M. asks,
“What makes a good review site, in your opinion?”
Ehhh. A loaded question, probably best asked of a reader than an author. I can give you a writer’s perspective. Setting aside the content of reviews themselves, I strongly prefer clarity in layout and professionalism in general policy. Now, I am a website snob, so take this with a grain of salt.
Most of it is really common sense things. For the sake of these discussion, review blog sites are defined as blog sites that have a specific relationship with the publisher: they are in contact with the publicists, they receive boxes of ARCs, and they run their blogs as a business. This doesn’t apply to review blogs that are ran by private individuals who purchase their own books and do not maintain a professional relationship with publishing houses.
Layout
Things that make me go, “Oy!”
Images and Color:
A really jumbled MySpace-type layout or poor use of images is a pet peeve. For example, there is a website out there, the name of which I can’t recall, that has a graphic on the left hand side in the bottom corner. The graphic isn’t behind the text, it’s in front of it, and it “eats” the text as you scroll. Drives me nuts.
High contrast light letters on dark background makes my eyes hurt. I think that if you’re shooting for light on dark, both have to be a tad muted, as in lighter grey on darker grey. White on black is just too hard for longer than a couple of paragraphs. This is more along the lines of personal preference.
“I reviews your work!” “Where iz it?”
I try not to look at the reviews beyond the first week or so. In the first week I do, so I can send the reviews back to the publisher for quotes on the next book. I can’t tell you how many times I’ll get an email that says, “We reviewed your work at our website, Superspiffyreviews.com” and I go to the link provided. No review on the homepage.
No review on the blog. Click click click, where is the review?
Is there a search form? No, no search form. (Please do have a search form, guys. Saves so much headache.)
Click on New Releases. No review.
Click on authors. Click my name. Click recent posts. Here is a link from an interview a year ago.
Click on books. Scroll. Scroll. Scroll. Here it is.
If I have that much trouble finding the damn thing, and I’m specifically looking for it, how is the reader going to find it?
Things I wish were handled better
Review of the book, but no link to or mention of the previous ones.
Review of the book, but no tag with the Author’s Name or link to the Author’s website.
Review of the book, but no cover.
Things That Don’t Bother Me
Some people get worked up if there is no link to order the book. I don’t think it’s needed, unless the book is available in a very narrow market, like specifically at one electronic retailer and nowhere else. If you’re reading book reviews, you probably know where to buy them. 
Some people get worked up about advertisements. It costs money to run a blog. If the blog can support an advertisement, awesome. It’s a win-win-win: Author gets promo, Reader gets notification that the release is out, and Blogger get’s a little help with finances.
Things I Love I Wish More People Had
That widget that automatically pulls other people reviews at the end of the review? Love it. Love it to death. Lookit here: http://angieville.blogspot.com/2010/07/matched-by-ally-condie.html
That is totally awesome.
General Policy Issues
Things that make me go, “Oy!”
This is only applicable to the Author-Blogger interaction. From my point of view, I try to be professional and I expect this professionalism in return.
Terms up-front:
If you ask me to do an interview/giveaway and so on, please outline your terms upfront. Just the other day we got an email asking to please come do a guest post promoting our “next release”. We said, “Sure.” Reply back, “Wonderful. We also need you to do a giveaway with your post.”
No. That’s not how this works. It costs us money to do a giveaway, and it’s common courtesy to tell someone up front before you request them to financially contribute. Not only that but you’re scheduling us in August, while our next book is out in October. How are we going to do a giveaway? We won’t even have author copies at that point.
Now we have to decide if we back out on something we already shook on. And we probably will, because my fuse is short these days.
Stick to the agreement:
Once we agreed to your terms, I expect both sides to stick with them. I’ve had instances where specific terms of contest/appearance were outlined and ignored by the website, which made me look like a jackass. I don’t need any help with that, I manage fine on my own.
Timely review when requesting an ARC:
ARCs, advanced reader copies, are expensive to print and we get a limited amount of them. We only got 5 for this release, frex. The ARCs are designed to generate pre-release publicity. Pre being the key word. If the reviewer specifically requests an ARC from me, I hope to see a review close to the release. That’s the unspoken agreement: you get a free book ahead of time, and the publisher and we get a shout-out. If you don’t feel you can slot the book in near the release date, let me know, and I’ll get you an author copy later in the game. I once mailed an ARC overseas and the review came eight months later.
No means no.
If you queried the author’s publicist or agent and got a no, it’s a no. Emailing the author afterward and trying to go around the publishing house or the author’s representative makes the publicists and agents foam at the mouth. 
Things I love
I really love it when there is a discussion in the comments. I will sit and read the comments – I don’t always comment, because sometimes an author wading in kills it a little – but I love reading them.
I really appreciate that sometimes when I’m on a crunch of the deadline and I write something half baked, the post goes up and it looks awesome, because the blog owner went and found the cover I forgot to include. I try to always say thank you, but in case I didn’t, “Thank you! Thank you or talking about the books and taking an extra step and having us over. We loved visiting and we appreciate it.”
thank you for taking the time to explain this and give us your view on it. we all only ever see the reader’s pov
i plan on giving away tshirts and moon pies at mysterious galaxy :::grins::: maybe cups w/ tea in it.
a gift basket of new orleans food. :::grins::: gift certificate to buy gator sausage.
what? don’t judge me.
Oh no you don’t. I shall be giving T-shirts away.
but now I’m intrigued by gator sausage *whines*
gator sausage is goooooooooooood.
but i SHALL be giving out moonpies!
MOON PIES.
Thank you for your perspective on this. I admit I have a more “intuitive’ feel for which review sites I return to. After reading your critical (in the best sense of the word) summation of what makes a good review site, I realized that all my favorite sites do follow those rules. Hum…interesting.
here’s something that’s a killer. Red font. Black background. I see that color combo and i just wanna run away screaming. And actually, I do…well, I don’t run, but I don’t stay on that website. those colors trigger bad headaches on me.
Something else to consider-if it’s a personal blog, it’s not an issue, but if you’re trying to establish a professional reviewer look, I’d stay away from anything that sparkles or flashes. O.o That’s personal opinion, and I’m a bit of website snob myself, but sites with a bunch of sparklies and flashy stuff makes me think of high school so when i get review/interview/guest blog requests from people with that stuff on their site, I generally pass.
http://members.boardhost.com/Merism/msg/1263150905.top The women on this board and escapies from Suzanne Brockmann’s board collapse… we’ve been together… let’s just say a long time and leave it at that… This spring… just b/c they thought they’d ask they had authors come. They are thinking of doing it again in the fall.
And they did come. Problem is most are romance readers and are willing to dip their toes lightly into paranormal/UF but tend to stick to those they know… I’ve been peddalling “On the Edge” since it came out and having minimal luck….
But… should you choose at release time to come and visit… no strings.. no promises of people posting to your post either….
It was a lot of fun.
For me as a review reader I get tired of reading reviews that the reviewer gives everything 4 or 5 stars. They have huge issues with a book… 4/5 stars.. Excuse me?? One thing about sites like Dear Author… they call ‘em like they see ‘em and the grade reflects that.
As a review writer, I have a goodreads pg… I scribble stuff for me. Sorry, I don’t have time to write a review if I’ve taken the book from the library… an ARC.. I’ll put some effort into it… but for myself, a reminded of things I enjoyed or hated so the next time I pick up one of your books I remember what I thought of the previous one…. Take it or leave it… my “reviews” are for me.. so deal.
*gasp* You linked to me. And nearby were the words “totally awesome.” *dies*
It really is great to hear this feedback from an author. We bloggers often only hear from other bloggers and another, different perspective is so helpful. I agree on all your points.
Dude! Are you holding out…what is this review widget you have? *grin*
*grin* I should have clarified in my first post. That’s just me and Google makin’ magic, baby. I like to pick and choose the reviews I want to link to (just like everyone else does, I’m sure), since some aren’t really reviews at all or are so badly written they’re not useful.
Alright then…I was getting jealous here for a moment. *grin* You are at least using the blogsearch, right? That has made finding reviews so much easier. Although, honestly, I don’t read all the reviews I link to. I make sure they *are* reviews and the blog title is more than “check me out”, but that’s as far as I go. I generally take the first 5 I find.
Great post. Thanks for the info.
Sound! Get rid of any sound graphics. That is always an irritation for me. If I want sound, I already have music on and whatever comes from a website just makes noise at that point.
Question, how do you know Angieville is using a widget for the review linkage? If she is, she’s holding out on the rest of us. I’ve been using the google blogsearch for all my links.
See above. I am not holding out on anyone. Sadly. Such a widget would be awesome. If you could put in in certain parameters, etc.
Oh Boy do I agree! No sound! If you absolutely must must have it, give me a way to turn it off.
I have a friend with only dialup connections available to her. People with dial up only still exist and if your site has too much to deal with, you will never get them to visit you again. I’ve found that it’s really important to construct a site that does all you want, looks great, and yet continues to stay easily available to all.
I didn’t – it’s just the spot where my theme has a widget space, so I assume it did. Hmmm. We needs to write this widget.
Mentioning music… author trailers as you open their site… huge turn off… Especially those of us without really fast high speed. When we had dial-up… I simply never returned to that author’s site.
Also, I tend to go in looking for past books in series’ or a particular blurb that an author may have written, so waiting for the trailer to load is wasting my time.
I re-read my post above… sigh… Rule #1 do not type in a rush because you have to leave to pick your kids up… Rule #2 remember rule #1.
Just curious, what are some of everyone’s favorite review sites – I am sadly uninformed!
Thank you for giving us a peek into the “author’s perspective”. I always appreciate how much you share with your readers.
Thanks for your insights – this was interesting to read. I’ve had an issue with text and graphic overlap that occurs for a very small percentage of people who visit so reading this inspired me to take a look at it (or rather get my husband to take a look at it). And it turned out Blogger fixed their issue that was preventing a workaround so that was good to know!
Thanks for posting your thoughts about bloggers. It’s always interesting to know things like these.
I would love a widget that would link to other reviews– this would be very cool.
All of these tips are cool. When I first started a website I made a friend who’s a graphic designer. She taught me a lesson I never forgot– Keep it clean! I suck at technical stuff big time, but I never put clutter on my blogs or website.
I agree the black backgrounds kills my eyes- I thought it was just me because I have vertigo quite a bit. Sound is bad, flashing things too. Clutter is very bad.
I have asked authors several times about WHEN to post a review after getting an ARC and no one answered me. It’s So confusing because I really want to help them with promo. Do I wait til the release week, or the week before it to encourage preorders? Maybe there is a hard and fast rule that no one told me about and the authors I’ve asked think “OMG I can’t believe she doesn’t know.”. *snicker*
The closest to the release date, the better. Ideally, in the week prior to the release, but anything in the month long chunk two weeks before and two weeks after the release date works.
Cool, that’s kind of what I thought but it’s good to know. I’m always worried I”ll be too soon or too late. Thanks:)
[...] I’ll be Patricia Briggs’ Mercedes Thompson. No, I was Mercy yesterday. Today, I’ll be Ilona Andrews’ Kate Daniels. Yes! I am Kate. And in my hand, I am holding Slayer, my trusty magical saber. [...]
Definitely a huge thank-you for the perspective! Sometimes it’s hard to know what works and what doesn’t, and doing a random sampling of blogs really isn’t much help as there’s just so many out there! Now I’m a little paranoid… O.o
Bummer that Angie’s “widget” isn’t. Wondering if Mr. Linky would let others add their reviews if they wanted to? Hmm.
I’ve never linked a review of a book to others in the series (can you imagine the link for Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series?), or linked to the author’s website. <– This one I'm not sure why I don't. Actually, I should link the author's name to the location on my books-reviewed page, and link the author on that page to the author's website. Am I talking in circles? I blame it on Friday!
Keep writing! I love your books–all of 'em!
I hope it’s okay to post a link to a review of two of your books? (if not, just delete the comment).
Magic Bites
http://sffbookworm.wordpress.com/2010/07/25/magic-bites-ilona-andrews/
Magic Burns
http://sffbookworm.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/magic-burns-ilona-andrews/
I’m going back and doing a review of Strikes and Bleeds but haven’t gotten to the writing part yet. I wonder though, for me, I almost like On the Edge better then your Kate Daniels series… oh I feel so faithless! Thankfully, I don’t have to choose but can have them all!
Thanks to you both for writing books that are well worth the price!