Books for Bunnies

Books for Bunnies Blog Blast – August 8, 2012 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Books for Bunnies

Books for Bunnies is an event set up by the blogger over at The Bunny’s Review and coordinated with the help of blogger Alchemy of Scrawl.

These two ladies have worked tirelessly in getting authors to donate eBooks for the event. Currently there are over 100 eBooks that have been donated, along with over 30 print books. Some of the print books are even signed by the authors themselves.

The event is to help raise money for the House Rabbit Society. The House Rabbit Society (or HRS) is a 501 non-profit organization to help raise awareness and to rescue rabbits from animal shelters. Below is a little about the background of the HRS.

House Rabbit Society Background
House Rabbit Society is a national, nonprofit animal welfare organization based in Richmond, California. Our mission has two parts:

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• Through our fostering program, volunteers rescue abandoned rabbits and find permanent adoptive homes for them.
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• Through education, we seek to reduce the number of unwanted rabbits — and to improve bunnies' lives — by helping people better understand these often misunderstood companion animals.

In line with our mission, we are against the exploitation of rabbits.

Since HRS was founded in 1988, over 25,000 rabbits have been rescued through our foster homes across the United States. Many of these bunnies had run out of time at animal shelters and were scheduled for euthanasia; others had been deemed "unadoptable" because of age, health, or disposition. Because there is no time limit on our rescued rabbits, HRS foster parents are able to spend time getting to know each individual bunny and can then match him or her with an appropriate home. We neuter/spay all incoming rabbits, obtain any necessary veterinary care, and attend to their social needs.

In caring for so many diverse bunnies, our all-volunteer organization has learned a tremendous amount about their social, behavioral, and medical requirements. By sharing the collected information these rabbits have taught us, we are able to help other people improve their relationships with their rabbits. HRS provides educational materials to veterinarians and humane societies and helps individual rabbit people solve behavior and health problems, primarily through our web site, www.rabbit.org, and our quarterly publication, House Rabbit Journal.

Over the past 20 years, HRS has grown from 300 to more than 8,000 members, with local chapters and educators in over 30 states plus Canada, Italy, Hong Kong, Australia and Singapore. Our web site, www.rabbit.org, is accessed over 100,000 times a day by people in dozens of countries around the world.

We are asking people to donate money to the HRS at this link through Network for Good. The person that makes a donation will receive either an eBook or print book equal to the amount donated. There are books ranging in price from 99 cents to $27.00. There are several print copies of the books that have been autographed by the author.

The person that donates will receive an email thanking them for donating. That email needs to be forwarded to books4bunnys@bunnysreview.com. This will show the amount that has been donated. Please remember there is not any donation that is too small. Any amount will be greatly appreciated. The HRS will use the money to either help pay for vet bills or help in finding a forever home for the hundreds of bunnies in their care.

Please if possible take a moment to donate a couple of dollars to the HRS you never know what bunny’s life you might be saving.

Suzie & The Bunnies - CupCake & Coale

Books for Bunnies Website: http://booksforbunnies.com Video for the House Rabbit Society:
RAFFLECOPTER FOR THE GIVEAWAY:
a Rafflecopter giveaway Link for the code: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/share-code/ZmQ5MjdmMTk4NmFjM2RhY2U4MDFlZDQ4MjZlNTRjOjI4/

Review Angst

            REVIEW ANGST or The Angst Over Reviews…

                                                                            by Robert W. Walker

I get some lousy reviews, too same as a first novelist even after having done as many as I have (some 50 odd books), and often it is obvious the mindset or BRAIN of the reviewer is entirely in the wrong hemisphere. How does an author respond to a reviewer who is off in left field and appears to be discussing another writer’s work using his/her title?

Trust me, this feeling is not just for the neophyte. Veteran authors may say they let such roll off their backs, but in a deep place in the soul, it troubles a writer when a reader—any reader—totally misses the mark he sets, or totally questions one’s standards, or even implies or directly says the book  is a ‘ripoff’ of a previous title of some notoriety as has happened many times with me when in fact, my book was in the works on or before the publication of the one I was supposed to have ‘copied’ or stolen from.

General wisdom among old vets in authorship is to ignore a bad review and revel in a good one. The system is not set up for even bestselling authors to ‘respond’ to a review, which I suspect would be far more engaging than most reviews—to see or rather read the author’s take on the reviewer’s take. But the universal reaction to any author defending his work in such a manner is one that says, “Oh, look, the author is whinnying like a horse…big baby. Can’t take the heat, stop writing bad books. Besides, the reviewer must know what he/she is doing, after all.”

I want to discuss this question because a young author recently asked me how he could deal with an ‘attack’ review on Amazon.com.  Of course, Amazon review space is open to anyone with an ax to grind, but so too for years has been the review staff at Publisher’s Weekly so far as I can see.  At any rate, here is my answer to the question of what to do with a bad review, and it is a lesson hard-won as I have made all the mistakes I am about to warn you away from.

Sure, you can complain to the editors of a magazine or newspaper or even to Amazon’s nebulous people behind the shadows but in either case, paper or virtual, it will be to no avail 99 percent of the time.  Actually if the review is blatantly PERSONAL, you might get someone in a positon to do something about it to do something about it, but even then it is so rare an animal that it belongs on the endangered species list. I mean if it is actually personal, that the reviewer knows you, has met you, has a hatred for you, you do have more of an argument, but even if you could get the magazine or paper to print a letter to the editor combating comments made in a review, YOU are the one who will come under attack by readers as a thin-skinned author who needs to go sell Peak antifreeze or Smuckers Jellies somewhere in a country setting. Even if you are right, you can be right and still get run down. The paper or Amazon in so many cases now, they seldom to never take a review down and typically if they do, I suspect it has more to do with foul language more than anything else....Take for example one review of one of my books:  No, we won’t go there….

You can go to COMMENT below the review but universally people just read bad motives on the part of the author defending the work rather than weighing up the remarks in the same manner as the author will.  Even if the author is right – it is like engaging a ‘stalker’ if you get embroiled too far with a reader who truly dislikes the book.  The author is just spewing forth a whine-fest in the eyes of this reviewer and any others who come on to see the comments, and this can also ENGAGE the ‘stupid insipid idiot’ who did not get you or your book why? because he is from Planet 9 -- or as in my case for most of the 11 books of the Instinct Series, a pissed off other female author who believed I had stolen her work (nutbag) lambasted every Instinct title until suddenly she stopped, and I assume she died....

Can you do anything about it on Amazon or elsewhere? Best to get someone else to post a counter review, if the review gave you two stars, get a four star review, if one, get a five, but this is not always easy. However, on Amazon, especially, It is the best way to combat a one star as they put the two extremes side by side.

In the end… Do as I do -- do some giveaways on Twitter, Facebook, other social media to anyone willing then to review the book, and hope for the best, and get on to writing the next book.

Brief bio for Robert W. Walker:

 

Award-winning author, ROBERT W. WALKER has been a citizen of Charleston, West Virginia five years and lives with his wife and four stepchildren in the Capitol City. Rob created his highly acclaimed INSTINCT and EDGE SERIES between 1982 and 2005.  He has since written his award-winning historical series featuring Inspector Alastair Ransom with CITY FOR RANSOM (2006), SHADOWS IN THE WHITE CITY (2007), and CITY OF THE ABSENT (2008).  This history-mystery hybrid straddles the Chicago World’s Fair circa 1893, and has had enthusiastic reviews from Chicago historians and the Chicago Tribune,  which likened “the witticism to Mark Twain, the social consciousness to Dickens, and the ghoulish atmosphere to Poe!”   Rob’s current work is Dead On and a 3-part historical thriller ebook entitled Children of Salem. Rob is also working on PlagueShip Titanic, a re-structuring of the Titanic story which attempts to explain why the captain intentionally sent the ship to the bottom of the North Atlantic. You can find Rob at www.RobertWalkerbooks.com ,  www.HarperCollins.com www.acmeauthorslink.blogspot.com , and http://tinyurl.com/ykch9vf