[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Huh. I've never returned a book because it didn't meet my extremely high standards. Do you walk out of a theater demanding a refund if the movie you saw sucked? Did you return your copy of CCR's Mardi Gras after realizing there were only two good songs on it? In the days of paper books, did you take your half read copy of Atlas Shrugged back to the book store for a refund when you figured out it was dreck?

Seriously? So, you, what, enabled the author to keep the money, without a bad review or a return? Giving them no indication that their A-Game, isn't? You're not really doing them much favor, are you?

I abide by the old adage: You pays your money, you takes your chances.

Noooo. Why should I? Amazon has enabled any Tom, Dick or Harriet to publish, which is all well and good, but does that mean I have to endorse and enable them with MY hard-earned? No, brother. No. I'm helping them if they understand that they've done something wrong in that book. I still maintain that they'd rather have me return the dough, then write a review. The dough is a pain in passing--a bad review lasts forever. (Given how few authors today use crit or writing groups....which they should, and don't, they're lucky if they don't engender more bad reviews.)

If you purchase a book after reading the synopsis, reading the reviews, reading the sample, you should live with it. If the book is a disaster, don't buy further books from that author. Feel free to add bad reviews. Maybe if others had done that, you wouldn't have bought the book in the first place. Help out your fellow man!

Sorry, but the free sample doesn't always show you the heinous flaws. As I said--I had one that started out pretty great and then, OMG, it hit the saggy middle and it simply fell through the floor. Tedious doesn't begin to describe it. And I've seen some that simply cobbled together an ending, that made NO sense. I just had a book from an author that I typically like--and if that ending wasn't the writer's equivalent of DWI, I'm damned. The book was fine; it had this plot element that made me scrunch up my forehead and then they had this idiotic explanation for it. DUH. I didn't return it, but...I was tempted. It was soooooooooooo stupid. For a writer with her experience--over 15 years'--it wasn't just a mistake, it was laziness.

Hitch