Goodreads. Oh, goodreads. I love goodreads, but it’s been a tumultuous, scary place lately, for both writers and reviewers. Scarier still, I’m both—with four years of reviewing under my belt and a novel forthcoming in 2013.

A few people have asked what we can do to heal the damage that’s been done over the past year or so in the YA community. Initially, I thought I might draft some ethical guidelines for community participants, some suggestions or pronouncements on behavior. But when it comes down to it, I think people (both authors and reviewers) have faced too much criticism and judgment lately, and I don’t want to do anything that might be perceived as adding to the pile on.

But I figured what I could do is to talk about the kind of behavior you could expect from me, going forward, as both a reviewer and an author. Some of this might seem simplistic or self-evident, but I think it can’t hurt to say it, to let you know who I am, and where my values lie. I care about my many author and reviewer friends, and those that I’m sure to encounter there in the future. I wanted to pledge the following to you, because respect, integrity, and accountability are important to me.

As an author:

• I will not make disparaging remarks regarding consumer reviewers (either individually, or as a group) in public venues such as twitter or blogs.
• I will not attempt to game online ratings systems in favor of my own works or works by my associates.
• I will respect a reader’s right to hold and express critical opinions of my work. I understand that statements of diverse opinion are important for consumer purposes, for reasons of building reader community, and for productive discussion within the young adult community as a whole.
• If I choose to interact with readers about reviews, I will comport myself in a professional manner. I will refrain from making disparaging remarks about a reader’s intelligence, education, age, gender, sexuality, political beliefs, or appearance.
• I will not stalk, harass, or bully individual reviewers or those who associate with them.
• I will refrain from offering unsolicited career advice to reviewers.
• I will not lecture or condescend to reviewers who disagree with me or dislike my work.
• I will use reporting methods available to me to report hate speech made against me, as well as libelous or slanderous remarks. When encountering such speech, I understand that it is both safer for me and legally prudent to allow site moderators or my lawyers handle such incidents rather than addressing them myself.
• I will respect the right of other parties to engage in private discourse regarding reviews. I will refrain from making private conversations public against the wishes of the participants.
• I will take ownership of my mistakes. I will recognize hurtful actions I have made and apologize for them, rather than attempting to justify or excuse hurtful behavior.

As a reviewer:

• I will respect an author’s right to make a living off their creative works. Although I may choose to negatively review a work or may choose to refrain from reading a book myself, I will not participate in, organize, or encourage blacklists of authors or titles.
• I will refrain from making assumptions about an author’s financial status. I will not allow perceived wealth or connections impact my discussion of a work.
• I will do my best to evaluate a work on its merits and weaknesses alone.
• I will respect an author’s right to a private life. I will refrain from making disparaging remarks about his or her family, personal life, appearance, or religion.
• I will not attempt to game online ratings systems in favor of my own reviews or reviews by my associates.
• I will respect the right of other readers to disagree with my critical assessments. I understand that statements of diverse opinion are important for consumer purposes, for reasons of building reader community, and for productive discussion within the young adult community as a whole.
• I will not stalk, harass, or bully individual authors or those who associate with them.
• I will not participate in or encourage hate speech, libel, or slander. I will speak up against instances of hate speech, libel, and slander in an attempt to make the critical community a safe space for all participants. When appropriate, I will use reporting methods available to me to report slanderous speech.
• I will respect the right of other parties to engage in private discourse regarding reviews. I will refrain from making private conversations public against the wishes of the participants.
• I will take ownership of my mistakes. I will recognize hurtful actions I have made and apologize for them, rather than attempting to justify or excuse hurtful behavior.

If you feel similarly, that goodreads and the community there is important to you (either as an author or a reviewer), I encourage you to figure out where your values lie, to make your own promises, and to hold yourself accountable  to them.

One last thought. I’m a member of another community, metafilter, which has a policy called “Brand New Day.” Under this policy, any member can join under a new user name in order to shed the drama and baggage of the past. I think the YA community as a whole could use a Brand New Day—one without the weight of old grudges, arguments or drama. It’s a new year, and in my eyes, at least, we all could use a chance to wipe the slate clean.

How to be using the goodreads?!

I’ve been meaning to put this post together for awhile, but then a blog post by Beth Revis where she shares social media tips got my butt in gear. goodreads.com, a social networking site focused on books, can be a pretty intimidating place for an author. The community there is very reader-centric, with its own mores, and a heavy focus on consumer book reviews (scary!). Having been a member there as a reader for over three years, I thought I’d share some tips on the best ways to use the site to connect with readers.

The first step is to look over the page the goodreads staff has provided on their author program. I’d highly recommend that you follow their instructions on building an author profile (complete with linked books, videos, a stream of your blog, and so on). I’d also recommend that you take advantage of their suggestions for networking with readers:

Take control of your profile
Make your profile a dynamic destination for curious readers. Here are some of the features you can use on your profile. Here’s what they recommend:

• Add a picture and bio.
• Share your list of favorite books and recent reads with your fans!
• Write a blog and generate a band of followers.
• Publicize upcoming events, such as book signings and speaking engagements.
• Share book excerpts and other writing.
• Write a quiz about your book or a related topic.
• Post videos.
• Add the Goodreads Author widget to to your personal website or blog to show off reviews of your books.Promote your books

Get the word out!
Here are some of the promotional tools available on Goodreads:

• Sign up to advertise your book to up to the Goodreads Community—4,400,000 readers!
• List a book giveaway to generate pre-launch buzz.
• Lead a Q&A discussion group for readers.
• Participate in discussions on your profile, in groups and in the discussion forums for your books.

The tools provided by the goodreads staff are very effective. In a quick poll of my goodreads friends (some of whom are very highly ranked reviewers on the site), many cited the Author Q&A boards as favorite places to connect with writers. They enjoyed the opportunity to engage in book-centric discussion with the creators of books themselves.

They also recommended that you (yes, you) try to be like Margaret Atwood. Oh, if only we could all exude such awesomeness!

But taking advantage of goodreads built-in opportunities doesn’t need to be the end of your site participation. Now, keep in mind that a lot of authors don’t do goodreads very well. Some authors use it as an opportunity to repeatedly spam readers, sending them recommendations for their books over and over again, or ending every message or comment with something like, “Don’t forget to pick up my book, an April 2012 release with Jerky Writer Press!”

Writers, let me tell you: spamming people is not cool. And it’s also not a very effective way to sell books. I think of this as the “butt-brush factor.” Paco Underhill, a researcher who studied the sociology of mall lay-outs (no joke), wrote that women who are jostled from behind in a store are most likely to bolt from the mall without having bought a thing.

WHAT CONSTITUTES GOOD OR BAD STORE DESIGN?

UNDERHILL: A lot of women are uncomfortable in narrow aisles–what I call the “butt-brush” factor. If you want them to stop and browse where there’s a high rate of conversion to purchase, you need to have wide aisles.

Having an author spam you when you really just want to talk about books is kind of like having your butt touched. Leave “wide aisles” around your readers–give them space so that they don’t feel violated.

Another way to create these “wide aisles” is to be careful about responding appropriately to reviews. This really boils down to one thing: don’t respond to negative reviews given to your books or books by your author-friends. I know that it’s hard–I know that sometimes you really, really want to correct misinformation, or give a reviewer career advice, or maybe even show that you can roll with the punches.

Don’t. Just don’t!

The vast majority of reviewers will construe author presence on negative reviews as threatening. They’ll see it, correctly or not, as an attempt to stifle conversation. I know that it feels really unfair, but it’s an ugly truth of the author-reader relationship: readers interpret authors as having power in these kinds of exchanges (and they do have the legitimacy of a publisher or readership behind them, even if writers see the power differential differently) and so get kind of freaked out by these butt-brushes. It’s a really, really good idea to refrain from commenting completely if you don’t want to totally alienate readers who might be watching the exchange. If you can’t do that, my biggest recommendation would be to set up a goodreads profile, and then avoid the site completely.

As a note, some goodreads members view all author interactions on reviews this way. They cite this Ilona Andrews blog post, and discuss how any reminder of an author’s presence makes them uneasy, even if they liked a book. I think these feelings are stronger in YA, thanks to the recent #YAMafia dust-up, and they’re certainly not the feelings of all reviewers on goodreads (some reviewers, of which I’m one, really love when an author tells them they liked a review. I mean, Megan McCafferty tweeted me. Squee!), but I think that it’s worth being aware of these feelings, and to know that they’re issues of debate within the community.

So if you can’t respond to reviews, and you can’t spam readers, what can you do?

You can use the site as a reader, of course!

This might seem counterintuitive, that utilizing a site like this as a reader could possibly help you sell books. As Beth Revis said in her blog post:

I didn’t to add it because, really, I mostly just use GoodReads to keep track of what books I’ve read and what books I want to read. I set up the author page there, but do very little to maintain it. So I definitely welcome any others who would like to share!

But ironically, using goodreads in this way is a terrific way to connect with potential readers. Because the books you love are sometimes (though not always) a pretty good indication of the way that you write. I’d recommend that, minimally, any author on goodreads list their favorite books with a small paragraph or two explaining why you love them. Maggie Stiefvater is one of many authors who does just that. Jessica Day George is another, and her brief (mostly positive, but occasionally negative) reviews are a great way of learning about the things she values in writing. Sherwood Smith is one of my favorite author/goodreaders in this regard. Her profile makes it clear that she’s a reader (like us!) and is really there because she loves books:

I’m here on Goodreads to talk about books, as I’ve been a passionate reader as long as I’ve been a writer–since early childhood.

I’m not going to rate my own books–of course I love them, or I wouldn’t have written them. If anyone is interested in what I was trying to do with this or that book, I’ll put that under my own ‘review’ of my stuff–otherwise, I’m mostly here to talk about my own reading.

I will never bombard this list or any other hounding people to read my books.

The benefit of adding reviews is that it makes your profile useful to readers on another level. goodreads members are there to talk about books–honest, and fairly intelligent discussion is the cornerstone of the community. I would always rather add an author as a friend if I know that I’ll also get smart, like-minded (or not! Discussion and disagreement are exciting when we’re talking about books) book recommendations from them, rather than just spam. And I love Sherwood’s idea of adding her thoughts as a review of her own books. Here’s an example of what she does, on her review of Wren to the Rescue:

I wish they would show the original covers, which are so very much nicer.

This series was conceived when I was in high school. What happened was, a friend from Dutch Indonesia asked me somewhat wistfully to write a story with a heroine who wasn’t tall, with pure white skin and golden hair and blue (or emerald) eyes. So I proposed writing a story about a brown girl with brown eyes and dark curly hair . . . but another friend scolded me, saying that a WASP like me should not presume to write about a minority heroine, as I did not know the least about how minority people felt while living in WASP-majority America.

So I compromised, letting Wren’s stripey hair be a secret signal for the fact that she wasn’t all white–in later books I slipped in her brown skin, and made her short and round, rather than tall and elfin.

I kept all that when I rewrote it for publication in 1990

This adds utility and interesting content to her profile, whereas the practice of just rating your own book five-stars and saying something like, “Duh! I WROTE it!” adds nothing.

One last caveat, on positive-only reviews. Readers understand why some authors choose to never negatively review a colleague’s book. For the most part, we respect that, even if we feel differently. But do keep in mind that in a community that values thoughtfulness and discussion, really gushy, unbelievably positive reviews on every single book you’ve read are viewed as a little eye-roll worthy. They’re not really useful, and kind of just noise. Again, we understand why a practice like that exists, and you’re not required to negatively review anyone (though it might increase the utility of friending you for readers if you do). It’s just kind of silly, and not in keeping with the general tenor of the site.

What is in keeping with it is respectful, lively discussion and a love of books. And you love books, right? So hop in.

First review of the new year! Keep an eye out for an upcoming group post on The Interrobangs site for more discussion on Matched!
Matched by Ally Condie

Matched is yet another YA-hype magnet. Because of the seven-figure deal the novel netted author Allie Condie, it was almost impossible to go in without preconceptions (and I’m not generally one to avoid spoilers, anyway). I’d heard Condie read prettily-written snippets on NPR; I’d also perused reviews on GoodReads decrying it as a derivative spin on YA-dystopic classics like The Giver.

But the truth is a bit more complex than that. Its taken me a few weeks to mull over my reaction to Matched, the story of Cassia Reyes (don’t let the name fool you; she’s written white as toast), whose faith in her structured, near-future society is shaken when she discovers that her arranged marriage to her neighbor, Xander, was not as perfectly plotted as she thought. On the day following her MatchBanquet, a sort of dystopian prom where her future nuptials to Xander are announced publicly, Cassia finds that she may have been meant for someone else, another neighbor, the supposedly broodalicious loner Ky.

I was really impressed by the opening of the novel, despite my reservations. It’s in the first seventy pages or so that Condie’s prose really shines. Though stylistically sparse, her writing is surprisingly rich with sensory details. The Match Banquet was particularly well realized–you can practically feel the rough texture of the green dress she wears, and though the emotional relevance and richness flags a bit when we’re returned to her bland suburbs, Condie eventually works us up to a grandparent death scene that had me openly weeping. We’re talking poignant, emotionally accurate stuff. I was surprised, and had trouble understanding the level of haterade I’d encountered.

Then I read the rest of the novel, and began to understand.

It’s not that Matched is particularly bad–it is, in fact, not particularly anything. Though the dystopian world building here is far sounder and more seamless than the glaringly problematic world of the similar, upcoming Delirium by Lauren Oliver, they suffer from what is essentially the same problem: a chronic lack of passion.

Cassia is sweet, but bland. Her two potential matches, Xander, and Ky, are sweet, but bland, and quiet, but bland, respectively. Her parents are good people that I could hardly be roused to care about. The most compelling characters–Cassia’s grandfather, who bites it in the first hundred pages, and her younger brother, who hardly figures into the plot–aren’t quite well-drawn enough to feel real. The Society that rules Cassia’s world is never threatening enough to seem truly dangerous, and the supporting characters are essentially interchangeable. A few scant weeks after reading, I’d be hard-pressed to tell you why or how any of them belonged here.

There are hints of complexity, but these are introduced almost as an afterthought. Cassia has one friend who suffers from panic attacks, and whom her betrothed, Xander, treats with surprising sympathy. This sympathy is promising (my first thought is that there might have been a love relationship between the two), but is ultimately meaningless. There are suggestions that Xander and Ky may have shared a long history of friendly rivalry and perhaps just plain friendship–but this is insufficiently developed, too.

Rather than fleshing out these points of fascinating character conflict, Condie gives us, instead, a repetitive and plodding story. Cassia and Ky climb a mountain over and over again and exchange bland poetry and something akin to boring indie comics. They share chaste kisses and hold hands. Their affair has none of the heat of genuine teen love, or even the unfulfilled promise and pain that we got in, say, Twilight. This isn’t just passion put off for later. It’s a relationship that might as well be between asexuals.

Condie’s writing holds more potential than many YA writers who write books I didn’t care about: I know she’s capable of being affecting, and, though, yeah, her world is derivative, at least it’s not gratingly irritating. I can see picking up the second book, but if it remains as bland and inoffensive and just plain boring as this, I can’t imagine reading the series through to the end.

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Like Mandarin by Kirsten Hubbard

Recommended.

Usually, I save my FTC/keepin’-me-honest disclosure for the end of my review, but here, it seems prudent to state it up front. I won this review copy of Kirsten Hubbard’s March 2011 debut Like Mandarin through a contest on her group blog, YA Highway. What’s more, I “know” Kirsten (not in the biblical sense of the term, of course, getchermindouttathegutta!) as well as any two people who have exchanged emails but never met can know one another. In fact, we met on goodreads, and bonded over a book (which shall remain nameless) that we both hated. She dug my honesty; I liked how welcoming she seemed in a genre that can often feel closed off to those still aspiring toward becoming professional writers.

When I read about Kirsten’s book, the story of a plain girl growing up in Wyoming who befriends a flashy, slutty older girl named Mandarin, I suspected I would love it. The plot summary—stating that “Mandarin’s unique beauty hides a girl who’s troubled—even dangerous”—promised the kind of thorny female friendship I love in both young adult and adult literature, paired with a poetic lyricism that’s often absent in modern YA. I was excited, but a little nervous, when I won the review copy. Though Kirsten assured me that she really wanted an honest review (she was, after all, more than familiar with my review style!), I wanted to like Like Mandarin very much.

Surprise, surprise; I had nothing to worry about.

Like Mandarin is, in fact, lyrically beautiful. The prose has a rhythm to it that’s poetic, but never hackneyed or trite. She fills fourteen-year-old Grace Carpenter’s world with the kind of specificity and accuracy that you find in really good poetry. For example, Grace isn’t just bookish. She into geology and rocks, a detail I found both surprising and fitting. And the way she describes this love early in the novel particularly affected me: “As soon as I heard [my sister] thump down the stairs, I knelt beside my stack of shoe boxes. I removed the first two—the ones that contained shoes—and swapped the quartz stone for a baby geode, the size of a half walnut. If dinner got too infuriating, I could poke my thumb inside the stone, feel the angles and rock candy ridges, and think about geology instead of my mother” (34).

It’s this kind of detail that also elevates the setting of Washokey, Wyoming among many places you’d find in YA. This is a story that couldn’t take place anywhere else. The antics shared between Grace and seventeen-year-old Mandarin are completely apropos to Washokey and only Washokey. You’re deeply immersed in this place, even as you learn about the girls’ shared yearning to escape from it.

But, as Grace and Mandarin skinny-dip, go dancing in a cottonseed storm, and steal the taxidermied trophy heads off the walls of the local supermarket, their friendship becomes increasingly complicated, built on a skeleton of competition, half-truths, and insecurities. They don’t quite hate each other, like, say, the group of friends in Margaret Atwood’s stunning Cat’s Eye, but there are thorny realities that underlie their tenuous relationship—the obfuscation of certain facts and Grace’s incipient sexual awakening.

And, realistically, there is a light sexual undercurrent to the way that Grace looks at Mandarin. It’s not a story of a coming out, but a realization of one’s own female sexual power, and the strangeness of seeing the things you want to do—to elicit lust from boys and jealousy from girls—reflected in another person. This tension was mighty compelling and perfectly balanced. Hubbard’s prose wasn’t didactic, but more a simple reflection of the complex truths that underlie the emotions of many pubescent girls.

But what really made Like Mandarin a satisfying read was the characterization. With a character as multifaceted as Mandarin herself, many less-capable writers would let their protagonist and secondary characters fall into the background. But the supporting cast—Grace’s mother, her little sister Taffeta, even the catty girls and semi-anonymous boys (oh, poor Davey Miller! Someday, you’ll find your Grace!)—are all written in a way that acknowledges their own complexities, too. The characters live and breathe and are clearly walking around with their own thoughts and lives in the far-corners of Washokey even as Grace seeks to escape them.

But my favorite character was by far Grace herself. Her strong, beautiful voice carries us through the narrative. She’s a stunningly real girl: a jerk to her little sister, unsure about what she truly wants in life, ignorant about positive male attention (Davey! Oh man, did I love this character, for all of his four scenes). In a genre chock-full of anonymous girls that are meant to be little more than empty screens against which teens can project themselves, Grace manages to be both specific and very empathetic. She’s the kind of character you wonder about days after you finish the book. I found myself wondering, where did Grace end up going to college? Did she stay friends with Mandarin? How will she look back on her childhood going to pageants and collecting rocks in Washokey?

Like Mandarin did have a few small flaws, which I find difficult to discuss without spoiling. There was a scene near the climax where Grace’s voice became a bit too self-reflective and expository for my liking, and the very end of the book was quite evasive about one specific matter for the sake of tension, and it sacrificed a bit of realism in being written this way. Still, those are exceedingly minor problems, nitpicks, really.

As a whole, Like Mandarin is intense and engaging and thoroughly beautiful. Hubbard’s sense of character and place reminds me quite a bit of authors like Judy Blume and Norma Fox Mazer, the last great generation of women writing contemporary fiction for teenagers. These authors created worlds so well-realized they were all but indistinguishable from real life, but their books are often seen as dated or irrelevant for teenagers today. I haven’t really encountered an author before who has managed to take up this style or these strengths in quite the same way, but I’m happy to say that Kirsten Hubbard has. I’m glad to know her, and ecstatic to have had the chance to read Like Mandarin.

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