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 8 2011, 12:51:58 UTC 6 years ago
I spent three months doing my legal internship at a firm that did employment and banking. I divided my time between the two, so I spent, what, six weeks or so in each.
Even in that little time--a tiny snapshot in time for a profession where a single matter can drag on for years or decades--I still saw cases in BOTH categories (employment I expected; banking was a surprise) that involved stuff said on the internet coming out as ammunition, when the speakers thought they were anonymous (or at least speaking in private, or assuming nobody but their buddies would read it even though it wasn't protected), getting dragged through the legal system. It was serious food for thought; I always thought you should be polite online because I was taught to be polite and to respect the impact your words can have (I have often goofed up on this score, but I try), but I didn't fully appreciate just how problematic the net can be for saving EVERYTHING until I spent hours digging up things party opponents said so that their words could be flung back at them in deposition or at trial.
March 8 2011, 17:19:47 UTC 6 years ago