There’s a new AAR coming in 2015!
Sometime in the next six months, AAR will change in some significant ways. It is time for us to update our software platform and we are leaning strongly to switching to a WordPress based site. We hope this will accomplish a whole host of great things including but not limited to faster loads, more interactive content, and a cleaner interface. That day is still far off in the future and in order to get to where we want to be–the best romance novel focused site on the Web!–we will be asking for input.
No input matters more than that of our readers–although that of our staff is an extremely close second. So today we’re asking you: What do you love most about AAR? What would you like to see us do differently? What features do you think are a must-keep? Are there those you think are a must-go? What do you wish we would consider doing? What would you loathe for us to contemplate?
We’ll be asking these questions several times as we begin to work with a designer and we’re genuinely interested in your constructive feedback, no matter how minute. Please feel free to offer your insights in the comment stream below or, if there’s an idea you’d prefer not to share with the masses, please email Dabney directly at dabneyataar@gmail.com.
We are excited for 2015 and we hope you are too!
Wow, seems like a Herculean task! But since you asked . . .
I love the Top 100 polls – an Internet search when I began reading romances revealed these lists and what a treasure trove of information I found across the whole site!
I really appreciate the reviews – especially the historical perspective of an author’s body of work over the years. I regularly check in when someone mentions an author they like. (Even when I disagree with a given review, it is still useful to see an author’s arc over time.) So please keep information and messages board info.
I regularly check the message boards, although I wish things were more findable (e.g. threads related to a topic of conversation (e.g. “westerns”) but not necessarily every thread that contains the term). Actually “findable” is a desired feature across all parts of the site – blogs, reviews, message threads, results of previous years’ annual polls . . . I’m struggling right now with a list of authors I jotted down based on a message thread. Can’t find the thread by just scanning thread names and the search tool for threads keeps timing out.
Love seeing the staff’s Top 10 for any given year – I always find a few new things to read.
Like the special topics lists but it would be nice if the info were more dynamic on the new site (e.g. I’d like to sort each list by its review/”grade” – or at least live link to AAR’s review(s) of it).
Agree with others that it would be nice to search for a range of grades for reviews.
If you are feeling especially ambitious, there is a lot of content at AAR that could be monetized. Look at your special topics lists. Readers have put a lot of work into “tagging” or “shelving” a lot of romances in ways that other readers would find helpful but it can be awkward to use as is at AAR (e.g. take a look at “war” list and all those separate listings by name of the conflict. This is really valuable info. It would be really cool if AAR could be one of the cataloging sources into a library catalog via something like Bibliocommons (which most public library systems use) for reviews and subject cataloging. Or at minimum, having a publically viewable “collection” at LibraryThing or GoodReads.
Like others, who’ve already given you feedback, I’d like to see who wrote blogs entries and review grades at the top of reviews and posts.
NO FACEBOOK! Don’t mind tweets when you post something new to the site but I want to be able to use AAR without having to have a FB account.
I’d like to echo JulieR here as well: even if you did nothing to improve AAR, I’m still very appreciative of this site and the people who make it happen and the effort to keep many years’ worth of really interesting info available.
Speaking with my reader hat on, the one and only thing that will absolutely drive me AWAY from a site is white type on a black background. I don’t care how “”edgy”” the site is or how much fantastic information it might have, or how fascinated I might be with the topic. If the site includes reverse-out type, I simply can’t read it because it hurts my eyes and gives me a headache. So my vote is for traditional dark type on lighter background.
LinnieGayl’s mystery reviews – because we have similar taste in mysteries. Any books I haven’t already read get put on hold at the library, as I assume I will enjoy them too. The audiobook reviews, though those are harder to get from the library. Many of them are just not available to be borrowed (and I have access to libraries in 4 of NYC’s five boroughs). Also, the regular reviews, eagerly awaited, and I second the notion of more detail in the special titles listings. Thanks for all your hard work!
One suggestion is that whatever continues on the site be done well…eliminate typos, incomplete sentences, weird font distractions, and all that that implies (to quote a favorite movie character). AAR is an awesome review site – new reviews, the database of past reviews, favorite titles, anything to do with finding interesting titles and new to me authors – and hope you can give us more of that. Personally, I would prefer more extensive review offerings to additional features. After 15+ years of visiting your site, and more ‘competition’, you are still my go-to site for reviews. Thanks for all you do!
I also heavily rely on the “”Books for Sale”” list for my upcoming shopping. Please do not leave this out of your new site. However, I would suggest a slight “”update”” to the list – namely a “”printable list”” feature. Many times the list is not printable or bogs down my printer. A good web designer can find a way to simplify this list and link to a version that is printable but keeps all of the features of the original.
One other thing to keep in mind. Many websites are now going to Facebook for replies and blog entries. Not everyone is on Facebook and many of us have no desire to be there. I have actually left a couple of other of my favorite sites (not romance novel – associated) that did this. If I cannot participate due to the chosen format, why stay around?
What I love most about AAR, what makes this page a little bit different are the polls, the annual and the Top 100 polls. B/c they are done by the readers. I know it’s a lot of work, but for me that makes the difference.
I think you must keep the reviews (of course). I particularly like those of genres I’m not very used to, as Pat’s m/m romance, for instance.
‘Eagerly awaited…’ is also one of my favourite moments of the month.
I don’t particularly care about interviews with authors, although I know they must be difficult to get. I only have a handful of favourite authors, and I love hearing them, but the rest? I skip them.
What I would loathe for you to contemplate is making ‘at the back fence’ disappear from your archives. I read it frequently, although I have to recognize it’s not always easy to find out what interests me, as I find no index to know what there’s in each issue.
For now, those are my thoughts about this subject. I hope they’ll help you!
I love the reviews, “”books on sale this month””, eagerly awaited, and special titles listings.
Is a like button worthwhile? I would not want it to link to Facebook. Its just that many times I see a post I agree with and would like to give positive feedback to the poster without commenting.
I appreciate AAR and all the reviews, message boards, search functions, and special title listings. I like that I can ask for help with titles for help for an old book I want to read and also recommendations. I like seeing what everyone is reading and books they are looking forward to. I believe this is a unique site because of the message boards. I wonder how many people visit AAR on average?
I love Powersearch, but I’ve always wished I could select multiple choices from the dropdown menus (grade, reviewer, etc.). Being able to search for A-‘s, A’s, and A+’s all at once would be much more efficient.
My favorite things are the reviews, including power search, the message boards, and the blogs (both the regular one and the after hours one). About the only area I don’t visit much is the special title listings.
One comment about appearance: I don’t care what the site looks like as long as it’s readable and loads quickly. But I do prefer for all the parts to have a similar theme. Lately it’s been a bit schizophrenic, with completely different looks depending on what part of the site you’re visiting.
I agree with the person above who asked for RSS feeds; that would be great.
I’ve asked for it before and I’m asking again: can reviews and blog posts have the AAR author’s name at the top instead of (or in addition to) at the bottom? The blog posts do say who posted the entry, but that isn’t always who wrote it.
I do want to make it clear that even if you did nothing to improve AAR I’d still be very appreciative of this site and the people who make it happen. Without AAR I would never have discovered such authors as Mary Balogh, Lois McMaster Bujold, Julia Spencer-Fleming. Deanna Raybourn, Jojo Moyes, Ruthie Knox, Jessica Scott, Jacqueline Winspear and Katie Porter. There’s only so much Nora Roberts and Jayne Ann Krentz you can read before getting bored!
I love the upcoming books on sale listing, though seems like lately it’s halfway through the month before it comes out. I want to see what’s coming the next month as soon as possible, that’s the way I plan out my to buy list. I would also like to know when new content is added.
I just wanted to respond and say that, as someone who reads and reviews historicals almost exclusively, I do make a point of selecting books by new and unfamiliar authors. The problem for me is that the majority of such titles I read this year were C or D grade reads – which naturally makes me more cautious about selecting them for review. That said however, I will continue to pick them up in the hopes that I’ll find a gem among them sometime!
Thank you for your response Caz! You are my favorite reviewer on AAR.
And now I’m blushing :P But that’s very kind – I hope I’ve pointed you towards some enjoyable reading material
To have the ability to comment on books AAR reviews, without having to join discussion forums. Not to discuss/offer an alternative reader POV, per se, but to be able to point out, right away, when the reviewer makes a mistake in the review. Recent example is Sheri Cobb South’s FAMILY PLOT, and the mobility of the Bow Street Runners. The reviewer made a mistake, which the author corrected on the forum. But not everyone reads the forums. I bought her book, btw, but how many didn’t based on a review that questioned the author’s historical accuracy?
For info about books in series, maybe you could include links to pages in the Fantastic Fiction site: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/
Will existing message board history be able to migrate to whatever you switch to? I seem to recall that the last message board engine change several years ago dropped all then-extant threads.
I look at your site for historical romance reviews primarily. I feel like your site caters to an older audience and tends to review mostly published and established authors. I would like to see more diversity in reviews and more reviews for indie authors. Even in historical reviews you site doesn’t review new authors that often.
A couple more things I forgot: it would be nice to make the site more usable on mobile and tablet, with a responsive design. A programmer in me is saying “”Look into Twitter Bootstrap, it integrates with WordPress and makes responsive options easy””, but I am sure your designer will have their own opinion ;-)
Also, make sure that the links are large enough to click. For example, look at
http://www.likesbooks.com/cgi-bin/newReviews.pl
The review names are clickable and this is fine. But at the end there are links like “”search for new reviews””, and the images are slightly fiddly to click even on desktop, especially if you have any limitations in your hands. Having a larger button or underlined link would make it much nicer.
I really like the search system, and the ability to look up recent reviews and sort by grade. I use it quite a bit, and it differentiates you positively from many other sites.
One enhancement would be to make author names clickable (sort of like Goodreads) and link it to search for the reviews of that author. I often wish for such searches.
Also, I wish you would post your reviews via RSS. I would actually visit the site a lot more if you did. As it is, I remember to visit no more than once a month. The sites that post through the RSS (Dear Author and SBTB in particular), I end up clicking through several times a week, whenever a review interests me, or whenever I want to follow up on the comments. Even if you don’t post the full reviews, but just links, I would still end up visiting a lot more.
There is a RSS feed for blog comments, but it mixes up comments on posts that I care about, and those I have no interest in, and that makes it less valuable.
I loved it when the Romances on Sales site gave upcoming releases for the coming month. It was so easy to plan for my purchases this way. Now, putting this list up in the current month does nothing for me as I find myself going to other sites and doing searches for upcoming romances. Please tell you fans what’s coming not what’s here. Thanks!
I totally agree! I’ve been using the ‘romances on Sale’ list for over a decade. years ago the list would come out on the first day of the month for the next month, then this slipped to the tenth day of the month for the next month, which was still doable, but now it seems to come later and later making it less useful.
Please keep the upcoming releases and the sooner we can get it the better!
Thanks!!
I regularly use the power search function, check out the daily reviews, and I look forward each month to the “”eagerly awaited”” column. I would love to see the “”Favorite Books by Favorite Authors”” function here updated, as it is quite out of date now.
I suppose too it would be nice to see more interaction between the blog and the message boards, as they seem a bit disconnected, though I’m not sure how that would happen. I do notice though that there seems to be different participants for each medium and not as much cross over as could be in order to create a more dynamic reading community.
Ditto! I also use the Special Title Listings a lot.
I love your power search. It is my go-to search engine. I value your reviews and your blog. It’s a great web site. I read it daily.
Please be very careful if you decide to change your typeface. It might look cleaner but is it easy to read?
I love your “”power search””.
Let’s do the purple prose contest again. It used to be so much fun!
I’m not sure how doable it would ever be but I’ve always thought that the STLs should have a link to the book’s amazon page or at least a description of the book. I know when in browsing the list for something to read, a long list of just titles doesn’t do much for me since I have no clue what they are. That said, I know it would be a big undertaking. If I can volunteer myself to help I’d like to.
Haley, we looked into adding HTML for the Amazon pages for each title and in the current format it’s a nightmare. We (Cindy, Rike, and myself) have to hand code the HTML for everything in the STLs. None of us can afford to personally buy a more sophisticated HTML editor, so we have downloaded free versions. We’ve gradually added in the grades at AAR (if they have a review). That being said, I’d personally LOVE to have the links to reviews (if available) and also to Amazon. However, in the current format, it’s just beyond our time constraints.
Understood. Having the grades helps a lot. It gives a good starting point for what to look into more in depth. :)
I like the annual poll (even though most books I vote for never make the list), the special title listings, and cover contest. And the annual reading challenges we’ve been doing since 2009.
What I like most about AAR is the message board. I like the various conversations that develop and that the board is searchable. I don’t mind the blog, but the nice thing about the message board is that we can create our own topics if we want to. The message board to me is more interactive than the blog.
When I first started coming to the AAR site, there was a feature that listed book series, titles in each series, etc. At this time, the only way to know if a book is part of a series is if that’s mentioned at the top of a review.
I totally understand that to return to the series list would be a Herculean task, but let’s face it–a majority of romance fiction seems to be “”part of a series”” (to quote the aforementioned series alert)! And since it’s impossible for AAR reviewers to review every new romance novel. . .those of us who still browse at Barnes & Noble or an independent bookstore would love to have some type of guidance when it comes to series. I’ve mentioned this elsewhere on AAR, but there have been so many times when I’ve bought a book, started to read it, only to find that it’s the third or fourth volume in a series!
More reviews, if possible. Also like the TBR Feature and more buried treasure stuff.
I feel an author’s name, when mentioned, should contain a hyperlink to other reviews, discussions pertinent to that author. In addition, the reviewer’s name should also be hyperlinked to other reviews she has written. This way the reader could get a “”feel”” for the reviewer’s tastes, to see if they are compatible with her own.
We don’t hyperlink to every review a reviewer has ever written for the site because our current database doesn’t allow it. For some of us, it would probably be a little unwieldy (I have 300+ reviews on the current site and there are some who have more) With the new platform, we should have more flexibility, though.
Currently, we do have the ability to sort reviews by reviewer or author. You can just use our Power Search to search by reviewer, genre, grade, year, etc… Here’s the link:
http://likesbooks.com/cgi-bin/searchReviews.pl
Yes, this is a feature I’ve long wanted on the site. Also, hyperlinks to reviews of books in a series would be helpful.
Maybe a hyperlink to the reviewer’s profile with their top ten romances?
I second linking the author of the book being reviewed to a list of his/her other books previously reviewed from the database. I often find myself jumping between new reviews and power search to do just that especially on authors that are new to me.
I like the “”Eagerly Awaited”” posts for upcoming releases, the reviews, and the ability to search the reviews.
The Romances on Sale this month list is my go-to page to make my shopping list for the month. The searchable database of reviews is also a feature I use frequently.
Love the special title listing, love the “”books we are looking forward to”” monthly feature. I lean on it heavily to make my buy list.
#1) I wish there were some way to weed through the self publishing/indie authors. I have been burned so many times I have quit trying new authors on my own.
#2) I wish the AAR message/chat boards were more prominent.