A short missive from the world-famous Madelyne Simone Rovenhauer:

Dear Worshipful Readers,
I must thank you for your delightful, if fawning reviews of my nasty little book. In response I shall offer some of my NYC publishing insider advice just for reviewers like you. Note pad ready? Here we go.

I've often wondered about readers who 'review' books by commenting on formatting,  typos, punctuation and spacing, meanwhile ignoring the substance, content and style of the book. One can only wonder... Do they compliment a dinner hostess by criticizing her choice of crockery? Do they sum up a baseball game by critiquing the players' shoe lace knots? Do they leave a film premiere discussing the font used in the credits?

I mean, you know, one wonders... all those enthralling commas aside.... WAS THE BOOK ANY DAMNED GOOD? Did you read past the title page? Do you know how to read? Did you perhaps have any thoughts on, you know... what the book said? Or were you merely counting  missing spaces? If, as I suspect, you were, then, why? A machine can count characters. You're a human being—at least presumably. 

Heads up here for an announcement—note pads out, kiddies: Books are written to convey meaning, not as an excuse to convey formatting. It's the WORDS you're supposed to be looking at... not the spaces. Has no one every told you that? Absent when they dropped that bit of advice in senior lit? What a pity.

Now a question...do the personality types who write these hairsplitting 'reviews' ever get into anything deeply enough to transcend surface appearance? If, as I suspect, they do not—or cannot—then how very sad for them. In this wide world, there is no such thing as perfection—not in books, not in people, not in anything. Most of us know that. If only perfect presentation and appearance allows these poor souls to delve deeper and enjoy the content behind surface appearance, then they are missing out on much of life. They may claim to have read many books, but, as any proofreader can tell you, proofreading is not reading.

One can only assume that, for many, pointing out errors is their greatest (perhaps their only) source of pleasure and I can only feel grateful that I, in my small way, I have provided them with much cause for self-congratulation—or is the correct term flagelation?

Sincerely and with affectionate big faux smooches here, to my many adoring fans,
Madelyne Simone Rovenhauer, author of The Nasty Little Writing Book

Read a free sample of THE NASTY LITTLE WRITING BOOK at barnesandnoble.com