If you’ve been living under a rock for the last day or two, you missed this example of how to never, EVER react to a review. It has also ignited an internet storm — not to mention how it set Twitter afire yesterday.
The review itself, while negative, certainly isn’t the most brutal I’ve ever seen. At least you can tell Big Al actually read the book. And, to be honest, the review hits a lot of my sore points when I’m reading. I hate to be involved with the story only to be thrown out by grammar, structure or formatting issues. So, yes, these are valid points to be critiqued in a review.
But it’s the comments that are absolutely boggling — especially those by the author. If there is now a poster child for what not to say in response to a crit, it’s this author. From blaming the reviewer for not downloading a new copy when she told him to — and, sorry, that’s not the reviewer’s job. If there is a better copy of the e-book, it’s up to the author to send it — to refusing to see grammar errors and professing that she is a good writer and we’d all know if it we followed her link and listened to her READ her work, to blaming it on the fact that she is British and the reviewer isn’t, to just telling everyone to f**k off, this author has gone off the deep end.
Now, I’ll admit, I have posted one response to a review on Amazon asking for clarification from the reviewer. But that’s it. Never would I even consider behaving as this author did. This is like the author a couple of years ago who went on a profanity laced tirade against one of his editors on his LJ page. Yes, he pulled it down within a couple of hours, but it is still out there to be found. It was so over-the-top that it was mirrored on other people’s blogs, discussed and dissected. It’s going to be the same with this.
The Worlds of Amanda S. Green 
It was a perfectly fair review. What an over reaction. This would appear to be one author that is ill equiped to brave the emotional landscape of selling books. Also another reason why I, personally, will probably not self publish. I know I’m not competent enough to catch all of the egregious errors I may make in the process of putting mental world onto paper.
Chris, you’re right about over-reaction. In fact, I’d say that is an understatement for what she did. You are also right about this being one of the pitfalls of self-publishing. No matter who you are, you need someone who isn’t invested in the story to check it for errors– spelling, punctuation, consistency, formatting and does it make sense. Some self-published authors pay big bucks for it. Others have good crit partners who can do it. But all too many try to do it themselves and that is a real problem.
Authors Behaving Badly… it almost sounds like a band name, except that it would be a silent band that periodically threw things at people or went off on tirades no-one else in the world understood. And it would have a number of very well known people in it.
Honestly, I think people have the real power relationships totally bass ackwards. Publishers need authors and book buyers or they have no product and no customers, but they treat both like mushrooms. And that’s on a good day.
Authors need book buyers, or they have no income, but you get twits like this one who go pissing off the readers they do have – needlessly. It’s one thing to piss people off because there’s something you simply can’t do without breaking yourself or your characters (yes, I have limits. I’m just not telling anyone what they are). It’s a whole different mess to go spitting the dummy because you think someone pissed in your wheaties when you accidentally got skim milk instead of full cream.
One thing I try to remember – I was taught this when I was (for my sins) taking teacher training. NEVER get the secretary, the teachers’ aides or (in the really old days) the tea ladies mad at you. They know everyone and they can ruin you without any trouble. The equivalent for authors is reviewers. They’re the people who read your stuff and bring it to other people’s notice – and they’re a community.
I’m rambling, and my break ends soon. Back to the workday world.
On further thought this is how I look at this particular author in question… 1) This review was fair. Take it and learn from it. 2) This review is strictly softball compared to a good Kate critique. Willfully submitting to one of *those* means that I have little patience for a whiner who had a reviewer use a feather in his review. Kate does, after all, favor the close-range shotgun approach to critiquing. 😉
Chris, not everyone is willing to sacrifice themselves on the altar of Kate critiques. ;-p However, I’ll be the first to admit that Kate’s comments have often helped me find my way out of the plot holes I’ve dug for myself.
As for this particular author, I found two divergent posts about what happened. The first (http://www.salon.com/books/2011/03/29/jacqueline_howett_greek_seaman) points out the same thing most of us have thought, if not said. The review really wasn’t that bad. The problems pointed out could be easily be fixed with a bit of judicious editing. But the interesting point this particular post makes is to wonder if this isn’t a case of an author using any means to promote her book. It certainly got folks to the amazon listing and she’s sold copies as a result. Maybe, but I certainly wouldn’t want to promote my work that way.
The second post basically takes the author’s side and chastises the blogger for not reining in his followers for beating up on the author. Sorry, but I don’t agree with this one. The author is the one who jumped in with both feet and a foul mouth and told everyone to f***k off when they didn’t sing her praises. Here’s that link (http://threatquality.com/2011/03/29/on-jacqueline-howett/)
Kate, I absolutely agree. As a writer, the last thing you want to do is piss off your readers — or potential readers. The next thing you don’t want to do is piss off editors and agents. At elast not if you ever want to take the traditional route to publishing. I’ll admit that I hate negative reviews as much as the next author. But really, this one wasn’t all that bad. This author either needs to grow a thicker skin or find herself a really good editor. Otherwise, she’s going to have a lot more reviews like this and worse.
Yeah, I just can’t see anyone taking the writers side in this one. Even if she’s using it as an opportunity to capitalize on any-press-is-good-press… her future sales are going to be non-existent after this.
I figure that if someone can take a Kate review to the face then the internet will never dish out anything worse. Then again… I didn’t let Kate dig her claws into Angel and the Demon (Hey, I get to succumb to moral cowardice sometimes too!).
Amanda, I don’t know what to say about this author except that she sounds very immature and even juvenile. That certainly wasn’t an unfair critique; the star rating was a bit lower than I’d probably have given it — for something like that (and I have reviewed books like that at Amazon.com), I’d give it a 2 1/2 on the head and say so (good pluses, big minuses) and refuse to recommend it — but not way out of the ordinary.
The author going out of her way to swear and do the equivalent of having a temper tantrum doesn’t impress me, nor would it ever make me want to pick up one of her books. I can understand sarcasm. I even can understand snark. But I can’t understand wanting to do something so over-the-top unless this is a person who has an undiagnosed disease of some sort or maybe had a panic attack and didn’t realize it at the time she was posting. (Panic attacks can definitely make you do very strange things, but I’m unsure if they really translate to computers/computing/making comments. But I’ll be kind and give this gal the benefit of the doubt.)
I know this is from a while ago and everything, but I was absolutely NOT taking the author’s side. Obviously it was a terrible way to respond to what was actually a pretty moderate review. My point is that Jacqueline Howlett is obviously a crazy person — like, a for real person with a psychological disorder, which is why she’s reacting the way that she is — and while it might be meritorious for the reviewer to respond forcefully to her comments, there’s absolutely northing righteous or worthwhile about a bunch of commenters jumping in to give her crap for it.