thoughtfulI 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.
March 7 2011, 17:31:17 UTC 6 years ago
In many ways it's the same thing. I always respond professionally, and in my "work" persona on my "work" accounts. My "personal" accounts are a lot wilder, but I always remember that some of the people following them are my customers. Laura is much the same. We both have intentionally chosen "our personality is our brand" as a marketing approach, and I think that's an approach that's a natural for many authors.
Part of that is remembering that you're always "on" any time you're in any forum you share with potential customers (meaning any public forum, and some private fora). And that while it's a really good thing for customers and partners, both current and potential, to see you as a real person and see your real life, it's also good for that life to be slightly edited for that audience. You're spinning an ongoing tale as to who you are, that's close to, but not identical to who you are. (I have a few private fora, and a few public personas not connected to me, where I don't need to do that, though, and I think that's a healthy thing).
I do think it's important to respond to any direct inquiry that seems to be expecting an answer, as much as you can. Email to you, twitter @ing, comments you notice in public fora that ask for a response from you... But the driving factor should be "what's the end result of this interaction going to be?". If the end result is one reader happy, that's a win and you should do it. If the end result is a long frustrating interaction that eats up a bunch of your time, or an appearance of being intrusive that makes a forum upset or likely to self-censor, you shouldn't do it. Sometimes that answer can be semantically empty but still a response - which lets you avoid the snotty bitch / come off as crazy dilemma.
I'm on several mailing lists where every other participant is either an existing customer or a potential customer. I'm very careful there to _not_ mention our product or services, unless someone else (an existing customer, usually) specifically, publicly asks me to. That's one of the rules I've created for myself for that sort of forum as an easy to follow implication of "what's the end result of this interaction going to be?".
I think your existing rules, including "don't respond to reviews" are excellent, and I think they follow perfectly from "what's the end result of this interaction going to be?" in protecting your sanity, the free exchange of views in comment threads and encouraging people to talk freely about your books. You can probably create rules for other fora, such as twitter and facebook, that are just as good based on the same reasoning. Facebook tagging and liking, for instance, aren't something that's really asking for a response, so it's not something you should feel a need to respond to (unless there's something in the particular instance that makes you feel you want to respond).
But don't stress it. Your online persona is doing just fine. When I think about people who are handling social media to talk to their base well I think of Gaiman, Scalzi, Wheaton and McGuire. At some point really soon, though, you're going to hit the point where you simply don't have the time to respond to everything, and you're going to have to prioritize and decide what sort of interaction with "your public" gives you the most bang for the minute.
March 7 2011, 18:21:32 UTC 6 years ago