I’ve blogged before about the “Be Nice” phenomenon in the writing world. It’s the edict that requires you to never say an unkind word about someone’s book– which is an extension of the writer, if we’re working strictly according to the “Be Nice” philosophy–, to never call out and even defend someone who is openly and gleefully screwing you over, and which fosters a culture of passive-aggression that results in authors stumbling around conferences and reader conventions with fake permagrins etched on their faces and strong drinks in their hands.
I’m used to hearing “Be Nice” mostly from the romance industry crowd. Because we’re a predominantly female community, we’re expected to live up to Sugar and Spice and supporting each other in the Sunshine Sisterhood of Everyone Succeeds, despite the overwhelming evidence presented by, you know, reality. But today’s “Be Nice” message comes courtesy of Chuck Wendig.
I really like Mr. Wendig and his blog. I think he’s clever, he has a great rapport with his readers, and he truly cares about the success of authors who are just starting out and trying to find their way. That’s why he shares his opinion on a lot of subjects that matter to writers, and he does a great job of it. The only area where I disagree with him is on “Be Nice.” It seems to be kind of his thing, and this blog post about why he doesn’t give negative reviews to other authors doesn’t veer from that course.
Mr. Wendig is always very clear when he blogs about this kind of thing, that it’s just his opinion, he’s not telling you what to do, and your mileage may vary. My mileage definitely varies, and so we have this post. I’m not saying Mr. Wendig is wrong, I’m not suggesting he did anything bad or we should sharpen our torches and set our pitchforks on fire or anything. I’m just going to cover the ways in which my experience and his experience differ, and how his post occasionally veers into “Be Nice” territory. All quoted excerpts are from the above linked blog post.
In a section titled, “Be a fountain, not a drain,” Wendig says:
‘Certainly not suggesting you be a robot shouting chirpy cherub-cheeked propaganda all the time, or always be manically happy happy eeeeeee, but negativity also has a seductive, multiplicative quality. It gets attention. In Internet terms, it gets “clicks” and it earns response. But that’s not always a good thing, and you’re probably better off trying to be relatively positive and further, writing your own stories than trying to tear someone else’s apart.’
This really struck home with me, because I’ve been criticized before as being “outraged for clicks” or needlessly involved in drama to further my own gain. And I’ve always wondered how on earth I expected such a nefarious plan to work. “I know!” I cackled, wringing my hands beside a pile of my dusty, neglected manuscripts. “I’ll start making fun of something everyone likes, and they’ll all love me! Brilliant!” That seems like a dodgy business tactic. Usually, when I feel moved to post a negative review on my blog or my GoodReads account, it’s not because I’m banking on internet clicks. It’s because I’ve encountered a product that is so shoddy and poorly made, I want to warn other people before they waste their money, eyeballs, and emotions on it.
The interesting thing is, I usually am a “robot shouting chirpy cherub-cheeked propaganda.” In person, I’m generally positive and fun– until I get angry about something, and I’ve been told that at least then the response is entertaining. And while it’s probably better from a professional standpoint to stay quiet about things I don’t like, or just express those opinions to my friends, the verbal review I can manage is usually just, “I hated it.” I express my opinions more eloquently in text. Plus, all of my friends live in the computer. #ShutIn #MyLifeIsSoSad
But wait a second, is it really bad for your business as an author if you do negatively review someone else’s work?
‘And then, you might think the next time you see one of my books, “Ehhh, he and I don’t really agree on what makes good story,” and so you pass my books by. Or, you’re more offended than that, and you counter my negativity with your own — maybe you negatively review my book, maybe you just say shit about me on Twitter, maybe you try to argue, whatever.
Again: what’s the value here for me as an author?’
When I started writing my recaps of 50 Shades of Grey, I could expect anywhere from one to ten hits per blog post I made. Three of those were probably me, not realizing I had multiple open tabs in my browser. But when I started sporking 50 Shades… you get the idea. Keep in mind that when I started these reviews, it certainly wasn’t because I thought that hating the book would get me more “clicks.” I was at a very low point in my life. My career had totally tanked, I wasn’t enjoying writing anymore, we’d lost our house and were in constant danger of having our lights shut off. I’d considered suicide several times and it was always kind of penciled in at the bottom of my list of options. I had no financial security, poor health, no career, and mental illness. I had literally nothing to lose, and I didn’t give a shit. About anything.
Obviously, that turned around right quick once I started my scathing critique of 50 Shades.
Wendig suggests that if you dislike a book and write a negative review about it, you risk losing a reader. I don’t believe this is always true, nor is it a bad thing if you do. If someone comes to my blog and thinks, “I loved 50 Shades of Grey! It is the perfect book and I will only read books that are exactly like it!” then they’re not going to like my books anyway. It’s better that they don’t buy it.
Years ago, I had a woman email me and tell me that she read some of my vampire series, Blood Ties, and she absolutely hated it. I was not as good a writer as Laurell K. Hamilton, and I should probably quit writing. She wanted to inform me that despite hating the first three books in my series, she was going to force herself to read the fourth, loathing it all the while, because she felt like she had to. I responded as kindly as I could by saying that I would much rather see her spend her book buying dollars supporting Hamilton, rather than buy my book, which she knew she would not enjoy. She shot back that I was the rudest author she’d ever emailed with and how dare I, etc.
That is the exact situation you’re avoiding if a reader knows that you don’t agree with them on what constitutes a good story. You’re avoiding a pissed off reader who is going to be utterly offended by your book’s lack of being exactly like this other one that they loved. You’re not turning them off of your book; they would have already been turned off because Wendig is right: you really don’t agree on what makes a good story.
But not all readers are that woman who emailed me. I’ve received email from women who have read The Boss, saying that even though they love 50 Shades and they know my book was written as a critique of the kinky alphole billionaire genre, they loved it and they’re recommending it to their friends. The moral of the story: not all readers approach reviews and reviewing in the same way.
So, what’s the value to an author? Well, in my case, I gained a metric fuckton of awesome people who are awesome even if their presence in my life doesn’t translate into the almighty sales figure. And if they do read one of my books, they know what they’re going to find (if the book was published after 2012. Let’s be real here, I dropped the fucking ball with Blood Ties when it came to feminism, racism, ableism, homophobia… yeesh, can we burn that series down and salt the earth already?). They know that we share similar values and those values will probably be reflected in the fiction they’re about to read. And the people who are looking for Christian Grey and will accept no substitutes? They know they’re not going to find him in there, and they’ll give my book a pass, rather than reading it, being disappointed, and leaving a one-star review or sending a nasty email telling me to quit because I’m not exactly like their favorite author. Everyone goes home a winner.
Another reason Wendig feels that he, as an author, shouldn’t negatively review books, is the fear of self-representing as an expert:
‘When I offer my review, you might take it more seriously than, say, one from Goodreads. Not saying that’s fair or reasonable, only that it’s possibly true. Which means my negative review — which sounds authoritative but is entirely subjective — carries more weight. And I have an audience, to boot! So I’m using my reach and my (again: illusory) authority to do what?
To do harm to another author and their work.’
Squealing brakes. This is where Wendig and I vastly disagree. Authors who review are rarely taken seriously by those who disagree with them. The first charge leveled against them in the case of a positive review is, “This is their pseudonym, obviously,” or failing that, “This is probably their friend’s book!” If it’s a negative review the reader disagrees with, accusations of sour grapes and professional jealousy are the go-to response. Authors who review books probably aren’t taken as seriously as professional critics, or even casual reviewers, specifically because they are authors.
As for using your audience to do harm, he might have a bit of a point there. If I found a book by a debut author, and it had poor sales and no Amazon reviews, and I started tearing it apart chapter by chapter on this blog, I would utterly destroy it.
No, wait, I wouldn’t. Because some of you would rush out and buy it, just to see if it’s as bad as I said it was. Because some of you are a bunch of weirdos, just like me. I bought 50 Shades of Grey based not on the strength of its good reviews, but the vitriol of its bad ones. I handed E.L. James and her publisher forty-five of my hard-earned dollars just to see how bad those books were.
Wendig goes on to clarify what “harm” is:
Potentially rob that author of one or many sales. I don’t want to do that. Writing a book is hard goddamn work. You’ve got rent to pay. Or a mortgage. You’ve got a food bill. And cats or dogs. Maybe one or several kids. I don’t like the thought that my review is going to take money out of your pockets, or snatch food out of your kids’ mouths.
This is where I feel the, “Your mileage may vary” thing goes a little off the tracks, and if that wasn’t Wendig’s intention, well, mea culpa, but as the internet is fond of pointing out, intent =/= magic. If leaving negative reviews is bad for an author’s image, it’s worse to attack reviewers, and that’s what this passage sort of does. See, if we’re going to believe a negative review can cause an author financial ruin, then it stands to reason that we must believe any blogger or reviewer with an online following is doing the same thing every time they post a negative review. And while it might be funny to imagine Jane Litte (to invoke the name of a respected online critic with a truly large influence) running around gleefully snatching bowls of gruel from orphans, I don’t believe she’s ever actually caused the financial ruination of an author merely by giving their book a low grade or a DNF. While Wendig might not have intended to say that respected reviewers are snatching the food from the hungry mouths of the children of authors, it’s exactly what he is saying, and I just can’t agree.
Wendig is right, negative reviews can harm sales. Leonard Part Six, for example, got horrific reviews from both critics and its own stars and was a huge flop of a movie. Poor critical reception did factor into low studio gross. However, it was a bad movie. That was why it got bad reviews, and why it was a financial failure. Just working hard on a book doesn’t mean you’re entitled to glowing praise. If you produce a shit product, and people point out that it’s shitty to warn other people away from buying it, then what’s the problem?
Writing seems to be one of the only industries where it’s considered bad form to say, “I think this product is bad, and I think you shouldn’t buy it.” Imagine if we treated the auto industry this way: “Don’t tell people those tires suck, because Al worked really hard on them and he’s got kids to feed.” Please tell me if Al’s tires suck, so I don’t end up in a ditch on fire.
Wendig goes on to explain that authors have feelings, and for an author to negatively review another author’s book is to potentially rob yourself of an important business connection, which I have to agree with. I was working on a proposal for a work-for-hire gig at a major publisher when I negatively reviewed a television show based on a book they had published. I posted this as a “real name” kind of review, and obviously, publishers Google the fuck out of you when they’re considering working with you. The deal fell through. Like, real, real through. Like, in-a-ditch-on-fire-thanks-a-lot-Al through. But I own what I put out there into the world, and if you can’t do that, you shouldn’t be writing negative reviews, anyway. So, there can be real world consequences to negative reviews. But I look at it this way:
- Do I really want to associate professionally with an author who I believe isn’t good at their job? Is that a link I want to create in a reader’s mind?
- Do I really want to associate personally with someone who will revise their opinion of me based on my opinion of their work?
- Do I really want to write for a publisher who is going to ask me to stifle my personal views to benefit another author?
I can live with the consequences of all those points. If you can’t, then no, don’t review the work of your peers. But I can, so I do. Authors have left bad reviews of my books, I don’t hold it against them. It would be petty and kind of gross for me to assume that anyone I like on a personal basis will automatically be a part of the Jenny Trout Favorite Readers 4Eva Fanclub, and it’s possible to get along with someone even if they don’t like your books– or said negative things about them. If someone really is so ego driven and weird about criticism that they see the rejection of their work as a rejection of themselves, well… I don’t have that kind of time to spend on friendship, sorry. And if someone feels the need to professionally destroy me because they don’t like what I have to say about their book? Well, they’re going to be pretty disappointed when I don’t drop everything to engage in full-scale passive-aggressive “Be Nice” war with them.
Wendig suggests that rather than writing a bad review, you should focus on your own work:
It takes energy to write a bad review. Energy you could probably use elsewhere. Like, say, writing more awesome books. Go do that. Contribute word count to your own fiction.
This one is a head scratcher for me, because I honestly feel like the writing I do on my blog comes from a different section of my brain than the writing I do on my fiction. There have been days when I’ve written lengthy diatribes here, then immediately opened my word processor and written five thousand words in two hours. It’s not coming from the same well of inspiration or motivation, and it’s often a welcome change to shift gears from one project to another. But I recognize that this isn’t the case with everyone, making his final suggestion a true YMMV situation.
I fully believe that critically deconstructing my reading material makes me a better writer– more so when I’m able to do so in a forum that encourages discussion. Without critical deconstruction of 50 Shades of Grey, I would have never written The Boss, a book that I consider the best, most satisfying writing of my entire career.
So, there’s the flip-side. I greatly appreciate that Mr. Wendig wrote a post that got me thinking. Penelope over at Penelope’s Romance Reviews also blogged on this subject today, and you can find her post here.
I guess, when it comes down to it, if you’re a reader/author, you’re going to have to ask yourself these same questions, and draw your own conclusions.