dear can be, for reasons aplenty.

27 short stories by mostly first time writers were selected to be published by a new-kid-on-the-block, Rumour Books, with Harsh Snehanshu as its Editor. I don’t think this young man slept much those days. Inboxes rang with new messages in the middle of workdays and ‘Please see and revert ASAP’ mails dropped by at 3 am. Okay, I exaggerate a wee bit but only to tell you how passionately he led this project. How democratically too.

At every step the writers were kept in the loop and their opinions sought. It was ‘our’ book in its truest sense. The cover was selected by consensus. Each story went through phased edits and was mailed back to us for approvals. Sadly, this very democracy swung the pendulum both ways. 27 people took their time and turns to approve edits, Microsoft Word’s Track-Change played tricks, the print deadline approached and ‘Send’ was pressed with a heart-beat skipped, and a few commas and full-stops too. Unforgivable, true. Looking forward to a cleaner Edition II.

The book was is successful. Professional numbers I don’t know but personal sentiments I heard, about the book as well as my story – from well-known authors, the book’s co-authors, family overseas, long lost friends and so many strangers on social media. It affirmed to me that the naysayers’ belief that no love and support is unconditional, is rubbish after all.

‘Mango Chutney’ had variety to offer its readers, in terms of genre and style, context and geography. In terms of quality too. Some stories soared confidently while others sat with their legs crossed, somewhere in the background. Some stole the readers’ hearts instantly and others disappointed them with their mere presence. 27 different authors, their ideas and moods, their use of language cannot please homogeneously. I bare my heart to tell you this that it did not me! What I learnt? The ‘quality’ of a story lies in the eyes of the reader to a very large extent, especially because each printed piece is received uniquely by every pair of reading eyes. What better proof of that than learning that the stories which some called the weakest links were hailed as favourites by others? 

How interesting the act of creating becomes then, ridden with not just flair but fluidity too. And helpless fear.

I remember how pills of Lomotil vanished into my stomach on the days preceding the launch at Oxford Bookstore, in New Delhi. I wonder why? Maybe because it was my first time. Or that some were betting their knickers off that money’s worth will not be found in the book? (I am hoping in their eyes too they stood naked after they read the book). The Lomotil-fed butterflies from my stomach reached my knees and I decided to wear a sari to keep the knocking from showing. I lie! I decided to dress as special as the day was to me, and not according to venue, age, company or the fact that I was just 1/27th a part of it. After all, on number 25 was my story ‘On the Other Side’ – one I stood by before I pressed ‘send’ and the one I know I could not have written any better, certainly not then. The gush of appreciation has ebbed, but the already burgeoning inbox will stand evidence to that.

Since stories are like mangoes, pride must be the last drop of sweet mango juice still stuck on the lips and which is so lovely to realize and lick a few moments later. Like right now…

Metaphors, metaphors, how I love you but spare me now, will you? A mango. A mango carved from the rarest stone I need placed on my writing desk. Or maybe, a book with a picture of a mango on it.  

(That’s a lot of mango now. Time for another Chutney! Wait, hasn't the rumour mill told you yet?)

[Written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts. The prompt for today was -Michelangelo’s YOU - Your personal sculptor is carving a person, thing, or event from the last month of your life into the glistening marble of immortality. What’s the statue and what makes it so significant?]

On Meeting a Manuscript

If reviewing a book is like taking the wrapper and ribbon off from a mystery gift, reviewing a manuscript is nothing short of being given a hidden treasure chest, with the key to open it. What lies within is virginal, for no other eyes except the author’s have seen it yet. You are told that. Sometimes made to sign and swear that you will keep secret whatever you find inside – jewels, maps or pebbles.

So, there is exclusivity to make you feel special. Curiosity too, and how it kills! There is a taste of power, for you have a license to deconstruct, sift-sort-suggest, to your head’s content. There is also a message in the bottle on your work desk, blinking neon – I trust you. Tell me what you think. Honestly. Thus, more than anything else, reading manuscripts makes you feel very responsible; more than being a caretaker of your own treasure chest can. 

Let me get serious now.

A few months back I became what we call a Beta Reader of manuscripts. As much as the term reminds me of a tool in the Physics lab, it actually makes me feel like a moon-dust robot, a nuke scientist and John Nash rolled into one whenever I say it aloud. Just the term, that is. The work of helping an author with feedback about their stories so they can polish them and make them publisher-ready (to put it very humbly) is much more difficult than the zaniest profession you can think of. 

Let me tell you why it is difficult and why you should call us Alpha Readers and not the second-in-command, Beta.

When an author has spent the better part of his past few years ‘working on’ a manuscript, he knows he is mailing you on an average 320 KB and 70,000 words of perfection. Pure perfection. He presses ‘send’ and your inbox reads 1 New Mail and somewhere in the few seconds in between he becomes a best-selling author – in his head. And you? You sweat, reading the introduction to the attached manuscript which is ‘close to my heart’ and a list straight from some Blue Book reading thus - ‘check this’, ‘notice that’, ‘keep a tab’, ‘what do you think’ and of course, ‘be honest’ – the last almost like a threat with an invisible ‘or else’ attached. After all, you are not the commissioning editor who will be dear-ed. Instantly, your finger nails feel your teeth and your fee seems like salt-free peanuts. 

So, you make a list of your own, next to the one the Boss sent, called ‘Expectations’. Suddenly, you are married to someone’s work and the father of the bride carries a pen (mightier than the sword), while the bride herself seems high-maintenance. Your side of the page, the real Beta list, is but a shadow in comparison. In short, there’s work to be done. The manuscript has to be read with a concentration even your inner eyelids have never seen. Comments and suggestions have to be added in track change mode and in polite language, even if you are asking them to go easy on the expletives. All impulses to kiss-bin-bin-bin-kiss-just-bin the virtual copy in admiration or deliverance have to be resisted. Finally, a chunky document called Overall Feedback has to be readied, which becomes a blueprint for the author to mull over slowly. In all this, do not forget, you have to be honest yet balanced, academic yet not-too-heavy, suggestive yet not over-smart, loud and clear yet not drown his voice and finally, helpful. Phew!

Yes, Alpha Reader would be good. Thank you! 

And then one day, when a book you helped shaped in whatever little (I mean big, actually!) ways sees the light of the published day you cut a cake, pat yourself publicly in the MCD park next door and order Chinese from Yo! China to celebrate “your” success. All jesting apart, it feels very, very good. Right from the point when the message in the bottle from the start is mouthed at the end of the assignment too as ‘I trust you’. That is when, as suggestions you made are incorporated, discussed and worked upon, you realize where the real value of this work lies – in the regard for what you call your impressions and feedback but which mean much more to those receiving them.

Ritu Lalit’s ‘Wrong, for the Right Reasons’ is the first among the manuscripts I beta-read to be a published book. I remember her call when with a semi-certain yet hopeful voice she shared this book’s idea with me, asking me straight away ‘Do you think this will work?’ It was 3 pm on a lazy day, it was 45 degrees, there was no electricity and I had a ripped toe-nail hopping around with me. But nothing clouded the conviction with which I felt for the book. Not just because it was woman-centric; not just because it was about surviving the everyday and not the fantastical but also because I assumed she was going to pour a huge part of her own life’s experiences into this survival account of a young divorced mother-of-two. The result of her hard work is for anyone to read now. 

‘Wrong, for the Right Reasons’ is one of the most real books you will read this season. It is Shyamoli’s story – as a young divorced woman, a single mother of two, a daughter struggling to break-free from an abusive mother and a person looking to walk on her own terms in a society which defines ‘respect’ in the most constricted of ways and hangs norms like nooses around the necks of single women. What is special about this book is what is seen as amiss in others – there are no sudden twists and turns, no army of characters and not even a flourish of a closure. It tells you a story keeping the sensational and the spectacular away, yet retaining the extraordinary within it, in the form of portrayal of relationships, streams of consciousness and the growth of the characters over the years that span the novel. One of my first doubts was about Shyamoli being too real to be made into a ‘heroine’ but by the end of the manuscript I had revised my idea. She is that exactly because she is life-like. And readers will be able to find a Shyamoli in their lives too. Isn’t that a wonderful thing in a book?

I met one manuscript for coffee first. Then I met some more, and then a few more and I don’t need to stop any more. Each speaks in its own voice to me, in its own style, not just to the reviewer that I am but to the dreamer that I want to be, of holding my own piece of art in my hands one day. Perhaps, that is what makes me love my work, for the possibility it keeps alive in my mind and for the various lessons it tucks within its folds for forwarding that on the right path.  

In the meantime, do you now see why we should be called Alpha Readers and not Beta, the second in command?