We made good on our promise. We told our readers that if they had an example of an author being rude about a review that we would publish it. Someone has just recently given us just that example. The story goes like this: a reviewer, Lizzy, wrote a of an author’s book, but unfortunately included a statement that was untruthful at the end (note: the review below is the edited version and does not include the original error):
The author of the book left a comment on the review pointing out, rather forcefully, the error in the review. The reviewer apologized and said she would edit the review, asking him for some time to do it.
The conversation should have stopped right there. The author should have said thank you and left it at that. In fact, he should have initially approached her in a more tactful manner to begin with, but he didn’t do that either. Instead, he continued to badger her about what she had done, which was definitely the wrong move. Words were then exchanged and Lizzy finally got pissed and outed him.
After she outed him, the brute squad jumped in to kick the author to the curb and do what they do best (see Bully MO.) Do we think he deserved it? Yes and no. He deserved to get told off, but he didn’t deserve for the bullies to go after his books, which they did, of course. If you want to see what they did, .
Now, in this case, both sides were right and both sides were wrong. Authors do have a right to ask (politely) for a reviewer to set facts straight if there is an error in the review, but they shouldn’t harass a reviewer like this author did. On the other hand, reviewers have a right to write what they like about a book, but they shouldn’t lie in a book review or leave misleading statements (especially if this is done to cause deliberate harm to either the author or the book, which in this example doesn’t seem to be the case.)
We think authors (and reviewers) can learn from this example. If you’re an author and you find a review that has an untruthful statement in it, you do have the right to ask for the facts to be set straight, but please, do it politely. Even if you’re raging pissed. Just bite your tongue and be professional. In the end, it will help you, it will help the reviewer, and it will help the overall author/reviewer relationship on GR.
Never mind the false information, what about the grammar mistake?
Would of?
Would OF?????
Why do young people have such bad grammar nowadays?
I had to write a post about it:
A correction to my previous comment: the reviewer said ‘Could of’ not ‘would of’.
Both are terribly, terribly wrong.
Good post about how all this can get so confusing. These two are both clearly amateurs. But this is why I stopped going to goodreads a long time ago. It always seemed to me to be the kind of place where people/reviewers suddenly find they have this huge amount of control and they take full advantage of it. These also seem to be people/reviewers who would never have any control or authority under any normal circumstances in their real lives, so they wind up over-compensating on GR, where the corrupton never seems to end. My goal has always been to point out that GR is not a place that can ever be taken seriously, at least not as long as they allow authors and reviewers to have multiple identities and practice other forms of corruption that cancel out both good and bad reviews. One example is I don’t find reviews by young adults helpful in any genre because I don’t think they have the qualifications to write serious reviews….unless it’s for other young adults (Their hobbies are sleeping and eating chocolate…seriously). I would bet half are marginal students at best and I don’t see how people who are experienced are supposed to take them seriously. I think that would be an interesting post in itself…is GR a credible place to go to read reviews in a general sense. Or is it just a big social network trend of the day where the unqualified go to rant.
That’s a good idea for a post. Thank you for the suggestion!
To give credit where credit is due, Johnny wrote most of this post. I added in my thoughts at the end.
Anon-a-bus, you might appreciate this:
http://robonwriting.com/2013/02/05/i-want-to-review-the-reviewer-personally/
It’s a post by an author who addresses this very thing.
“Which is why humans that roam the Internet, finding perhaps the weakest in the herd, or better yet someone with a wellspring of talent compared to them, only to intentionally cause such acute self-ripping and questioning and doubting.”
Guthrie has them sussed.
Yes, he put it very eloquently.
It seems to me that this author is showing the same kind of belligerence and refusal to forgive that most of the bully reviewers do. I kept wanting to say “She apologized! Let it go, man!”
That’s exactly how I felt about it, too.
Yes the author could have handled things much better, he approached the issue very badly. You are right STGRB, he should have bitten his tongue and acted more professionally.
Although I have to agree with his “Simon Cowell generation” comment. This describes some “reviewers” on GR perfectly. It doesn’t describe the girl Lizzy who reviewed his book, she seems like a nice girl who wrote an honest book review, but it does describes the negative troll reviewers who constantly pop up on GR looking for trouble, you know the ones! 😉
I can totally understand Lizzy replying to the author and I can understand Lizzy’s friends defending her. What I don’t understand is how come the VERY same trolls always pop up from no where when there is a disagreement on GR? This disagreement had NOTHING to do with them. They troll GR threads looking for a good old fight, how exhausting!
Its hardly surprising so many of those names appear on the STGRB Badly Behaving Goodreaders list. These very same trolls pop up at the slightest hint of trouble, they are at the heart of countless arguments on GR. Then they kick and scream and cry when people point them out! Do they never get worn out fighting?
Just to clarify I am not talking about Lizzy or any of her friends, I am talking about the trolls at the center of almost EVERY argument on GR. They are notorious at this stage.
I agree the author may have (or as the uneducated say – may of) crossed the line. He pointed out something, Lizzy appeared to be willing to fix it, then he “pushed” the issue.
That aside – It should have been between him and her. But the names who did take upon themselves to once again be “judge, jury and executioner” are the familiar names of old.
You’re right. They always involve themselves in spats that have nothing to do with them. And it’s ALWAYS the same people.
Great post, STGRB. I do think this reviewer’s negative review wasn’t THAT bad and apparently the author hasn’t gotten used to what most authors have (that there WILL be bad reviews on your books if they’re read enough!). The first bad review always hurts, especially when it’s from someone you gifted your book to or someone you trusted. But bad reviews are to be expected since not everyone likes everything (look at the one-stars on Harry Potter!). The author didn’t handle the situation very professionally. With that being said, this reviewer does what so many in the reviewing community do when challenged: rally the bully squad to go after the author. There are wrongs on both sides, but the bully reviewers are worse than the bully authors, in my opinion. The bully reviewers are trying to destroy careers and livelihoods with their campaigns. They have the upper hand because an author’s livelihood (which directly affects their lives and those of their family’s) is on the line, and those bully reviewers know it. Of course, there are lots of professional reviewers and authors out there, thank god. It’s the bad ones on both sides that give everyone a bad name. The bully reviewers are a breed of their own, unfortunately.
Thank you for another fair and honest post, STGRB!
When the author saw Lizzy’s misspelled and grammatically incorrect review of his book, he should have stayed silent and let the review speak for itself. She discredited herself, and any intelligent reader would have dismissed her one-star book about his “poor editing” when she herself doesn’t even know grammar. Sometimes silence speaks louder than words. Authors should trust their readers. They can discern a valuable review from a ridiculous one.
I would like to intercede on behalf of Lizzy here, who seems like a very nice girl and actually corrected her mistake. Contrast her behaviour with Coaxial’s who, when I pointed out that she seemed to have a small problem with homophones, completely ignored me. And that isn’t counting the times she’s told me to f— off.
It’s unfortunate that there are so many young people today who can’t spell, have terrible grammar, or don’t know what words mean. And that applies to both authors and reviewers. I think that if anyone were to set up shop as a review editor/remedial English teacher on Goodreads, they would never lack for business. There are some reviewers who are humble enough to admit their shortcomings and strive to correct them. It’s the aggressive, belligerent ones who think they know everything and can judge everything that are the problem. Just a few days ago I caught some of these girls, who were friends of Coaxial’s, bragging about how intelligent they were, how some of them had been offered scholarships, and how they always wrote their essays ten minutes before handing them in and always got As, because that’s how clever they are. I hate to burst their bubble, but if they’ve never had a teacher who could spot a paper written ten minutes before class, then they’ve never had a very good teacher. Believe me, I used to write my papers the same way they did whenever I could get away with it, which was often. But I was also blessed with a handful of great teachers who never let a facile pen and a fluent tongue masquerade as actual work. That was a long, long time ago, but for the sake of anyone who has to read their reviews I hope they find a teacher like that before it’s too late.
LOL.
It’s my belief that the best approach would be a private message to the reviewer thanking them for the review and pointing out that the author disagrees with one of his/her statements. This has only happened to me twice. The first time it was quite clear that the reviewer hadn’t read the book and was a ‘troll’, so I ignored it. The second time my reviewer had misunderstood where my story was set (both she and I were under the misapprehension that there was only one place of that name. We sorted it out privately and subsequently became very good friends.