Three Dollar Bill Reviews – year in review
The Year in Review
So TDB officially opened its doors on 1/18/2010 and has had a pretty solid year. At least we think so. Although as with any venture we started with our ideas bigger than our reading time, we’ve been steadily plugging along reviewing we hope a wide variety of books in the GLBTQ genre. We didn’t hit all of the goals we set for ourselves but we also never wanted to be a massive site. We’re happy to be a quiet corner of solid reviews that span the genre with thoughtful, careful reviews. So let’s see how we did in accomplishing that goal.
In the past year we’ve published 21 “rambling” posts and 223 reviews by 10 different reviewers.
Of those reviews, they break down the following way:
1 star reviews – 4
1.5 star reviews – 1
2 star reviews – 8
2.5 star reviews – 7
3 star reviews – 27
3.5 star reviews – 45
4 star reviews – 77
4.5 star reviews – 38
5 star reviews – 16
The average rating on TDB is 3.7.
We’ve reviewed:
8 bisexual titles
193 gay titles
24 lesbian titles
2 queer titles
7 transgendered titles
Erotica still makes up the majority of books coming in at 138 out of 222 reviews – we all like our porn – but we do offer nearly 40% of non-erotica book reviews. Hopefully we can get this even higher and more diverse in the coming year.
One of the goals starting this site was to offer reviews for books that are outside the m/m erotica romance genre. While we still have to work on that, I think TDB balances both the guilty pleasure books we love and those gems that may be overlooked.
So where do we improve? We have several ideas about what we’d like to improve upon and work on in the coming year but this is a perfect time to get some feedback from our readers.
Feel free to take the anonymous poll or leave us some feedback (which we love!).
Thank you and here’s to another successful year.
Loading ...Posted in Ramblings
I think your site is pretty great as it is. When you say you want to review “books outside the m/m erotica romance genre” are you saying you want to review non-GLBT books? Or do you mean books with GLBT characters but no romance/sex? (Bottom line: I wouldn’t want to see you move away from the GLBT stuff)
The Zombie theme week was a good idea (even if I’m not a zombie fan) so maybe having a theme week once in a while would be fun. I clicked ‘other’ in your poll.
Otherwise, keep up the good work and congrats on a successful year!
Thanks for the feedback Wren! We will never move away from books with GLBTQ characters or themes. That’s our focus and it will always remain that way. There are so many review sites out there that provide reviews for books of all genres, I think those are pretty well covered without our help.
We opened this site with the hopes to focus on the GLBTQ genre and in particular to review books that are often overlooked. Books that fall under LBTQ or books that feature gay male characters but are not erotica often aren’t featured on the reviews sites out there that are willing to review GLBTQ content. There are so many wonderful books that don’t fall under the “m/m erotica romance genre” and we hope to feature as many of those books as we can.
The zombie week was definitely a lot of fun so I’m sure we’ll be doing something like that again! I’m sure we’ll be looking for some ideas of what to focus on…
Thanks again from all of the TDB reviewers!
Hmmm. Well, it won’t let me vote. But I said more opinion pieces because those are always fun. Congratulations on one year (and a bit). Keep up the great work and the zombie week was fun.
Seems that the poll is being finicky… Thanks for the feedback and glad you enjoyed the zombie week!
Congratulations! And no, it won’t let me vote either. What have Tam and I done?!?
I couldn’t think of anything particular to do differently as I’m simply enjoying the site – sorry!
Anne
xxx
LOL I’m pretty sure it’s not your fault…this is the first time we’ve tried using the poll plugin and it seems to be acting up. Silly plugin…
Thanks for your support and we’re glad to hear you enjoy the site!
I couldn’t vote either, but I was going to vote for more opinion pieces because I love reading them!
Thanks for producing such a great review site – I shall try to remember to comment on the reviews more often.
Jo x
Definitely seems that a lot of readers enjoy the opinion pieces so we’ll have to try to put a bit more focus there in the coming year.
Thanks for your support! Of course we love comments but don’t want anyone to feel they have to comment all the time. In the end we wanted this site to be a helpful resource for readers and I think we’ve accomplished that.
I want to echo Emily’s sentiment. We do love comments but we’re really just trying to be a resource more than anything. We know how crazy busy people are (my google reader often has 400 unread posts or more and imagine if I commented on all of them!?) so we’re more after just being a place people can rely on for informative reviews.
If we’re doing that, comments or not, then awesome!
It seems the post hates us all. At least, it’s consistent.
I was going to vote for more opinion pieces too. Like others, I enjoy the discussion generated by these kinds of topics.
Yeah the poll apparently doesn’t play well with others. LOL
Thanks for the vote Kris, opinion pieces definitely seem to be quite popular.
Hmm, well, here’s boring. I’d just like more
, both reviews and opinion pieces.
And I’d like to say thank you for your attitude to comments, and the fact you’ve “said” it out front. I love reading the reviews but don’t always comment. Sometimes it’s because of time pressure, sometimes it’s because of inhibition I feel as an author. But I always read and appreciate!
We’re definitely going to try to focus on getting more out there this year. Last year a lot happened to slow some of us down (me in particular) but things are picking back up. Hopefully there will be a lot more of both reviews and opinion pieces.
As long as people are here reading and appreciating the reviews and other posts that’s all that matters to us! Commenting is fun when people have the time but I know how little free time I have with work and family and that same situation extends to a lot of others out there I’m sure.
Ooh, can I say something else? Would it be possible to have types of book as part of the site? eg Romance, Comedy, Thriller, Short Stories, BDSM, YA etc etc? It might help when trying to find something that takes the fancy now. Just a thought, many thanks!
Anne
xxx
Its a good thing you said that Anne, I have been thinking of asking for more tags and it keeps slipping my mind.
I know when I do reviews for the site, there is so much I want to add as a part of the book, not just the erotica, gay, etc.
So it would be great to add more tags as Anne suggested,
I couldn’t vote either, but I’d like more of everything! Mostly, though, I’d love to see more non-gay books features. Right now it’s about 4/5 gay men books reviewed, isn’t it?
(Also “trangender,” not “transgendered” is the preferred term.)
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