Author-Blogger Relations

Authors are brilliant, wonderful people. I'm so glad that you do what you do, and that you write books that I and others can read. Do I love them all? No, but I don't have any expectations that I will or that I should. Like most bloggers, I write negative reviews and I offer criticism. It's part of the whole book reviewing thing. Most authors know how to treat reviewers and how to deal with such criticism. This post is not about them. You're all awesome and should keep doing what you do.

In the last couple years, I've seen so many examples of authors getting mad over a review a blogger has had the audacity to write about their book. I've been lucky and haven't had that happen to me personally. However, it still saddens me every single time that it happens. There are a lot of reasons why it's not a good idea to take on a reviewer over a negative review.

Why an Author Commenting Backfires:
Since most authors have a much larger following than any book reviewer, any sort of comment makes the author look like Goliath and the reviewer David. Even IF their review had flaws, the author's not going to come out of this looking good. Foz Meadows talked about this much better than I ever could.

I want to speak to a couple of other reasons, ones that make it in the author's self-interest not to say a thing online. Of course, negative reviews can hurt, but that's when you rant to friends offline or in a DM or an email.

Commenting with criticism of a review, whether fair or not, only legitimizes said review. The author, by showing indignation, and feeling the need to "disprove" the reviewer's comments also displays a lack of confidence in his/her own work. Generally, such commenters try to say that they truly don't care about the individual review, but simply need to set the record straight. However, there is a flaw in that. People who do not care, do not comment. Reviews are subjective, and reviewers can put whatever they want in them. No book will please every reader, and there are so many reasons for that, many of them related to personal experience or reading background. An author commenting to say that a person's reasons for liking a book aren't valid suggests that the reviewer has hit a sore spot, criticized an area where secretly they feel they might have made the wrong call. Maybe that's not the case, but, generally, that's how I feel when I see that. If a review truly didn't have any good points to make, the author would dismiss it and figure that other people will do so as well, because it simply is not a well done review. Thinking back, all the reviews I've seen attacked have been well-written, honest reviews, because those are the ones that make an author feel insecure.

On top of that, by commenting indignantly, the author assures that a review which would likely have died in obscurity will now be seen by thousands of people, rather than a couple hundred. Is this really the desired outcome? Bloggers feel solidarity, and many will plan never to read an author's books if they've seen such behavior, both out of a lack of desire to support such actions in any way and out of a fear that, should they review one of this author's books, such an attack may come their way. Much as bloggers may be seen by authors as balls of negativity hating on books for attention, we generally  would like to avoid such controversies, despite the additional pageviews they bring.

Keep in mind too that bloggers are not professional reviewers and that most of us do not want to be. Blogger reviews might break from what is considered acceptable commentary in PW or Kirkus, but we're speaking to our experiences, and I, as a reader of reviews, find that refreshing and helpful. There are some bloggers I respect a lot whose negative reviews almost never make me remove a book from my to-read list, because I know we react to things so differently. Readers of reviews are smart enough to know whether the subjective issues the reviewer had will result in a similar experience were they to read the book. If the commentary listed is something the reader identifies with, they might pass on the author's book and spare them another review with similar complaints. This is, in the end, beneficial.

A Not for Bloggers:
Bloggers do have certain codes of behavior they should meet as well, so it's certainly not all on authors and bloggers can do no wrong. Things bloggers should not do:

1) Talk about the author rather than the book in a review. Review the book, not the author. Even if the author is, in your opinion, a horrible human being, ad hominem attacks never look good. Don't do it, because it gives all of us a bad rep.

2) Tweet the author a link to your negative review, unless you know them and that they're okay with that. Posting a negative review on the internet is one thing, but, in essence, forcing the author to read it by tweeting it to them is another. Plus, what are you hoping to get out of tweeting the author the review? Do you want them to respond with their thoughts on it? Do you expect the author to RT your rant about why someone should probably read a different book? There's no reason why they should have to do that.

Happy Thoughts:
Obviously, the internet changes dynamics between authors and readers, and we can all have a dialog in ways that weren't possible before. That is an amazing, wonderful thing. I've had wonderful interactions with authors, even ones whom I gave some amount of criticism to. Some of those authors I'm even very close to now. When I write a negative review or a bit of criticism in a four star review or whatever, I mean the author no ill will. My thoughts are about the book alone. Authors who recognize this and are wonderful are ones that I specifically remember and I will recommend their books a bit more than I might have otherwise, because I want to support them as people.

Here are some shout outs to authors who have been amazing to me personally, and I encourage anyone who reads this to add some stories of their own, because this is the sort of behavior that can be wonderful. Click on the author's name to go to their Goodreads author page and check out their books!

Lenore Appelhans
Lindsay Ribar
E.C. Myers
Sarah Strohmeyer
Inara Scott
Maryanne O'Hara
Elsie Chapman
Rhiannon Frater

All of these authors reached out to me about 3-4 star reviews and were incredibly kind and grateful. I'm probably forgetting a couple, because my memory is awful, but most authors generally don't comment, so it's not a ton of experiences. Whenever I see bad author behavior, I think of these authors and smile, remembering that most are wonderful, professional people like them, not the ones who act out in the face of criticism.

Let's all keep it classy.