Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: thoughtful
  • Music: Rachael Sage, "Beloved."

The lines of interaction.

Common wisdom among authorial circles says "do not respond to reviews." I consider this a mantra, and practically have it cross-stitched on my living room wall. Good review? Happiness. Bad review? Sadness. Review which bears no resemblance whatsoever to the book I wrote, leading me to wonder where the reviewer gets their books, since if they have a dimensional portal, I want to borrow it? Bewilderment. But nowhere in there do you find a class of review that comes with "engage reviewer and either look smug or bitch about how they don't understand your genius."

I will respond to reviewers, if we have a relationship, however casual it may be. The majority of the reviews I link to are found by my helpful Google spiders, which skitter around the Internet bringing me things without concern for my feelings. I tell them they're good and feed them lots of flies. Some reviews, however, come to me because the reviewer emails me directly to say "I reviewed your book." In those cases, I feel entirely justified in replying, privately, with "Wow, I'm glad you liked it," or "I'm sorry this wasn't your cup of tea, hopefully the next book will suit you better." Because we're in a private setting, interacting like people, as long as I'm polite, I'm okay.

The lines start to get a little blurry when newer forms of social media come into play. Like Twitter. If someone @'s me, they know I'm going to see their Tweet the next time I check my @replies. That's the culture of the system, which is built on the expectation of/hope for interaction. I don't answer every @reply, but I make an effort to read them all, and answer the majority. So am I responding to a review, or am I sticking to the dominant culture of the platform? What about on Facebook, where people tag to your profile? They know that doing so will send you a notification. Is that an invitation to interact, or is it a sad reality of the system?

Miss Manners never had to deal with being a polite, professional working author in the Internet Age. I think that's why she doesn't have any pointers for certain kinds of behavior, and why she never considers "get a baseball bat" to be the appropriate beginning to a polite response.

So where are the lines for you? What do you think is the boundary for "polite" authorial behavior—and from the other side, what's the boundary for behaving politely toward authors? Inquiring minds want to know.
Tags: contemplation
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  • 98 comments

bahnree

March 7 2011, 15:48:59 UTC 6 years ago

Twitter is tricky. If I link one of my reviews on there, I might put the author's twitter name, but I would do that if I wanted my followers to go check out the author's Twitter, rather than particularly wanting (or expecting) the author to read it. So unless I specifically "@" a "celeb" (I'm counting authors in that term) and say, "Hey, I just reviewed your book, blah de blah," I don't intend for the author to read it. Not that the author CAN'T, clearly.

re: boundaries for behaving politely toward authors, I think no one should act on the Internet differently than they would in real life. I am a loud, opinionated person, and if I don't like a book, I'll say so, both IRL and online. That being said, if I know I'm having a REALLY negative-emotion reaction to a book, I try to wait a little before reviewing it so that I can be as objective as possible. I also would not personally attack an author in a review, no matter how much I hated the book. I write reviews for the readers, so I try and point out what exactly I disliked (and liked; usually there's a bit of both.).

(PS my book-blog is a blogspot, not an LJ, if anyone wanders over there looking for reviews ;))

seanan_mcguire

March 7 2011, 15:58:07 UTC 6 years ago

Twitter is definitely tricky. I find it mostly frustrating because I do make such an effort not to cross the politeness lines, and I wind up vapor-locking between "do not respond to reviewers, you'll come off as crazy" and "do not ignore @replies, you'll come off as a snotty bitch." Fun for the whole family!

To be clear, I absolutely do not think you should censor your book reviews in any way just because the author might see it. That's always been a possibility, even if it's easier now. I appreciate that you can take a cooling down period; Great Pumpkin knows, I can't always manage that.

archangelbeth

March 7 2011, 21:52:57 UTC 6 years ago

Twitter is weird. (I lurk, following someone else... It's very orthogonal to how I prefer to have my online chats!) If your name is on it in an "you're being addressed" way ("Hey, @seananthefantastic, I read your book, and..."), then... it wouldn't sound crazy to me to say "thanks" or "sorry you didn't like it." Assuming a reasonably polite, rational tweet, that is. If it's a crazy-looking tweet, then I'd just leave it lying and back away slowly and, if called on it, maybe something like, "Gosh, sorry, I must've missed it" or "Oh, I thought I'd replied to that! Must've been a computer hiccup."

If it's just saying, "I read this book by @seananthewonderful and I really did/didn't get into it," then... I dunno. Twitter conventions are probably fluid enough that you could leave it lying there if you didn't feel comfortable with saying "thanks/sorry"?