Pictures in the Words

This may or may not be long, depending on how emotionally invested I feel while writing. (:

And some of you may have heard, there has been a LOT of drama surrounding one reviewer in particular. I’ve decided to leave out all names/titles/etc. because that only causes more drama, and nobody needs that right now.

This reviewer wrote an advanced review of a book that came out in April. It was a one star review, and she freely admitted she skimmed the last half of the book, and continued on to write an incredibly fair and thoughtful review backing up her one star rating. Now, I don’t usually read reviews in full for books I’ve never read before because I like going in with a clean slate, but this one caught my attention. I know I can get pretty snarky with my one star reviews, and I was impressed at how adult and mature she was, even though there seemed to be plenty of things that would make you throw up your hands in either amusement or exasperation.

And then the author and her agent decided to have their own conversation on twitter, complaining about “the b****” who had the most likes on her review. Talking about this particular reviewer; this was the agent who said this directly, but the author of the book completely agreed with her.

I find that completely ridiculous and unacceptable. Those of us on GoodReads and on blogging websites are not paid to do what we do. We don’t receive anything, except the occasional ARC for our reviews. This reviewer was just a private person, expressing their opinion. And I don’t feel like it’s right to authors who disagree with the level of stupendous-ness their novel holds, and proceed to complain about and call reviewers nasty names for not giving them five stars. Not everyone is going to like your writing. That’s a part of being an author. And if you’re not ready to accept criticism, then I don’t think you should be putting your work out there yet.

Believe it or not, this is only the first half of the drama!

For months, MONTHS, after the review was initially posted, the reviewer continued to get hundreds of comments on it, both from supporters (like me) and troll accounts. Some people who were angry with the reviewer were legitimate people who liked the book and were angry she didn’t. But most were accounts made in the same month the comment was made, with zero friends, one book added (the book in question) and one comment (the comment they posted on the review). These were obviously fake accounts created by who-knows-who to harass the reviewer. Most times, a lot of us tried to block/dismiss the troll before the reviewer got wind, because we all feel she’s dealt with enough without worrying about more trolls. I and a bunch of other reviewers/members have spent time getting these trolls out and trying to, at the very least, defend the right to give one stars if we so choose.

Now, for the most recent activity.

An author, who shall not be named, posted their review of the same book on Amazon. In this review, they quoted the one star reviewer, just to call her “ignorant” for her dislike of the book, and to point out why she thought the reviewer was wrong in liking the book. She also stated that she didn’t like reviewers now, because most of them were too stupid and she wondered how they could even function in their day to day lives.

On her blog, she wrote a post regarding the attack (since many reported the Amazon review, and as far as I know, it has officially been taken down for the personal attack), and continued express hateful and degrading opinions about the original reviewer. She went so far as to post this reviewer’s 1) real, full name 2) her husband’s full name, 3) her hometown city and state, 4) her email address, and even 5) the fact she has three cats. Herpersonal information. And she also continued to refer to the reviewer’s friends (like me) as “The GoodReads Bullies” and claim they have attacked authors for ages and given one stars for no other reason than to be hateful and cruel. That she, as an author, was taking a stand against hateful reviewers, and being hateful right back.

Now.

I will freely admit that I am disgusted by what I read on her blog. Everything there about hateful reviewers, specifically this reviewer’s group of friends (who are my friends as well), is a lie. And someone, who we strongly suspect to be the author, keep posting under the username “Not So Anonymous” on the blog post, relaying everything we say to each other on GoodReads regarding the manner. Even myself, where, I’ll admit, I jokingly said I would read the book only to contribute to its downrating. (Something I will freely admit was a total mistake, a joke not to be taken seriously, and I’m deeply sorry it was by anyone.) This user keeps posting in mass, relaying everything, and saying more hateful things about all of us. They also continue to say that they have tons of accounts, and are friends with each and every one of us on those accounts, and will continue to stalk us—that we’ll never know which of our friends is really them in disguise. Now, this is seriously disturbing and just plain wrong. The is the user we all believe to be the author in disguise (since their username as NSA, AND the mass posts they make on the author’s blog post).

The author, after receiving a comment that said, “I still don’t get what her real info has to do with any of the drama,” continued to respond to the post saying, “Good point. You’ll have to ask [her] and her friends because they started this drama in the first place.” Complete avoidance of the question, when really, she knows she had no right to post that personal information on her public blog in the first place.

Now, I’m just sick and tired of all this. So here’s my take on reviewers and authors in general:

Reviewing is about honesty. If we aren’t honest in our reviews, what’s the point in writing them at all? You guys read my reviews because you trust my opinion, or at least enjoy what I have to say—and at the VERY least, believe I’m at least being honest with myself. (There were a lot of “least”s in that sentence!) If I only handed out five stars, nobody would give any validity to my opinion anymore, and if I only handed out one stars, again, nobody would give validity to what I have to say. If I just say nice things all the time, I can’t help authors grow, which is my essential goal at the end of everything. I review for two things: 1) to help people who read like me and don’t want to be blindsided by inappropriate things in books and warn them away from explicit or uncomfortable content, and 2) to help authors write better. I want to be an editor when I get older. I want this as my job! Pointing out grammatical errors and exposing plot holes and unnatural character development—my goal is to help. And even though I’ve been accused of being a “hateful reviewer”, I’ve still given out more four and five stars than anything else.

Honesty is the thing that matters most. And authors know there will be reviewers out there, and the truth is not everybody will like your writing. As an amateur writer myself, I understand that. And whether you’re published or not does not guarantee that everybody on this earth is going to just love your book. That’s what reviews are for. To discern what needs work and what is just great as-is. If all reviews ever written gushed over the story and work as a whole, nobody could trust reviews anymore. We all like different things, and that’s just part of being human. (I forgot to mention that the same author who attacked the original reviewer has also attacked other reviewers for disliking novels she loved.) And you cannot convince everyone to love what you love, same as you can’t convince everyone to hate what you hate. One of my best friends can’t STAND a series I’m totally in love with, and the same happens vice versa. And we’re still best friends. We can all coexist peacefully! Authors should not condemn reviewers for not liking their books, nor condemn them for not enjoying everything they did. I’ve read one star reviews of books I’ve loved, and some points I think are ridiculous and make no sense and others I agree with and overlooked. I’ve read five star reviews of books I hated where I think both, “This makes no sense; that was terrible in the book,” and also “Yeah, I can see why someone would like that.” Opinions are always going to be different. Once your book is out there, it’s done. That’s your final product and people are going to think what they will about it. I was in a discussion once with the co-author ofThe Magnolia League, where I and several others were able to express honestly and fully why we didn’t enjoy the book, particularly the mentality that a size six girl is fat (and as a size fourteen girl, I was able to be pretty defensive about it!). The co-author actually messaged me and thanked me for my honesty in our discussion and also in my review of the novel and thanked me for still giving the second book a shot. Now, while I didn’t like the book, this author was a perfectly lovely person! She was fair, she was willing to listen, and admitted that the comments would always help her in her next book. And again, even though I didn’t really enjoy the book, I would point to her if I were to show an example of great author behavior.

While not an author, a rep. at a publishing company thanked me after my review ofFatedfor the ARC they sent me, and said they appreciated my honesty.

These are the proper reactions to negative reviews. It’s not okay to be blatantly hateful in your review, but if the reviewer is being honest and open and also being mature, the author should show the same courtesy. This whole author/reviewer drama is totally overrated, and I’m deeply upset and troubled by the way the authors in this situation have handled themselves. It doesn’t make me want to read their books, and it doesn’t make me want to keep reviewing. I think that if I can still like an author whose book I didn’t enjoy, the author should be able to be civil and mature when speaking with a reviewer who gave them a negative, yet constructive, review.

Thanks for listening, followers! I really needed to get that out, and you can probably tell I needed to rant a little bit. I usually keep personal doings/rants out of my blog, but I was tired of authors acting this way, and while not every reviewer is perfectly fair, it’s not okay for authors to retaliate in such a childish and inappropriate manner.

If you’d wish to comment about the situation, leave something in my ask box (which you can do even if you don’t have a tumblr account!) and I’ll be sure it gets posted; hateful, disagreeing, agreeing, and compassionate—whatever it is! It’s only fair every voice is heard.

Thoughts, class?

There’s been a lot of author/reviewer drama going on lately. And I’d like to address, but I’m heading off to school right now; so I will address it when I get home! Just be expecting the post.

I have never been so grateful to be on tumblr instead of GoodReads-only or on blogger. I feel like people are nicer here about negative reviews and tumblr review blogs get attacked much less often than Blogspot blogs. I wonder why that is?

Sorry about my ridiculous inactivity as of late! I promise I’m not just slacking!

1) School is ending! To prepare and make way for my three glorious months of nothing but reading summer, I have to sacrifice a ton of free time in order to make deadlines for end-of-year projects, extra credit I’m doing for various classes, class reading assignments, and studying for finals. Because I’m in eleventh grade, this is supposed to be the year that matters most—I’m shooting for A’s in all my classes, so I need to devote a lot of time to schoolwork!

2) I unexpectedly got really sick over last weekend. I was totally fine, and then it all just went downhill from there, and I’m STILL not better. In fact, I’m getting worse I think! You’d think staying home from school most of this week would mean more reading time, but alas, I have to spend even my sick days just trying to catch up! The good news is I’m reading two classics for my English class, so at least I can give those reviews before this school year is out. Trust me; after June 12th, I am home free and will be blogging a lot more often again!