Hello, and welcome to day 13 of Birthday Blog Bash 2018, which is an event where I post on my blog every single day for the month of January.
When I logged onto Twitter tonight (it is Friday 1/12/2018) I saw a disturbing petition going around. My Twitter feed was lighting up with information about this petition. I will not be linking to the petition because it is ridiculous,however, I will link to a thread that Jeann@happyindulgence started, which explains the petition. It's worth checking out before you continue reading this post.
Everything goes back to one issue that I noticed happening a lot lately. Authors harassing Reviewers, who give the book a bad review. First off, the whole point of reviewing is to give a critical take on the book, to help other readers as well as the author. Bloggers are a great source of advertisement for authors, that cost them nothing. Sometimes an author or publisher might give an arc to a blogger to read for an exchange of an honest review. The blogger's are still not being paid, and are a free source of advertisement. Expect the fact it costs more money to make an actual ARC than a book, according to Small Review, I don't know if this is true, but it makes sense. Reviewers are supposed to be honest and critical about what they are reading. If we all lived in a society where everyone agreed on everything then life would be boring.
As an aspiring author constructive criticism can be hard to handle sometimes. If all I ever got was amazing criticism, then I wouldn't need to be spending money on an English degree. ALL AUTHORS HAVE ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT. NO ONE IS PERFECT AT WHAT THEY DO. AUTHORS ARE CONSTANTLY DEVELOPING THEIR CRAFT. You know what helps with developing your craft constructive criticism. Authors should not expect everyone to like their book. You can't please everyone. There's going to be good and bad reviews, but both will help you. I'm not saying read every single bad review of your book because that would mentally taxing. Reviewers do not owe an author a good review. Authors should not be harassing Reviewers because they didn't give a 5-star review. Jeann from Happy Indulgence has a great post about authors harassing Reviewers.
The harassment of reviewer has led one person to create a petition to 'defend' authors on Goodreads. Goodreads is a site for readers. Although, having your book on Goodreads is another great way to reach a mass audience for your book; it is still not for Authors. Authors can use the site as readers, but it's not intended for Authors. Reviewers have every right to speak out on authors, who are harassing them. The reviewers themselves are NOT ruining any of the authors careers. If anything the authors, who harass reviewers, are ruining their own careers. Again not everyone is going to like your book; just do NOT RESPOND to bad reviews.
All reviews are helpful for readers. Reviewers should not be afraid to post a bad review once awhile. It is a reviewers job to report their honest opinion. What are your thoughts on this topic? Comment below or message me on social media @chey_ouatar; and remember, keep looking for your Once Upon A Time.
Wow, I've heard of reviewers being harassed before for negative reviews and when I see this happening I instantly am less inclined to read anything by that Author. Funnily enough it's not the so called bad review that puts me off, but their lack of professionalism. Your statement about them ruining their own careers with their behaviour is accurate.
ReplyDeleteI love that one of the points in the petition was 'rating a book without reviewing shouldn't be something happening'. I am sure not writing a full-fledged review for EVERY book I read. I understand that it’s helpful for authors if a reviewer justifies why they gave a certain rating, but honestly sometimes a book just isn’t for me, and I don’t have the patience to write a review if I don’t have anything nice to say about it. It’s a bit contradictory that if we rate a book we HAVE to review it, but we’re also not allowed to say anything negative about it. You can have one or the other but not both.
‘Authors don’t have to be a part of Goodreads and without our books Goodreads wouldn’t exist’. Yes, Authors don’t have to be part of Goodreads, but without it getting their books out there would be a lot harder I imagine. Goodreads is beneficial to both readers and authors, they get publicity and we get other readers HONEST opinions and get to make an informed decision.
Reviewers should be free to write an accurate and honest review of a book, without fear of repercussions or being shamed about it. I don’t mean that its acceptable to be rude or derogatory in our reviews (constructive feedback should be the aim) but to not be permitted a negative opinion is ridiculous.
Ugh sorry for my long rant haha