Thoughts on Writing #49: Leave Reviewers Alone.

That book ruined Christmas trees for me. I have never seen tinsel the same way again. (On the other hand, I have given several copies to people who I thought would appreciate it. It's a love/hate relationship).

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Thank you for this post; I've been hanging onto Oz's "Naw, it's fair" response to "Dingos Ate My Baby play their instruments as if they had plump Polish sausages taped to their fingers" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqhKcy6vmE&feature=youtu.be&t=2m11s ) but this is better.

A Local Habitation shows that software companies are the same everywhere, even in Faerie. Though hopefully without the murder part.

Not responding to that sort of criticism or trolling is hard, I don't know if I'm skilled enough to walk away.

A Local Habitation was the first book of yours I read. I immediately bought Rosemary and Rue on kindle and devoured it. Possibly the same day, before bed.

Bravo. Thank you for writing this. You discuss this topic SO ELOQUENTLY. :)

One of the worst interactions I ever had online was when I left an honest review of a book that I really wanted to like, but which was very, very bad, and read like a pastiche of product placement which fed into a lot of very very bad stereotypes about female gamers, and disabled folks.

It was so bad that I had to stop reading the book partway through, and you know how often I do that.

I left what I felt was an honest, thoughtful, thorough review on Amazon and Goodreads, explaining my issues with the book and where I thought the author had done well -- and was promptly argued with, at length, by the author.

I tried discussing with the author, explaining and restating why I thought the things in the book were problematic, and why I wouldn't want my son to read it -- and then, very clearly, the author called in their legion of fans, and possibly sockpuppets.

As a result, I have literally had to turn off all of my emails from Amazon about replies to my reviews, because I can't turn them off for one review. Over a year later, I was still getting angry replies from people who -- if I checked their review history -- had left only five-star reviews for every thing this person had ever written, among any other reviews they had written.

I learned, from that, and let's be honest, from WORA, that responding to your detractors that way never does any good. Let it ride. You do more damage trying to defend your honor than by simply defending your honor by outputting more work.

So far my one book (nonfiction) has one very positive review from a professional organization and zero reader reviews on Amazon, I think I'd welcome a bad review at this point, just to know someone read the damn thing.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who cries at insurance commercials.

(yes, that's what I got out of the entire post)

"But writing a book is hard ..."

As you say, that's not much of an argument. The amount of work a writer put into crafting a book imposes no obligation on a reader to like the result. And a review judges the result: An A for effort is not a final grade.

*wry*

I make my spouse read any review under 3 stars, before I even look beyond "oh, few stars." He can distill anything that's useful to me out of it, and it keeps me from either sadface or blood pressure issues.

I had two very different experiences with authors replying to my reviews on Goodreads, but they both kind of ended up in (more or less) the same place.

One was the writer (Seanan has probably even met him at some point) who took objection to my review and sallied in to tell me why I was Wrong on the Internet. When I told him, politely but firmly, that I was not interested in speaking with him, he stopped, but he must have talked about me SOMEWHERE, because then his fanboys came in to tell me how wrong I was, how I was obligated to talk to them about the book, and what a generally awful person I was. I was unlikely to buy another of his books again, but I have definitely told this story to everyone that I've discussed him with. Probably not a lot of impact, but I can dream.

The other experience was somewhat more tragic, in that the author contacted me to thank me for buying her book and leaving a review. And...she seemed very nice and sincere, but I still had to write her a very polite reply that I DID NOT WANT TO TALK TO HER. It's so difficult to leave an honest review when you feel like the author is birddogging their review, even if they're not a complete jerk or you like the book. If I want to interact with an author, I will seek them out in their spaces...like this comment. But in a place where I want to be able to freely talk about my feelings about a book, I don't want to feel like I'm being watched or have to worry about whether I'm hurting a writer's feelings by being honest. I'm not a monster, after all. It was incredibly awkward, because again, she only wanted to be friendly...but I wanted to be left alone.

I...I think I need to buy a copy of Santa Steps Out.

Waaaay back in the days of e-publishing before everything was available on Amazon, and where reviews for e-pub (not always but usually) erotic romance was through individual reviewer sites and blogs, there was a particular romance reviewer who was considered almost a rite of passage. Her reviews were snarky as hell, irreverent as fuck, and often hilarious -- and she had a huge following (and no, this is not Dear Author). It was considered a Big Deal to get reviewed by her, and she was one of the few reviewers that at least my publisher said they did see a correlation for sales bumps.

Well, my first book got completely raked over coals by her. She was also right, in that she picked out some heavily used tropes, and made wicked fun of them. It wasn't even a bad review, necessarily, as she said she enjoyed the book, but this particular reviewer didn't spare books she liked. She was sometimes called a troll because of how she reviewed, because even books she liked were open for mockery. Thing is? The review was fucking hilarious. I didn't care if she got a couple small details wrong. It made me drown in a sea of giggles, At the time (this was, oh, 2007), I linked it on my blog because back then, it wasn't so much a Thing for fans to harass reviewers in defense of authors they loved, especially when said author left a note to the tune of, "Look, if I think this is hysterically funny, you do not get to go 'defend my honor' for me." People usually respected that.

Now, it's a totally different world, and if I ran into that same sort of review of my books on Amazon or Goodreads (which I'm sure I will, once I get around to finishing things and publishing them... editing has been taking up more of my time lately), I would share privately with friends that I knew would also find it funny, but I wouldn't post about it -- because I would be afraid that despite my saying, leave the reviewer alone, this is one of the most hilarious reviews I've ever gotten, people would not pay attention and instead mob the poor reviewer.

And coming from the above background, I think that's really pretty sad. :-\

As a soon-to-be-published author, I will be in a position of starting to get reviews very, very soon. And I'm terrified about that. In my day job, I'm an instructor. We give surveys at the end of every class. I loathe reading them. Like, it ranks somewhere on the scale of "getting a root canal" on the list of things I want to do. I could be dancing along, thinking I had a pretty good class, and then BAM--some student decides to eviscerate me because of my teaching methods or my tone of voice or because they just woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day. (The class is mandatory for those employed in my organization, so a lot of students are not happy about being there.)

Which brings me back to the reviews. I think I'm going to try very, very hard to avoid them. Like, I just don't want to read them/see them/whatever. I don't think I have to worry about myself ever arguing with a reviewer; I've watched the dramas play out on Twitter and Goodreads long enough and often enough to know better. But I just...don't think I can handle it.