Recently, we promised one of our blog readers we would give an example of something an author should never do. This is it. Below is a perfectly legitimate review done by a well-known review site and following, is the author’s response to it (we’ve purposefully kept the name of the site and the author anonymous).
Please, authors, don’t ever do this:
No. Just no. If a reviewer, especially a reviewer involved in a blog tour, writes a review that is this professional, don’t ever do what this author did. This review was not a bully review (i.e. a review that personally attacks the author or is written for revenge). This review was also not mean-spirited in any way. The reviewer simply wrote what he/she thought of the book. That is not bullying.
Edit: Also, in this particular case, the author experienced a huge backlash from this, which we don’t condone either. Bullying an author for a mistake like this is wrong, but it does happen. We’ve seen it happen over and over. This is why we’re warning our readers and giving them an example of what not to do.
There has been some debate over whether reviews are for readers only or for authors or both. STGRB has stated our opinion on the matter both here and here. In general, we agree that reviews are for readers, but there are a few fine points to be considered (see conversation linked above).
We may be doing some more posts on this topic in the future, but in the meantime, we have several posts planned for next week, a few of them, requests by some of our blog readers.
So stay tuned.
« A Message from a Bullied Author Gavin Hetherington Apologizes »
I know what this one’s about, and I know of the author and reviewer who interacted in the kerfuffle. It blew way out of proportion, like it always does. She was in the wrong, and so everyone and their mother publicly eviscerated her. It got to the point where the punishment did not fit the crime, and even Nathan Bransford (such a decent guy) called it a witch hunt perpetrated by the haters.
Throughout all of it, the original reviewer remained professional.
Yeah, that’s usually what happens. The author gets slammed to the point where the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. That’s why we left out the author’s and the reviewer’s names in this post. We just wanted to use this as an example of what never to do.
These writers are simply inexperienced and don’t know the first thing about how to handle their first bad review. Or even if they tolerate it, eventually the author blows up after getting further bad reviews. There comes a point, sometimes, when the last straw happens.
And then watch out.
They need to be taught not to look at their own reviews. Just let the book go and write the new one.
Or to be able to read their reviews without responding the way this author did. We believe that reviewers have no right to bully or disrespect authors, but it goes both ways. Reviewers should be shown respect. They have a right to state their opinion about a book without being told their opinion is somehow “wrong”.
I followed this train wreck as it happened and was astounded at the author’s unprofessional handling of the review. I did find it unfair that many people downloaded just the sample from Amazon so they could then leave a negative review of the book and have it appear to be legit.
I actually read the book in its entirety after this particular reviewer’s and wrote my own fair review. The story had promise, but the writing itself and the pacing of it left much to be desired.
We felt bad for her when she was attacked for this. We wish we could have warned her beforehand. Learning the hard way can be devastating for new authors.
As an author, I have had many types of reviews. Some great, some where my work was torn apart. Even where the reviewers love the story but rated it low because of the length. They didn’t want the story to end so to them it wasn’t that great cause it wasn’t double the size. I’ve taken it all in stride. As a professional author, you have to be open minded to realize that not everyone will love what you write. Move on or if you have to, then wallow in self pity (off the internet) for a few days. It’ll make you feel better and you’ll learn that you can move above the reviews that hurt you (or rather hurt the way you feel about your book). It’s all subjective.
Yes, this author’s response was very unprofessional. S/he came across as very foolish. The person who wrote the review has every right the tell the author that s/he is way out of line. In fact, I hope the reviewer did. But that doesn’t give other people the right to gang up and attack the author. Have you ever noticed how its always the very same group of trolls who turn up to attack the author in these situations. They troll the internet looking for drama, they live for it. The internet is a big place, yet the very same group of trolls are always ready and waiting to attack authors.
As for the question, is the review for the reader, the author or both? I feel that it is up to the person who writes the review to decide. I write book reviews for both readers and authors. Although whenever I download a book for free, I mainly write the review for the author. Its my way of saying thanks for the freebie.
The GR bullies label authors “BBA,” meaning badly behaving author. The gall of these busybodies telling authors how to behave. A book is either good or not, an authors behavior has no impact on that authors book. Why would anyone even care how an author behaves? The GR bullies try to use authoritarian tactics to make themselves look important, but they come across as arrogant nobodies.
I actually remember this particular brouhaha. Yes, this is one instance when it was the reviewer who was professional and it was the author who was out of line.
2011. Wasn’t that the time when the campaign against self-published authors got out of control? And suddenly there were all these rules that SPAs had to follow, where basically authors were supposedly not allowed to talk to readers or to promote their work?
Yeah, this was one of the events that set it off. The whole “BBA” culture began around that time. The conflict between reviewers and authors is really unnecessary if you think about it. If authors showed respect to reviewers and reviewers showed respect to authors, there would be no conflict at all. Something to hope for, I guess.
Maybe Just maybe –
It might be possible that the blogger never gave this author a fair chance and there could be more to this story. The reviewer reviewed an unedited version of her book. If you’re a writer and someone takes your unedited version to do an important review, you know it’s going to get torn apart. It will be bad, especially if they are a critical reviewer… I don’t care who you are, you just know it. So, I guess I think that the author had every right to announce to the world that they didn’t handle the review of her book the way it may have been agreed upon. This person obviously reviewed the unedited version and we don’t really know what correspondence transpired via emails, etc. So, he blasted her book all to heck because of grammar errors on the wrong book. And she flew to that page of his and tried defending her book. Saying – hey, you didn’t even read the right book. You’re complaining about grammar errors (well duh – unedited book) Now that being said, although I truly believe that she had every right to defend herself verbally, it was suicide in the cyber world of trolls and GR gangs. Was it wrong? Me thinks – morally NO. Financially YES.
This post is a great example of the difference between a fake one star troll review, and a genuine one star review. The trolls accuse STGRB of complaining every time an author gets a one star review, but that is not the case. Nobody has a problem with genuine one star reviews.
This author should not have reacted that way, the reviewer offered good constructive criticism. But I also agree with what STGRB said about the trolls, they don’t have a right to attack this author because what happened. No one ever has a right to attack anyone. This was between the reviewer and the author.
I think this post shows both sides of the story. So many people can’t seem tell the difference between, troll reviews and genuine reviews. It is good for new authors to see examples like this, so they can learn from it. Its all a learning curve.
As both an author and a reviewer, I am glad to know this did not happen recently, but hope the writer did not give up writing after the bully patrol finished snarling and slashing.
As an author, I would have thought, “OMG, the reviewer got my pre-edit.” Then I would have gone in private to the reviewer and apologized for the oversight. Even if I thought they were in the wrong. They may have or they may not have been. Reviewing can be tough time wise, the new edit may never have gone through or was sent to the wrong address or the reviewer had private issues which caused the oversight.
The reviewer was polite. They did not tear the author or the skills down, but did point out the errors. in fact, the reviewer said it was a good premise with flowery descriptions which pulled you into the story, but it was hard to get past the errors.
Another thing is most reviewers are understanding of different cultural usages and adjust their reading to fit. The wrong turn came when the author took the review and flung it back in public. Now, I realize some people do not mind debating in public, some do. The author could have addressed it in public – politely.
At this point I would have said the reviewer is right, the author wrong but then you had the self appointed troll patrol swoop down and set the tenor for three, too many years of ‘justified’ abusing.
The moral to this is “Do nothing in anger or hurt.” As to the trolls’ philosophy – “Authors have no right to speak,” is ludicrous. The trolls are not reviewers as they want to think of themselves, but rather, over-pompous, self-appointed, critics.
In one regard, I thank the trolls – everyone they slash, I investigate, and so far have found enjoyable stories attached. I am not interested in the authors supposedly bad behavior. Do they write a credible story? Nevermind, I will check the preview and decide for myself.
Surprisingly, there are a couple of our blog readers who disagree with this post and think that the author was justified in her actions. We would like to state for the record that we DO NOT agree. We would NEVER tell our readers that it is okay for an author to harass a reviewer like this over a legitimate, negative review. Never. And we do consider this to be harassment. This author came to this reviewer in anger with the sole intention of chewing him out for a bad review. She told him he “didn’t get” her writing and that she was going to “stick with her four and five star reviews”. Then, she had the audacity to list those reviews. If I were the reviewer, I would be incredibly insulted by this. I would consider it as her telling me that my opinion was “wrong”, as if opinions could be wrong. I wouldn’t tolerate it. I would have removed her comments, banned her from my blog and never read another book by her again. The bullies would have people believe that STGRB does not stick up for a reviewer’s right to be respected. This is not true. They ignore the posts we have done in the past defending bullied reviewers, like when we defended Lizzy Lessard, Kriss Morton, and an Amazon reviewer who was harassed by the AFT. The bullies willfully overlook these accounts.
Now, if it were the case where this reviewer unintentionally reviewed the wrong copy, then the author should have contacted him in private and been polite about it, similar to the way the author did in Autumn Turner’s case. Was this reviewer like Autumn and willfully reviewed the wrong copy just so he could slam the book and then published the author’s private email to him? No, that didn’t happen here. The fact of the matter is that in this case, the reviewer behaved professionally. The author did not. Whenever we see bad behavior like this, we call it out on our blog regardless of who’s doing it. In this particular incident, it was the author and we called it out. We have always taken this stance and we always will.
You know what Athena, I really admire you. STGRB has always been a fair blog, it is never one sided. Internet trolls try to discredit STGRB, saying you whine every time an author gets a one star review, but nothing could be further from the truth. The main problem on GR and Amazon is the group of trolls that STGRB has listed as GR & AFT bullies. They stalk the internet, purposely looking for authors to attack.
I admire you Athena, for always standing firmly for what you believe in. No amount of threats, bullying, name calling or criticism has ever swayed you. You’re a strong woman. STGRB provides a safe place, with valuable information and much needed support. I would advise everyone, especially authors, to read this blog before they go near GR or Amazon. Some people may not like this recent blog post, but it is important to show the unfortunate outcome an author can have, if they don’t handle criticism well. The trolls are just waiting for these kinds of situations to occur. Authors need to understand these pitfalls and learn to avoid them.
I truly believe that STGRB has brought positive change to GR and Amazon. Some people are going to disagree with some STGRB posts, you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Just remember the countless people you have helped, think of all of the wonderful thank you comments that authors have posted. Onwards and upwards.
Thank you, Jane! I appreciate it.
Here’s my list of Don’ts:
1. Don’t say a review is “unfair” if you agree with it. The fact that the author produced a second, “edited” copy supports the reviewer’s criticism (of the book the reviewer read).
2a. Don’t send out a copy of your book that is so badly edited to begin with that it invites (deserves) this kind of criticism. Anyone can make a mistake — Oops, I have two files on my computer and I accidentally sent you the wrong one — but that doesn’t appear to be the case here.
2b. Don’t expect a reviewer to read multiple copies of your book. You aren’t The Beatles — nobody cares about your alternate takes.
3. Don’t tell a reviewer other people thought your book was well written, then use sentences like, “Maybe its just my style and being English is what you don’t get.” It doesn’t make you sound like a good writer and it calls into question your positive reviews.
4. Don’t tell a reviewer you are “sorry,” when what you mean is, “I regret that you’re an idiot.” Well, don’t do that when you are clearly the one who doesn’t “get it.”
I have to agree with those Don’t’s, Brian. There are a couple of fine points I want to stress. It matters that this was the author’s book and that she went into the reviewer’s space and got in his face about the review. Say for example, it was a review of another author’s book and she wanted to criticize it, that would be different. Then this author would be acting as another reader and would have right to state her opinion of the review. Another scenario. It is a review of the author’s book, but she chooses to write her criticisms of it on her own blog. STGRB feels she would have a right to do that. We would never advise it because she would certainly be attacked by the trolls for it, but she would have a right to do it in the sense that she has a right to write whatever she wants on her own blog. The problem we have with what this author did is that she went into the reviewer’s space, got in his face, and chewed him out for a bad review. That would make me mad, too.
Your response is a little confusing in this way: you say an author has a “right” to post these kinds of comments under a review of another’s book, and you say an author has a “right” to post these comments on their own blog, yet when the author posts them under a review of their own book, you say you have a “problem” with it. Does this mean we agree that the author still has the “right” to post under a review of their own book? And if so, why all the talk of “rights” to begin with, if they have a right to do any of these? Or do you believe an author does *not* have the right to post such comments under a review of their own book?
You see, this is why I framed my “Don’ts” as I did: as advice for authors on how not to look foolish. I believe they have the right to post wherever public comments are allowed or wherever the reviewer or author has turned on public commenting. What I’m saying is, Think before you post, because what you’re posting may convey a message totally opposite to the one you intended.
You said you would be mad if the author posted this under a review you had written. Why is that? Is it because the author had no right to do it, or because their criticisms are absurd? Would you be just as mad if the criticisms were valid? I can understand being angry if it’s an author with sufficient talent to make you (and your review) look silly even when that isn’t true, but that’s a different issue. This author wasn’t lying, she was just a bit addled. And one final question, Would you *not* be mad if the same comments were made by someone who wasn’t the author?
It’s really very simple. The author has a right to post whatever they want on their own blog, although we would never advise them to respond poorly to a legitimate, negative review on their blog. It would reflect poorly on them and they would also be attacked by the trolls. The problem occurs when the author goes into the reviewer’s space and harasses them directly for a bad review of their book. We feel they don’t really have a right to do that without the reviewer’s permission, even if they can, meaning even if either the reviewer’s blog is open for comments or the review is on Amazon and is open for reader comments. That is that reviewer’s space and must be respected by the author. Harassing a reviewer in their own space for a bad review is just not acceptable.
Now, if it was another author’s book and the author was acting as another reader and wanted to disagree with the review, that’s different because we believe that reviews are for readers and in this case, the author is acting as a reader. It matters whether or not it’s the author’s book.
Thanks so much for the clarification. Now it’s not such a “fine” point anymore, which is a good thing.
I disagree, of course, but that’s as may be. Speaking only for myself, I support an author’s “right” to comment in “my” space (since I’ve opened it up to public commenting specifically to allow anyone who cares to, to comment). I figure it’s up to them whether or not they say anything intelligent. And it’s up to me whether to respond or delete the comments. Also, I think our definitions of “harassment” differ. I’d rather make that call myself.
It makes perfect sense to me, Johnny. Thanks for clarifying. I agree. Authors need to respect the reviewers space. Too many bad things happen when they don’t.