Jane has an interesting post up regarding ‘Street Teams‘, which is a topic expanded on from a blog post Karin Tabke posted at Writer Unboxed. Really this was posted a week or so ago and I am sure has more comments and such. But I am lazy so I either post this now or say fuck it.
I know, I know… you are shocked I would shut up and NOT post something but teh lazy often over rides the mouth (keyboard?) whatever…
As a reader, a blogger and blog owner I happen to think the idea of ‘street teams’… blows chunks. And it is odd that is has come up because it was something I almost addressed (two) Saturdays ago… in a serious ass round about way.
There are so many things going on in that post and the comments – all nifty stuff but I will try and keep it short. (shush all of you it could happen) The post I started had nothing to do with Street Teams but self interest – as in my own. We are not paid. We do not currently take ads. We do not review every book sent to us. I do not have every author who requests – do a guest guest and/or contest. We do want we wanna do, say what we wanna say, play how we wanna play. And hope that others have a good time too…
I hope you discover authors you have never heard of and give them a try. I hope you find new authors to love. I hope you tell us what you thought and above everything, I want from you, what I demand from any person who reviews here – I want you to be honest. I would like every reader blog to be honest and reflect what that readers honestly thinks, not what they feel they should think, believe is expected of them or was agreed to in a back room.
The idea of author lead street teams sucks because it reeks of dishonesty and is the soil that grows the rabid. Am I saying every ‘member of an author grown’ team would be dishonest – nope – but sadly I am a cynical bitch and it would make me think twice. If not completely discount the author because so many books so lil time…
Kristie J lead a charge for Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas. She wanted to put that book in every reader’s hand and say “try it”. It was charming and she respected people who tried it and didn’t like it. She had no agenda, no purpose, no goal other than to share the love she had of a book with others.
I understand authors have a very hard time today. I get publishing is often more about numbers and green than it is about talent. There is such a push and pull and authors are put in a bad spot. They have a right to educate their readers – hell all readers. I totally agree with azteclady (comment #32 @ DA) “Self interest, readers’ choice = all good, IMO.” Provide the reader the info and allow them to decide what to do with it.
Angela pointed out “I don’t know…you guys at Dear Author–if not the SBs and the folks at TGTU–can be pretty close to a street team when you’re giving away copies of books you’ve loved and/or allowing them to guest blog (sometimes authors you guys know). It’s a pretty fine line to walk, and it seems that the reason why Karin’s attempt to create a street team is being pointed out is because she’s an author and DA, SBTB, TGTU,etc are helmed by readers.”
Being the vain duck I am, we will go with TGTU being us and she is right to a point. I can answer for no one other than TGTBTU but it is simple and leads back to azteclady comment. We are all about self interest baby and more often than not it is my interest. Score!
No one makes us do the things we do, no one tells us what we have to review and honestly I don’t know if you could pay us enough for the time, energy and effort we put into TGTBTU. Much like you could not recreate Kristie’s DoY crusade, you couldn’t put out a casting call, give rules and recreate us, Dear Author, Book Binge, Smart Bitches or any other reader blog . That is what I don’t want street teams to fuck with. I don’t care about reader/author breakups or entitlement issues (that is a whole other blog post and the rabid are just short bus special).
But have you noticed the ‘reader’ blogs popping up that read like sound bites. They are happy, happy, joy, joy two paragraphs of “please fucking quote me” goodness. There isn’t a bad read book in the bunch – evah. I don’t think it is bad so to speak, as long as the Harriet clones are nice and upfront about being in it for the free books. Or whatever rush that comes from having people lurve you for lurving them. The ones that seem to pass themselves off as everyday readers who love to review what they read is dishonest and triggers my cynical bitch.
Will these street teams cause us to look at every new blog that pops up and wonder are you a “Team Author” or “Team Reader”? Discounting a few, the romance community is very welcoming, we don’t care where you were the night before or who you were with – you don’t have to like what we like or do as we do – but be honest with us because we sure as hell plan to be honest with you.
Personally there are a handful of authors I would count as ‘friends’ and I am very sure each and every one of them knows if they ask me something there is no reason to say be honest. There are friends of the pond, as in many a duckie here loves many of their books, most likely they have also gotten ‘lower’ reviews here as well. The Harlequin Spotlights that have been going on was completely my want to do. Harlequin didn’t ask me, aren’t paying me and by now are prolly hoping I go away soon *eg*. This month has been a lot of work, mainly because we set the standard of the blog and ‘try’ to keep to what few rules we have.
In June we will have had around 30 authors guest who write for Harlequin Historical and we will have talked about, reviewed and/or had excerpts of well over 30 Harlequin Historical books. I hope the next time you are in the store you pick a few up and it would be awesome if you bought some, read some, honestly reviewed some because my self interest is in getting MORE Harlequin Historicals. See how that works…. if you had tried to recruit me for this with any other line I would have laughed at you. I don’t know if I would have gone along with it for HH and it is just a good thing the others here have taken to nodding and smiling whenever I go off on a wild idea.
I love reader blogs and our community is grand. Can we stay as awesome as we are and join ‘author teams’? Can we as a community join these teams and still have our blogs belong to ‘us’ and not just reflect some author or publisher’s self interest? Or is it just me being my normal cynical self and it won’t mean a thing.
**I so think I have used this title before or Jane has or something… but hell if I can be arsed to look I do know this vid was up on the blog (as was/is the snakes on the plane one *g*)
Most of the time I think of Sybil-ish as infectious–as in I read more than two paragraphs of it and I get infected and start writing pseudo Sybil-ish.
But sometimes you come up with a grand turn of phrase and I keep reading despite the risk of infection.
As in “soil that grows the rabid.” Man, I need to write me a contemp so I can steal that phrase.
Count me among the cynics.
And I’m with Sherry, that’s a great turn of phrase–very graphic!
I have no idea where I fit there.
I’m a writer, and whether published or not, I’d write. In fact I did, for years and years.
If someone likes one of my book one of the best things they can do for me is to tell their friends they enjoyed it, but I don’t control that and I never would. Because it’s fun to find new authors and it’s fun to chat about it. Such a shame if it starts to be controlled.
Authors are usually fanatical readers. I have a big stack of Harlequin Modern/Presents and every time I see Kate Walker or Penny Jordan I get them to sign my books because to me, they are teh crack.
The rabid – scares me to death. There are authors I deliberately refrain from commenting about because they have teh rabid in droves who will hate u 4 evah.
Ahhh – I haven’t gotten a dose of Sybilish in a long while. Work is eating my lunch – LITERALLY.
This is an interesting question, Sybs. I think Street Teams for authors is a good idea, as long as they identify themselves as acting in that fashion.
If they don’t, it’s a bit like being told that “smoking is good for you”. If I didn’t know it was Big Tobacco funding the ad, you could be misled (if you’re a sheep and don’t read any other opinions, that is).
It’s an interesting conundrum.
You know it scares me when I’m on the same page with you because you usually move at like Mach 10 and I’m on a bicycle pedaling to understand and catch up.
Coincidentally, I have a draft post on this subject. I have somewhat similar feelings to yours. For disclosure purposes, I read the post at DA, but declined to wade through all the comments.
My observations stem from some emails that I’ve received recently requesting reading books, offers of ARCs etc. All from publishers. Call me paranoid, but I’m small potatoes compared to sites like yours and have a lot less traffic. Why would I be so popular all of a sudden? Consequently, this whole STREET TEAM thing has taken on sinister overtones for me.
Sherry it is my gift to you 😉 but you aren’t allowed to do contemps so…
Rosie take the money and run… well books not money. People like you who will be honest over grateful are the types that should be getting them.
Instead it has turned into a free-for-all with random HAPPY!blogs popping up everywhere. And I don’t get it. Is that fun to read a book and give a 2 second sound bite? Are they even reading the book? Is it just an ARC high – they feel special so will keep on feeding whoever it is they think they need to in order to keep em coming.
And you need to look at the fact blogs are ‘new’ to many PR peeps. The door is opening and they are making lists, of lists, of lists and much like fishing… they are casting out to see what is going to bring the most return. I think the HAPPY!blogs are trying to answer the question with crap like “go XXXX and tell ’em XXXX sent you”, telling you over and over how happy they are you like them, you really really like them, misrepresenting their content, and commenting on any blog they can find and agreeing with two word comments.
If reader blogs are suddenly pimping themselves out like authors have always been slapped on the wrist for – does that mean they really aren’t ‘reader blogs’? Who is the person behind the curtain? Or like gwen said… should we care cuz anyone with a brain will see it for what it is at some point.
The truth will come out… or something like that.
In the meantime, though, there’s clutter 🙁
The whole ‘street teams’ thing seems a bit sinister, mobilizing the fangirls–it brings strange images to mind, of women in camo with face paint, like, doing somersaults over bookstore tables, then hiding underneath, while the geeky goateed employee tries to figure out who messed up his display. Fun!! And don’t forget the “Mission Impossible” theme!
A blog like TGTBTU is a shitload of work. The ARCs are great, but they’re responsibility. You must read and review it. There have been a number of times I’d have liked to just chuck a book and move on to something else, but I can’t. Must…keep…reading, while gazing longingly at the TBR. I owe it to Sybil, the Publisher, and the author. When I had my own little place, I could do what I want. But now we’ve all got to do our part to maintain good relations, so we keep getting books 🙂
But my point is, it’s truly a labor of love. When you read reviews on a reader blog you know they actually read it, even if they didn’t like it. Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy blogs…feh.
I see both sides of this, actually. My sister was on some author’s street team some years back. IIRC it was an author she really loved, so she would have read and loved the book anyway, and probably would have pimped it all over the place.
I admit not everybody is as honest as my sister and I’m sure there are people that totally use the opportunity of reader blogs as an excuse to get free ARCs. I think the difference between those sites and blogs like ours, though, is that here we’re honest. I mean, I recently requested an advance reader copy of a favorite author’s book which comes out in early July. I expect I’m going to like it a lot because, dude, favorite author. But if it sucks, then I’m obligated to mention that it does in my review because that’s the understanding we have as reviewers. Those blogs Sybil mentioned don’t adhere to that standard, so there’s no way of knowing what they really think, and I agree, that’s not good for the community in general. But then, I also think discerning readers who want recs that mean something will come over here or to DA or Rosie’s or wherever because they’ll realize if we liked something and articulate why, it means way more than some blog that just says “OMG this is the best book evah! Next up, the next best book evah!”
And now I go find something else to do besides ramble on pointlessly.
Wading in late here. I think I still have Vacation Brain.
The Street Team concept has been around for a while, and I’ve never really liked the idea. It’s one thing for a reader to genuinely lurve a book/author, to rec it to friends, to talk about it to everybody and their grandmother. Another thing entirely for an author to “put them up to it.” It just smacks of having an agenda, and agendas just don’t do it for me.
I think you bring up an excellent example in Kristie’s Dreaming Of You Crusade. I read that book. 1) Because Kristie nagged me and 2) Because many romance readers seem to love it. I ended up rating it around a C; because even though I thought Derek Craven was sex on a stick, I had other issues with the story. Kristie knows this, and she is still talking to me.
Now if Lisa Kleypas had been lurking behind the scenes like some demented puppet master? (which OMG – I could not see happening! LOL), the whole affair would have come off as disingenuous to me. The entire fun of it was how infectious Kristie’s love of that book is. How she genuinely adores it, and the author’s other work(s). In a nutshell – I believed in her, and didn’t feel manipulated.
Sigh – but I do understand the pressure authors feel when it comes to promoting their work. This is just one idea that personally does not work for me…..