(no subject)

[coraa]

Has anyone ever seen a situation where an author defended themselves in the face of a less-than-positive review, where it came out with the author looking better than if they'd refrained from involving themselves?

I've seen authors involve themselves in positive discussions without problem. And I've seen authors say neutral things like 'Thank you for your review' in response to negative responses without problem. But I can't think of a single example of a time when an author has attempted to defend themselves from, or refute, a negative review, where the author has not come out looking measurably worse.

Comments

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

Ahahahaha!

No.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Author pile-ons have a much, much higher chance of driving me away from an author than bad reviews do. Heck, sometimes I buy books becuase of bad reviews. But if it's obvious that the author considers readers to be the opposition, well, I definitely don't feel obligated to participate in that. As I said to paperclippy, I am a book-buying individual! I am not the enemy!

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I thought that author did over at Smart Bitches yesterday.

I saw a bunch of people say "Now I'm going to buy your book just because of your awesome response to the slam review."

[samhenderson.livejournal.com]

Linkie?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Linkie!

http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/pregnesia-by-carla-cassidy-guest-review/

[ckd]

I didn't read that as defensive or an attempted refutation, though; I read it as engaging with the review (which was roughly "plot, bleh; cheesiness, awesome!") and embracing it.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

That's exactly why it worked!

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Oh, that is an interesting interaction. It does seem to be true that if you can reply to a negative review with grace and humor, and without defensiveness, that it will go over quite a lot better.

Of course, that's a great deal easier said than done. I'm pretty sure I'm not that gracious!

[paperclippy.livejournal.com]

Even worse is when authors jump in to defend their fellow authors against negative reviews.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

GOD YES.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness, yes. It looks/feels to me like throwing a poor reviewer to the wolves. But worse than that, it looks like the author thinks that they and the other authors are on the same "side," with readers being the "opposition," and that makes me cringe. I am a book-buying individual! I am not the enemy!

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

I don't think I have ever seen that, never.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

The investment mismatch makes it really hard, I think. The author spent months or years on it; I spent a day or two. The author knows it inside and out; I read it once, and if I didn't care for it, my attention may have wandered and I may have missed things that actually were there. Of course, to the author, that's going to make what I say look 'unfair,' because yes, I might not have got everything they were trying to do. But... but. But it's also 'unfair' to expect the reader to have the same experience of the book as the author.

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

Perhaps my favorite professor here said something about writing (scholarly articles, though I think it holds for writing anything) -- if a reader* of his work does not understand something, it's his fault. As a writer, he told us, it's your job to make your meaning clear, not your reader's job to try to decode what you were saying when it was not clear.


* He's talking about peer reviewers, so smart people who are at least trying to give the article its due attention.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

For me, it's mostly that I don't think that objective measures of 'good' or 'bad' exist for fiction. If someone hated your book, then, for them, the book was not good. And you're not going to be able to argue them into thinking the book was good, ever.

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I H-A-T-E it when someone tries to convince me of either of the following: Something I like is bad, or something I don't like is good. Why you like/dislike something, presented in a non-confrontational way? Fine. But telling me that the POTC sequels actually suck, or that Dune is actually a really enjoyable read, with the implication that my opinion is wrong: annoying.

[janni.livejournal.com]

Heh. I was just asking this over on the Making Light thread about the particularly bad response to a negative review being linked around right now. I was linked to the Smart Bitches response, too.

Still not inclined to risk it, myself, but the author in question there did handle herself well.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the tentative consensus seems to be that you can probably get away with it if you can approach it with grace and humor and a total lack of defensiveness, which, to me, sounds almost impossible! I'm fairly confident in saying that I do not have enough self-possession to do that about my own work. So it's certainly safer to keep one's mouth shut, because that way you are at least not going to make it worse.

[seajules]

Nope. Even the Smart Bitches one people are linking to, I think the author would have looked better if she'd stayed out of it.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

Yeah. And I get that negative reviews hurt. (I wince whenever I see an author explaining it as, "Readers just don't know how much it hurts!" Yeah, actually, I think we do, because pretty much everyone has had something they've worked hard on and/or loved criticized before, and yeah, it does hurt.)

It's just that I don't think that the author's pain means that I should have to not talk about the book, or to lie about my experience of the book. And I can't help but interpret the angry, defensive responses as an attempt to stifle discussion, which I don't appreciate.

[maggiedacatt.livejournal.com]

"Readers just don't know how much it hurts!"

My response to this: If you're not ready for this pain, don't put your work out there. Period. Not everyone is going to like it.

[coraa.livejournal.com]

For me, it's even more that... that I think that statement assumes that fiction writing is Special. That even if you've had harsh criticism of your work before (whatever your work may be), you can't possibly understand what it's like to be criticized for fiction writing, becuase it's Different, and Special.

And yeah, it hurts like heck to hear how your fiction writing failed. But it also hurts like heck to hear how your other work failed. I just don't believe that it's something that Can Only Be Comprehended By Artists.

But you're absolutely right, part of it is that if you're not okay with people sometimes disliking your stuff and saying so, you shouldn't publish. And if you can't handle seeing the criticisms, then you have a very simple option: don't go seeking out reviews. That will remove both the pain of hearing that someone didn't like something and the temptation to leap in and defend yourself. Of course, you also miss out on hearing about people who loved your stuff, but, well, trade-offs.

[(Anonymous)]

I had dropped Rice's vampire series till she went uncool and defended a new character. I figured that if she cared that much about him, she had probably written the book sincerely, with fresh material, rather than just stamping out a new clone for profit.

So her uncoolness made me more likely to read the book, and other recent books in the seriews.

/houseboatonstyx/

[coraa.livejournal.com]

I guess I just don't think that 'sincerely' or 'with feeling' necessarily means 'good.' Sometimes it means 'without perspective.'

But I suppose a defensive reaction does indicate that the author is less likely to be phoning it in, which is something.

[ceph.livejournal.com]

I would like to thank you for posting this, because it led me to the Making Light thread, which led me to the original review whence comes the phrase "OH JOHN RINGO NO," which made my ride back from the airport much more entertaining.

[neonelephant.livejournal.com]

I want to say that I've seen it with game designers, but I think that in many cases I may be reading too much into things due to already liking the game in question.