The totally awesome Blythe Woolston posted an interesting blog the other day about reviews. Unlike other authors, who recommend NOT reading reviews, she uses them to fuel her writing and make her a better author. It seems like there's about a 60/40 split on that logic, from what I've seen. I don't have that many reviews right now... In fact Mr. Pale has gotten a grand total of one so far, but her idea is something I'm totally going to use eventually.
In an attempt to create a subjective picture of the reviews for her novels, she takes the reviews, clumps 'em together and creates a Wordle of them. What's a wordle? That image above. The program takes your text and assigns a size based on frequency of use, then assembles it in an eye catching little bubble like that. I dig it. It's actually a semi-useful tool for writing to spot over-used words but it's also just a great way to waste time playing with colors and layout.
The great thing about doing this with reviews is that it gives you a picture of what words are used without the context, allowing you to focus subjectively on the overall impression of the reviews. No personalizing with the reviewer or anything like that. Very interesting idea.
EDIT:
Just after writing this, I noticed that I'd actually gotten a second review of my book on Amazon, which is great. Amusingly, my reviews have both been quick two or three sentence things. Mr. Pale would approve of the brevity. So I made a Wordle.
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