Dear Fellow Authors: GROW UP

[Bards and Sages (Julie)]

I woke up this morning to the following in my mailbox.  YES, I am angry.  YES, I am frustrated.   Because two of these people are people I have seen in this forum, which makes it even MORE aggravating because these are people who should have expected no less but honesty from me.  I don’t pretend to be something I’m not.  I don’t act one way in the forum and another in private. 

I had three situations.  One is a book I had agreed to review, one is a book I declined to review, and one is a book that the author offered an excerpt for my newsletter. 

For the one I had agreed to review, I got through the first four chapters and found significant problems with the book that prevented me from completing it.  As is my custom (and something that I have said repeatedly in this forum AND I inform authors of directly before they send me their book…it is not a surprise), I send the author I private e-mail noting my concerns.  I also told the author that I WOULD finish the book and write the review anyway if the author wanted me to do so (because some authors do feel any review is better than no review) but I wanted to give the author the choice.  So this is the reply I get:

Just wanted to let you know that whatever you think of my book, I am not doing it to make money. As you can see below. And I will not be dealing with anything with Bards.

Well, BOO HOO to you.  What, you aren’t going to buy any of my books now?  Aren’t going to advertise in my publication?  Did you want my honest opinion or just a pat on the back?  You came to me and asked me for a review.  I told you what I would do, and I did it.  You can disagree with my opinions.  You can ignore them.  But don’t send me your passive-aggressive BS.

Fine, whatever.  So I move on through my e-mails.  Someone had requested a book review, but I sent them an e-mail declining it because, after going and looking at the preview, there were just so many obvious errors (grammar, spelling, weird formatting, double-spacing, etc) that I couldn’t review the book in good conscious.  I told the individual I couldn’t review the book and why, and even went so far as to offer to help him with the formatting and put him in touch with one of my proofreaders to help him.  So this is the reply I get:

NOBODY CARES WAT YOU THINK ANYWAY YOU DON’T KNOW EVERYTHING EVEN IF YOU THINK YOU DO I DON’T WANT YOU REVIEWING MY BOOKS IF YOU CANT JUST READ THE STORY AND IGNORE A FEW TYPOS CAUSE PROFESSIONAL BOOKS HAVE TYPOS TOO AND I BET YOU DON’T BITCH ABOUT THEM.

Alrighty, then.  Must be something in the water today. 

The last was someone who had offered an excerpt to include in my monthly newsletter.  I sometimes include sample chapters of indie authors’ books in my newsletter, with a link to the book.  I don’t charge a fee for this.  I do it for free because it gives my readers something and helps promote other authors.  But it is MY newsletter, and MY readers, and I have to make decisions as to what I do and do not include in the newsletter because it reflects on me.  And that means I am not including an excerpt that is effectively torture porn.  I don’t publish that sort of stuff.  I don’t promote that sort of stuff.  My readers would have a cow if I exposed them to that sort of stuff without some sort of warning.  So I declined the excerpt, and explained to the author that it was inappropriate, but if he had another book that was more in line with our themes I would be happy to consider it.

I won’t reproduce the reply here, because it would be a violation of the forum terms.  But there was a reference to knowing where I live in it.  Use your imagination to fill in the blanks.

Why am I posting this here?  Because as I said, two of these people I have seen in THIS FORUM.  If this is how people are treating potential reviewers, is it any wonder so many people don’t take self-publishers seriously?  Is it any wonder people just won’t review self-published books?  We can all smile and laugh and pretend it is because they are jealous or want to keep self-publishers down or elitist or whatever.  But none of that is true.  People don’t want to deal with self-publishers because they act like PSYCHOS when they don’t get their way.

And if the people in this forum want to try to “defend” their behavior, I will post the exact e-mails I send so that the rest of the forum can judge for themselves how PSYCHO you are.  There was nothing in my replies that was anything but professional and honest.  Those replies were written to help support my fellow writers and help them improve their work.  They weren’t one sentence “You suck” insults, but detailed, thoughtful critiques that I agonized over writing to make sure they were helpful. 

You can disagree with those critiques.  You can ignore them.  You can wrap up in your security blanket and tell yourself I am just wrong.  That’s fine.  Do what you want with the information.  But don’t attack me for doing what I told you I would do and for doing what you asked me to do for you.

People, we need to get our acts together.  We need to grow the hell up.  We need to stop acting like we are in high school and attacking people just because our feelings get hurt.  If we are ever going to be taken seriously, this sort of crap must stop.  This isn’t a “OMG feel sorry for Julie” rant.  This is a serious warning.  Because if you are doing this to me, you are also doing it to other people.  You do it to me, I come here and yell and keep it “in the family.”  You do this to others, they do it on the Amazon community forums or their blogs and websites and make the entire self-publishing industry look bad.  Send these kinds of responses to your local newspaper reviewer or a regional magazine or a popular blogger and you destroy the credibility of every other self-published author by acting like a spoiled brat.  Every single one of these responses I got this morning reinforces every negative stereotype the general public has about self-publishers.

[swolf]

I agree with you 100% on this Julie.  You shouldn't have to put up with this kind of crap.

[David 'Half-Orc' Dalglish]

Some authors simply don't see it as anyone's place to critique their work. Yet they then send that work to reviewers. There's so many things wrong with this. A god-complex assuming you couldn't ever get a bad review, or that if you do get one, it is clearly the reviewers fault? An ego the size of a house that says anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot? I don't know.

Oh, and I -hate- the argument "I don't do this for money" bit to justify any errors or problems with a work. You're in a public marketplace. You're sending it to a reviewer to get more exposure/reviews. You're playing with the big boys, so while you may not expect money, you're still trying to get yourself out there, and therefore you need to play by the same rules as everyone else.

David Dalglish

[FrankZubek]

I agree

Your 'threat' is kind of like what they (finally) do here in Ohio with people who drink and drive
They are issued a bright yellow license plate so that EVERYONE knows that they CANNOT handle their liquor

When  I see a yellow plate I literally slow down and give them plenty of space until they are safely out of my way
Personally, I dont see how they can still want to go out in public with that plate out there for all to see.

And actually....not to be a wet blanket....but just posting the quotes FROM their emails here (precious as they are) could anger them enough where they would fire off yet more emails back at you

And yet...what choice are you left with?
Your time is too valuable to waste on the few who don't 'get it' while providing a great service the rest of us here appreciate

[Travis haselton]

O.K. It seems a topic of conversation on here alot lately. Bards, I completely and totaly respect you for have a critical opinion. It is accurate and not to mention if anyone where to want to be an author they should get used to bad press. After all it is the media and it does what it wants. I also respect you for having sent the authors private emails about it to inform them. Again I also respect you for not naming any names on the thread here when their behavior has clearly asked for it.

Personaly as a author I am looking for these kind of emails so I can fix the errors also when I release the whole series of short storys I am writing in one novel I can make changes to improve the story and make a more entertaining story for the readers. For anyone who does read my book. PLEASE tell me my errors. PLEASE do it the way Bards here did at first and keep it private. Authors PLEASE stop making a bad name for us idie's.

[foreverjuly]

I don't think there's any way any of those actions can be defended. It's a shame that author complexes can cause people to be so immature. The books we write really do go straight to our hearts. They matter to us. But it's really revealing what kind of a person someone is when they do something like that.

As for the second example, it sounds exactly the same as a guy getting shot down at a bar after hitting on some girl. After he's exposed himself (with his proposition), he's desperate to reclaim the high ground, and that means knocking down the girl as much as he can. It's just pathetic.

Bards, brush off all three. They have everything to do with those authors' inner troubles and nothing to do with you.

[Steven L. Hawk]

Wow.  Just wow. 

[derekprior]

I think the only difference between indie publishing and mainstream is (or should be) that indies don't have to sit at the bottom of a slush pile to be read. We decide what to put before the public and we are in control of quality. If we can't be bothered to re-draft and edit (and better still, have our work edited) we have to be prepared to take the flack.

I think it is a great courtesy to inform the writer privately that you are unable to give a positive review. The general public probably won't be so kind.

I've raised this issue in another thread -- should I refuse to review something I thought was really bad? The unanimous response was to review anyway. Unfortunately, bad reviews tend to become full-blown critiques (I don't like to say something's bad; I prefer to explain what didn't work for me). Then you get the criticism that reviews are not critiques. It's a hard one to win.

[horse_girl]

Great warning, Julie. I suspect that the authors in question also don't get along with honest critters on critting sites, if they visit them. A lot of critiquing would help the attitude as well as the writing.

Writers need to grow thick skins. If they can't take critiques on their unpublished manuscripts, what makes them think they can take the opinions of readers and reviewers? Once a book is out there, it's open to all forms of criticism. Some people live in their own small worlds and don't want to hear the negative about their precious books. I've dealt with those kinds of people on critting sites and they only want to hear praise.

It's unfortunate you've had to deal with the attitude. I'd like to hope that people on KB are more professional than the average self-pub authors, but I guess that's not always the case.

[tbrookside]

I am a little surprised that these are people from the board, though.

[David 'Half-Orc' Dalglish]

I am a little surprised that these are people from the board, though.

I'm not. As much of a community as this is, there's still plenty here with the sole desire to sell books and nothing else.

[Travis haselton]

I'm not. As much of a community as this is, there's still plenty here with the sole desire to sell books and nothing else.

amen.

[MariaESchneider]

So Julie, does this mean you have space for an excerpt in your upcoming newsletter???  I, uhm...Under Witch Moon is available for excerpting.  

Just sayin'.  Anything to help out and all.


RE: the meat of the warning.   Julie is conveying what many, many agents have conveyed in blogs.  Agents have stopped providing feedback and critiques because of this type of response from unprofessional writers.  It hurts us all because some of us take feedback seriously--or at least treat it as one professional to another.   Write the email to the agent/reviewer/Julie.  Then save it in your draft folder, and glory in your fit--just don't hit send.  

[R. M. Reed]

Publishers and agents in the traditional system got these kinds of juvenile responses often, but just filed them in the wastebasket. Now the whiners have as much access to publication as anyone else, so we have to deal with them. They do make the rest of us look bad, but I don't know how to filter them out without going back to a gatekeeper system.

[Cliff Ball]

Wow, that's rough. I once thought about doing reviews, but, I'm kind of glad I don't. I really dislike drama. now, when I get people who tell me there's something wrong with formatting, grammar, etc, I thank them, and I have gone back and tried to fix  those issues. But, really, dumping on you for just doing your job, not cool.

[Sandra Edwards]

I'm at a loss for words over those email responses. That's simply amazing--and not in a good way.

[Bards and Sages (Julie)]

I am a little surprised that these are people from the board, though.

That was the thing that really got my blood boiling this morning.  I've gotten this sort of stuff in the past, but sometimes you can chalk it up to "hey, they didn't know what they were getting into."  But two of these people are people who I have seen here, and one would think that, having read enough of my posts to ask me for a review, they had also read enough of my posts to know what to expect.

My reason for posting this was to provide some perspective and alert folks.  There HAVE been a lot of threads recently about reviews, and there is this tendency to villify reviewers or anyone that says something negative about self-publishing.  We've talked about people who vote down negative reviews, or leave comments on reviews.  We've had discussions about other forums that blast self-publishers.  We've talked about sites that won't review self-pub books.  And always we (as a group) tend to blame the reviewers.  But what I'm bringing up in this thread are examples of what WE ourselves do to alienate reviewers and the general public.  

These are not isolated incidents.  My hope is that we will stop sugar coating things and hold ourselves more accountable.  Maybe the next time a writer posts a thread asking people "how do I respond to a negative review" it won't devolve into a pity party with everyone going and voting down the review or telling the author "it's just one person's opinion they are probably jealous."  Maybe the next time someone finds a thread elsewhere where people are blasting the quality of self-pub books, we'll temper our angst and try to understand what the complaints are and not just attack the posters.  The things we do in this and other forums reinforces the behavior of what happened in my emails this morning.  

I just want folks to realize that there are real reasons why some stereotypes persist.  We need to address them honestly.

[kcmay]

I agree with you, Julie. If we want others to take us seriously, we have to act professionally to both readers and other professionals in the field of books and publishing. If we just want to sell our books to friends and family and not make money, then we need to understand that we'll still be expected to conduct ourselves respectfully and respectably.

[Arkali]

Holy cow, I'm pretty speechless.  I know there are people out there who feel as though any sort of criticism (constructive or otherwise) is a personal attack, or that the person offering said criticism is just "trying to put you down" or whatever, but holy cow.  You'd think if you're soliciting a review that you'd expect that.  And as for Mr./Ms. BDSM - hello - they should know from the get-go that their work isn't exactly "mainstream".

Color me boggled.

[BP Myers]

there were just so many obvious errors (grammar, spelling, weird formatting, double-spacing, etc) that I couldn’t review the book in good conscious.

Happens to the best of us, I guess.

[Rory Miller]

So where does a new writer go to find "reviewers" who give nothing but glowing praises for our work?

Oh yeah, Family Members.

(I'm just kidding)

  I just can't imagine anyone doing that to you, but then again there's a lot of stuff on the Internet that I just can't imagine anyone doing!

[daringnovelist]

I absolutely agree with your first post.  Not sure I agree that we've had so many threads here vilifying reviewers though. 

I mean, yes, there is a knee-jerk defensive reaction for many people,and yes, especially earlier there were calls to go "vote down" or "vote up" somethign over on Amazon, but cooler heads have always prevailed.  And lately the meat of such conversations has been ways to get past such issues, or they've been like this thread itself, all of the members sitting around and shaking their heads and saying "what's WRONG with these people?"

The problem with narcissistic types, though, is now culture wide.  And there's little we can do about it, except don't put up with bad behavior around you.  Call them on it.  Demand that people grow up all the time.  (And doing that may include holding your nose and voting.)

Camille

[J Dean]

Very sorry to hear such things being written, and such personal attacks being made.  That's wrong; if you live in a glass house with regard to criticism, you shouldn't take up writing, and especially take up self-published indie writing.

[LCEvans]

Wow. I totally don't understand this kind of behavior, but I know it's out there. I've learned to be careful when I review because some people think their writing is perfect. Sorry this happened to you, Julie. You don't deserve this--no one does.

Linda

[Bards and Sages (Julie)]

Happens to the best of us, I guess.

There is a reason I have a proofreader.  I know I suck at proofing my own stuff.