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.
Okay, confession: I generally loathe the romance genre. I don’t read it unless I am desperate for a book and there’s nothing else, and there was a period where I wouldn’t even walk down the aisle of the bookstore.
I’m going to buy “The Boss” and I’m considering “Silent Surrender”. Because your recaps are screamingly funny and anyone who can write THAT can write. Period. Because behind the drunken-keyboard-smashing rage reviews are insightful, intelligent critiques. Negative reviews are bad? You gained at least one fan from this, and I’m sure I’m not the only one.
I had never read a romance novel before I read “The Boss.” It, and the sequel, “The Girlfriend,” are both great books, and definitely worth reading.
I’ve never been professionally published or widely read, so I’m speaking from little experience. I’m also not the best at taking negative feedback. I have pretty low self esteem and if someone gives me too many ‘here’s why your book sucks’ reasons all at once, I have been known to retreat and stop working on it, at least for a while, because I’m convinced that not only does that particular story suck, but I do too. Having said that though, if all I got was positive feedback, while that would be good for the sensitive ego, it wouldn’t help me at all as a writer.
Constructive negative feedback is what I hope for, preferably in manageable chunks during the writing process, but afterwards I still want to know what people thought I did well, but also what they thought didn’t work, or I could have done better. Otherwise I’ll just end up repeating all the same mistakes over and over again and that’s not helpful at all!
If you’re just going to be an ass and say how much of a piece of shit it is then, yeah, don’t waste your time or mine, but if you’re actually planning to explain WHY you think it’s no good, yeah, it might sting, and yeah, some people can’t take that. But for everyone else it’s useful information! Sure it might be subjective, but you can still explain why you didn’t like it, and maybe I’ll agree and do better next time. Or maybe I’ll think about it, realize I like it the way it is, but maybe if I did ____ it could make you not care as much about that.
Negative feedback can be incredibly useful and not having it just breeds bad habits. My ego will heal in time, I promise.
The idea that negative reviews would do actual “damage” to an author, via their income, is troublesome. Because yes, that basically blames reviewers for doing the same every day, so if that’s a valid argument, the fact that they’re not authors wouldn’t mitigate that supposed harm. It’s a pretty anti-reviewer stance whether her intended it that way or not (and he probably didn’t).
Big giant AMEN to all of this.
I’m consistently surprised at how *personal* the writing industry seems to be. Or I suppose any artistic industry. There’s so much hoopla about how ‘art reflects the soul,’ so I guess it’s inevitable that artists would take criticisms of their work as being directed ‘their soul.’ But that doesn’t make it right, especially at the point where you start charging money.
Why you charge money, you enter into business, and you have to treat it as such. And ‘writing is hard’ isn’t a good excuse, because *every* job is hard. Writing doesn’t have the market cornered on hard work!
“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.”
^ This. I find that writing snark tends to give me more energy for other stuff, rather than drain me. Of course, that’s true of most things that I enjoy doing.
I don’t understand that either. A lot of the time, a person has talent but hasn’t honed their craft. Like, I think Meyer has some wonderful concepts for her stories, but her execution sucks. I love JKRowling, but she has made me hate the word ‘said’. Sarah Dessen is my favourite YA author, but her last few books have felt off to me. But that doesn’t mean because something doesn’t sit right for me that they have no talent, or they’re not wonderful people.
Except maybe for Meyer.
I mention this in my comment below, but there is something I forgot to add to it.
I went to an art college. We had to take our work up in front of the class and get critiqued on it. It helped me grow as an artist to be able to hear what other people liked or didn’t like about it. Maybe it’s because I knew my finished product would reflect who I was as a person—as someone who listens to what the public has to say about their work.
I tried speaking up during a critique session that wasn’t part of a class, but the student was not willing to listen to anything negative about her work. She even had one of her friends standing next to her to tell me off when I suggested that the font she was using was less than ideal for what she was designing (he told me I was being a “bitch.”). So, I figured that if she wouldn’t listen to me, then she wouldn’t listen to anyone else when they told her the same damn thing. It’s her loss when, later on, some professional tells her during the portfolio show that they would prefer her design if she hadn’t used Papyrus. Having your friend call a stranger a “bitch” isn’t going to help guard you from every critique on your work.
Overall, negative criticism can be helpful.
Oh, this is common among scientists as well.
(And we’re supposed to be emotionally detached from our work.)
I have had a lot of bad responses to my criticism, but also for my responses to criticism.
Like, someone has written a review or a response I disagreed with, and then I wrote them back a reply explaining my point of view, and then they get scared or offended because I defended my work.
But that’s good. It should be a discussion.
Also, Jenny, your work is not just pointing at 50 shades and going ‘this sucks!’. You are providing valuable critique. You make valid points.
Quick comment as it’s late here, and I agree with you entirely as usual, so…
I think it’s wildly…er, wild…to think that a negative review can impact on an author’s sales. I don’t think EL James is crying into her cornflakes after so many people panned her books. She’s doing all right. (Why, God; WHY???)
That said, I just don’t understand the notion that authors should zip it and only say nice things. Such a notion deprives us of the freedom of speech that all other readers have, and aren’t we readers too?
There are many, many people who say they don’t review anything they wouldn’t give less than, say, 4 stars to, and that makes me question their integrity. If we start dictating the level of niceness (and Lord, how I hate that word) authors must adhere to, then fine, just churn out authors on a conveyor belt of niceness and bleach out the opinion cortexes of our brains.
I’m not fighting for the right to excoriate books online. Just standing up for the right of authors to put on their reader hats and share any damn opinion they wish.
So much for this being a ‘quick’ opinion.
My life is like a fart!
I don’t know, Jen. I think you’re the special case scenario we all aspire to. If someone I considered a friend trashed one of my books online (even if it was terrible), I would be crushed. What a betrayal. Seems like an author would have to be absolutely 0% ego not to be hurt by something like that.
My interpretation of that paragraph you quoted re: potentially robbing author was way different. When I read that, I didn’t extend it beyond his private-personal feelings for not wanting to post a negative review. I didn’t see it at all as a comment on reviewers.
For me… oh, I have so many reasons for not posting negative reviews. Strikes me as bad for business/don’t want to build my brand around negativity, don’t want to inspire karmic debt, don’t like the idea of injuring others financially, fear of retribution (a lot of my reasons are fear-related, you’ll notice), and just plain not wanting to hurt other authors’ feelings.
I’m not saying NOBODY should post negative reviews because I, Giselle, don’t want to. Other people can do what they want. No judgement. That’s just the way I conduct myself/my business. (It’s actually more a business decision than a personal one. I loved trashing shit before I became a writer.)
And I’m addicted to your recaps, btw. You feed the hate in me.
Giselle
Well, in fairness to Wendig, he did say that the entire post is his opinion. But he stated as fact that negative reviews harm authors in order to justify that opinion, and that’s not a position I support. I respect the hell out of Wendig, but I do feel that was a misstep.
Hi!
Very glad you dug the post and saw fit to post your own thoughtful thoughts (DEPARTMENT OF REDUNDANCY DEPARTMENT ALERT) in return.
I don’t consider it a fact that negative reviews harm authors. I have actually been helped by negative reviews — a negative review might turn off the wrong readers and turn on the right ones, and that’s totally awesome.
I don’t consider reviewers or critics — whether professional or amateur — toxic to authors, and in fact I think they’re a considerable part of the ecosystem in which we live. If I suggested otherwise, or seemed to, that’s my bad.
But from a personal perspective, *I* don’t want to be the one turning people off of other authors’ work, because for better or for worse that could result in lost sales. Even one lost sale, when each sale really, really matters.
Let’s take an example: let’s say I read a book by a debut author with my publisher, Angry Robot, and this author — Betty Fizzlegibbet — has a book that I just didn’t like. I didn’t think it was great, I wasn’t too excited by it, meh. I go and use my social media reach, which is not inconsiderable, to post a negative review — straight-up “do not read.”
And folks, trusting me, choose not to read the book.
They’ll say, as I see on review sites or Goodreads, “Thanks, I’ll skip this one.”
Now, Betty — whose novel needs any help it can get — just got kicked in the stomach by me, a fellow author. Fairly. Honestly. But subjectively.
She’s getting some help from the publisher and she’s in bookstores, but she’s not getting a massive press push — so, little things make a big difference, and my review might make a big difference. In the wrong way.
Ripples from thrown pebbles.
Now, here’s the thing: this is at least a half-true story. I did read a book by a debut author (not with my publisher) that I really, seriously disliked. My review would not have been kind. I did not post that review. I said nothing about it. And that book? Went on to do very well for the author. People really like it. It’s gotten some very good attention for a debut.
Had I written that review, there might have been a CHANCE it wouldn’t have — or, at the least, would’ve stumbled longer than it sang.
Now, a 50 SHADES OF GRAY critique — you know, I think punching way, way up with reviews, aiming for pretty untouchable, already successful authors is probably easier and has minimal ramifications. I can say out loud that I didn’t like THE PASSAGE at all, because it’s a runaway bestseller and who cares that I didn’t like it? People have already read it and really liked it. I didn’t. So, you know, that’s all well and good.
But when it comes to punching across or down to fellow authors in the mid-list and below — i.e. most authors and most books — I don’t see the value proposition for me, or them.
Reviewers should do that. Reviewers contribute to an ecosystem by writing reviews, good and bad. But it’s also curious to think that reviewers don’t at least somewhat contribute to a book either selling more copies or fewer copies — that’s ostensibly the point of most reviews. A thumbs-up, thumbs-down, buy/don’t buy.
Anyway, again, this is why *I* don’t do it. I understand some authors do and will and that’s entirely awesome — and further, I don’t frown on reviewers or critics, and think they form a vital part of the literary backbone. My time and effort as an author is better spent for me, personally.
Thanks for the post and the comments!
— Chuck
Hi Chuck!
Thank you for clarifying on the review thing! I have to admit, that really confused me, because I had never heard you say like, anything even remotely anti-reviewer before. I just felt like it was important to note that bad reviews aren’t necessarily linked to financial success– Interview With A Vampire comes to mind– and that the statement could be read as slightly anti-reviewer. I’m glad you came by and set me right!
I see what you’re saying with the “don’t punch down” mindset, and I have to admit that in the past, that *has* shaped my personal policy on what I’ve posted on my blog or on GoodReads. Mostly in terms of “Do I review this book by this author who is in this professional organization with me, even though I can’t in good conscience give it a good review?” Sometimes, it just makes life easier if you don’t piss off everyone you know. So I understand where you’re coming from with that, definitely.
I think this is one of those writerly things that will always be a personal choice, as much as exclamation points and overuse of adverbs. “Is this my style?” And I think it’s going to become more so as people who started out as internet reviewers are getting published and still trying to maintain their review sites. I think it’s going to be interesting to see what happens.
Thanks for writing such a great post and getting everybody talking about this! It’s been a truly fascinating couple of days on Twitter!
…should I be that person that says a lot of these arguments could be solved by authors just.. not reading reviews of their books?
‘Cause that’s kinda why I stopped reviewing self-published from people I didn’t know, honestly.
Seth Meyer shielded Stephenie Meyer from every little thing so that she thought she farted rainbows. Since she never got to know when fans were starting to turn, she put out a book so bad that die-hards of its franchise returned the in droves. I have ever heard of returning books because you don’t like them, yet that’s what her fans did.
Negative reviews, when they’re true reviews and not someone just saying, “I hate My Little Pony and so think a movie is stupid” on the Amazon page about the movie (there really is a review like that), can inform a writer, especially of a series, what their fans don’t like so that that can be considered when writing other books. Constructive negative reviews can be ore helpful than cotton candy reviews.
As far as I’m concerned, that’s why you have critique partners. If your crit partners don’t call your stuff out, they’re doing you a disservice.
Also, editors. Your agent. Your friends. Not strangers on the internet.
Critique partners, friends, etc., are more likely to want to be nice, and since these are people who associate with you, may not give a real-word representation in their view. Opinions on a good book are just that, and the fewer you have, the more skewed your results may be. I want to know what people outside my little sphere think as well.
A chef who can’t handle hearing that he’s using too much salt or a painter who can’t handle hearing that people are tired or quick cat sketches are likely to fail and not know why when accepting some honest reviews could have spared them. Maybe that chef’s friends like a lot of salt and that artist has a lot of friends who love cats. That is a very small sample for something with success based 100% on the opinions of others.
If you don’t want to read reviews of your work, then don’t. But a lot of people want to know what random people outside their personal circle think about their work. There is nothing wrong with this. For those who want to hear it, only seeing distilled and censored reviews won’t help.
You and I have VERY different crit partners, then, because mine tell me when I suck so I can fix it.
I just want to say that if your critique partner is afraid to give you honest criticism, s/he is not your critique partner. S/he is an audience.
I don’t subscribe to the theory that negative reviews either can/should contain constructive criticism. I mean, some do, don’t get me wrong. But it’s not their purpose. The purpose of a review is to express criticism in such a way that a like-minded reader will look at it and either say, “Hey, that sounds like the book for me,” or “hey, that’s a terrible book.” Occasionally, I’ll read something in a review of my own book that makes me go, “Hey, they’re right, I do use a lot of adverbs,” and maybe I’ll think about that the next time I’m writing, but it would be too difficult for me to sit down and go, “Okay, let’s learn from these reviews,” because too many of the negative points would have to do with personal preference, rather than craft or structure.
I mean, my very favorite bad review is a one star on GoodReads that just says “sucks.” It didn’t teach me anything. I can’t use it. But somehow I very much enjoying the idea of someone being so 100% meh on my book that they can’t come up with a decent review, because that was how much they just didn’t care for it. Something about that tickles my funny bone. But you find that there are more of those, “meh” negative reviews than any with useable concrit.
I guess what I’m saying here is that you can use negative reviews to learn, but you could also save yourself the time and save your ego a beating by just getting those same notes from a reliable critique partner who doesn’t tiptoe around your feelings.
Critique partners can only give you their opinion of the story as a whole. You can have several partners all pick out a few things that didn’t work for them, but still miss something that the wider viewing audience would get right away. Sometimes focusing on the small details can make you miss something not working in the big picture. Authors who crit for each other are not necessarily coming at it from the same place as a casual reader.
One should always consider one’s audience.
If I write a scientific paper, for example, I’m not going to give a shit about the opinion of some random person on the net who has no knowledge of the subject, because that’s not the audience.
And if I write a fanfic about Portal I’m not going to go to my professor for feedback.
If you write for your fanbase, listening to their feedback is important, but you need to keep in mind most people don’t know what they want.
They will say for example they want the two characters to get together, but if you give them what they ask for, and get rid of the sexual tension without any idea where to take the story afterwards, will they actually like that?
Or if they get mad for you making a character suffer, does it mean you shouldn’t have done it, or that you got the reaction out of them you wanted?
I disagree that a negative review of books is a negative review of the author. I have a post in draft mode I started yesterday about how, despite my two recent posts about the abuse in Fifty Shades and some problems with its portrayal of BDSM*, I am not speaking negatively of the author, and in fact defend her to an extent.
Likewise, there are some fantastic books written by jerkass authors. A lot of people love the fiction books penned by L. Ron Hubbard. But he also founded Scientology on a bet and people have died following the pseudo-religion (Lisa Peterson is a well-known case, though there is some really shady stuff surrounding Isaac Hayes’s death. So if a review of a book is a review of an author, then lots of anti-Scientology people secretly respect LRH as a person because of his work in the sci-fi genre.
Stephenie Meyer, despite her little bubble of a world, seems like a genuinely nice person. Granted, she’s been shielded from even the mildest of negative reviews by her brother (the degree of protection around that woman to make sure her world is all rainbows and cotton candy borders on scary), but still. Because of the men in her life controlling every aspect of it, she really may not see Edward’s control issues as negative. Despising her books doesn’t mean despising her.
As far as thinking you may come off like a make-believe expert, well, that is why you cite sources from people who know better than you. I’m not an expert on BDSM by any means, but when I wrote a post about BDSM (*the most recent post in my blog as of right now: http://alysbcohen.wordpress.com/ ), I cited sources. If I couldn’t find a source to back something up, be it a blog of someone in the Lifestyle or a website dedicated to safe practices, then I didn’t list it. Unless someone claims to be an expert, I think most reviews are taken with a grain of salt anyway these days.
Negatively reviewing is a waste of time? I think not. Those things that stand out to me so much that I find it worth my time to write are things I will be more aware of in my own writing. Also if writing a review is time spent away from writing, then I guess I’m doing a bad thing when I read Cracked for a couple hours instead of writing. We’ll get burned out of we spend every moment writing out own books.
Also the bigger the book, the thicker the skin, in my opinion. Review smaller books in a kinder way, but when something’s outselling the bible, all that money can buy armor for skin to shield them as they’re laughing their way to the bank to cash that big check while I’m balancing my budget to make room for new tires tat my truck MUST have before ice and snow starts.
If someone only writes glowing reviews, I’m not going to believe them anymore.
“Negatively reviewing is a waste of time? I think not. Those things that stand out to me so much that I find it worth my time to write are things I will be more aware of in my own writing.”
Yes, this! I find that critical reviews help me hone in on things that bug me in fiction and therefore I will make sure to avoid doing them myself. And, like Jenny, I also find that writing book reviews or blog posts occupies an entirely different part of my consciousness than writing fiction.
I think there are three exceptions to the “Never Say a Mean Thing” rule: E. L. James, Stephanie Meyer, and Dan Brown. I see authors, at all levels of success, pick on those three all the time. If I had to guess, the general idea is that they can go cry into their giant pile of money, if they get their feelings hurt.
When I am feeling particularly snarky, I tend to pick on Nicholas Sparks and Bret Easton Ellis. Usually? All it takes it cherry-picking their own quotes and then basking in the fact that I can just let the derp speak for itself. Sparks has compared himself Hemingway, Aeschylus, and Shakespeare in interviews. SHAKE. SPEARE. For real.
I agree with you on this so much, Jenny. I’ve said so many times on goodreads and my own blog – I kinda want the negative criticism. Not because I’m into making my self-esteem incredibly low, but because negatives have the most constructive arguments. ‘This scene didn’t work because …’ ‘Your character doesn’t fit here because …’ they’re the people engaging with your work and getting frustrated by the simple mistakes. How can anyone grow in their field if they don’t have the right feedback? If all someone wants is a cheerleader … well, maybe they should only stick to fan fiction.
Also, about you saying your blogging and snarling comes from a different place from your fiction writing, I do something similar. Sometimes, I can write and write, and some times I struggle. And when I can’t write, I read. I’m not stealing ideas, my story is so cemented in my head, but you’re giving the writing part of your brain the chance to rest and recreate. That’s why after a blog you come back better than ever.
Everyone compartmentalises after all. Like, the girl I am with my son is not the same as the girl I am with my friends or at work. And yet, being any one of those girls is no more beneficial than the other, I’m not going to screw my son over for work or vice versa just because I might get negative. If my son gets too energetic or my work gets too crazy then I just have to suck it up, that’s it, I can’t just leave my boy alone or walk off a shift because of negativity. Why is reviewing any different? It’s all there in people’s heads anyway.
As a librarian, it is my job to have a perpetual smile on my face and word things in the least offensive way possible. So, in my blog… I can be kind of a bitch. I TORE APART the movie The Lucky One in a humorous post. Did I harm Nicholas Sparks? Psh. No. There’s some woman romantically hitting him in the face right now and therefore already doing that. I did, however, decide not to create a book blog. I get too much entertainment from giving negatvie reviews. I get too passionate about the things that piss me off. Do not get me STARTED on the scene from It’s A Wonderful Life where Mary Bailey is… HORROR! A librarian. Fuck you Clarence. Fuck you and the pegasus you rode in on. I’m never ringing another bell, EVER.
My writting style tells me that I”m not the gal to write book reviews. I’m just not. I would be intentionally cruel for a giggle. However, if you don’t have that temperament already, I don’t think you have a responsibility to give good reviews or to put food on that author’s table. If writing isn’t for him, he should find another career.
Zac Efron made the Lucky One watchable.
I’ve read two Sparks books … Never again.
I’ve only read one. I did make it clear in the post, though, that I was critiquing the MOVIE. Only fair. I don’t know if I could even watch that one again for Zach Effron. Alcide Herveaux, though… I know he has a real name, but he’s always Alcide Herveaux.
[…] and non-prescriptive fashion. Chuck Wendig wrote an “anti-negative-review” opinion and Jenny Trout wrote the “pro-negative-review” rebuttal. You should go check out what they have to say […]
I like reading negative reviews. Even of the stuff I love. I like seeing how something mad someone so mad that they had to write a three page essay on just how wrong it was for them to read. I think they’re important to read. I feel that they help me to know what NOT to do.
I like writing negative reviews. I’m not published (not as an adult), but I do write. I feel that, if I can share my opinion, perhaps someone else will be able to come along and tell me what they did or didn’t like about something. I like how they start a dialogue.
For instance, in the sporking community I belong to over on LiveJournal, one of the sporkers is taking apart John Green’s “The Fault in Our Stars.” As a person, I like John Green. I love his vlog and the stuff that he says on Twitter. He seems like a great guy. But, as I started reading TFiOS, I grew angry with the fact that I was being told that I should like this character or that character just because he or she has cancer. There are good points in it, but there are also points of contention where I was left feeling more frustrated than saddened. Maybe it’s just because I’ve known so many people who had cancer. Maybe I’m not the target demographic (the sporker is part of the YA demographic).
My point is, just because I was angered by some of the stuff in TFiOS doesn’t mean I’ll never read anything by John Green ever again. I’ll go back and read “Looking For Alaska” because I’ve heard good things about it.
That doesn’t mean I won’t read (or watch) something that has BAD things said about it. I’ll read bad writing. If someone was angry enough to write a bad review about something, I’m usually intrigued, not turned away. I guess I’m like you. I just have to see how bad it really is for myself.
All that being said, I’m reminded of what fanfiction writers do when someone leaves them a bad review. Usually, it’s a rant about “don’t like, don’t read” or “everyone else likes this so, fuck you.” Those aren’t professional writers. They’re mostly teenagers who are still learning how to write effectively. So, when I see a terribly written fanfiction with over 100 reviews and only two of which are negative, I feel compelled to rip it apart. Not because of the two negative reviews, but because of the 100 or so other reviews that are praising the author.
I say: If it’s good tell me. But if it’s bad, tell me why. If it’s good, I don’t want anything spoiled. But if it’s bad, bring on the spoilers. Be as descriptive as possible. Prove to me why I shouldn’t give this author my money.
I agree with you. Author’s shouldn’t have to “Be Nice.” If something is bad, please tell me. I want to know if I shouldn’t waste my time with it or not. If that recommendation or criticism is coming from someone who writes things I like (like Stephen King saying that “Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn”), then good.
You keep talking about how much you hate your Blood Ties series. I finished the first book and can see where you went wrong, but that doesn’t mean I hate the books or you. I dislike certain aspects of it, yes, but that doesn’t mean I’ll never read anything else you write. I’ll certainly give Silent Surrender a chance. I’ll still read your blog posts. And why is that? Because I like you as a person. I’ve gotten to see part of your personality in this blog and through Twitter, and I like it. Like with John Green. I may not have liked TFiOS, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like him.
Negative reviews do not equal a personal attack.
I think I learned that from the critique sessions I had in college. I would have to do my assignment and stand next to it in front of the whole class and try to explain my vision to a group of people who might hate it. I quickly grew a thick skin and decided that everything being said had the possibility of helping me. I started carrying a sharpie with me during every critique and would write suggestions and critiques directly on my project. And it did help. Because I knew that those negative critiques were not an attack on me as a person.
I can say without a doubt that the only reason I found your work in this big wide world full of many reading possibilities is because of your recaps of 50 Shades. I’ll admit that I enjoyed the books, but in the same way that I enjoy a really bad movie or reality television. The writing was horrible and I wanted to see if other people had the same issues with SO MANY specific aspects of it, as I had. Hence, I found your blog. And I pretty much fell in love with your writing. Since then, I read the Boss, and could hardly wait to buy The Girlfriend. Having finished those ridiculously quick, I was feeling a romantic lit void in my life, and as such am reading the Boss again (after a wait period of only a few weeks! Sad, maybe, but I really did fall in love with the characters you created, and the sex scenes are legitimately very hot and worth emulating, unlike 50 Shades. My husband thanks you, too). I guess what I’m trying to say is I really enjoy your writing. Perhaps if 50 Shades is due any credit, its exposed readers such as myself to your work, which I would otherwise not know. So in that regard, I definitely disagree with Mr Wendig on the value of bad reviews. Through your reviewing and the subsequently reading of your books, I’ve realized how much I enjoy good erotic literature, a genre I previously had largely avoided. So please keep reviewing, and I will continue to happily indulge in your excellent writing, both blog and novel!
The problem with this “Be Nice” philosophy is that it’s turning into a law that a certain sect of authors think ALL reviewers, even their audience, must follow. And when the reviewers don’t follow it, they think it’s appropriate to bully those reviewers into silence.
I’m never going to agree with a philosophy that suggest critique itself is best left to a certain group of people or that it is somehow mean, or that it reflects badly on someone to critique. I understand that there’s a public nature of this discourse that pushes authors into feeling shame and then defensiveness, but silence is often taken for support, so merely being nice or saying nothing at all still suggests that a community has taken a side, so to speak.
Also, frankly, I do think less of authors who say nothing or worse give apologias when their author friends respond badly to critiques about -isms, so. I really don’t want to read books from Cassandra Claire’s author friends, even though they probably are written better.
I tend to go with the ‘If you cant’ say anything nice, don’t say anything’ philosophy because people often take criticism of a work as a personal attack. I respect the way Jenny handles negative comments on her blogs, she has a fairly mature approach to things in my opinion.
However, I think if somone put something out in the public domain, they have to be willing to accept the negative with the positive. Not everyone is going to like everything. Should people speak up and say what they didn’t like – why not? I read a scathing review of “The Great Gatsby’ movie and that prompted me to go and see it. The reviewer compared it to a number of other movies by Baz Luhrman, saying all of them were terrible. I happened to really enjoy those other movies so I figured I’d like Gatsby as well.
Reviews are a guide. The ones that outline why someone likes/hates the work I find very informative for my own decision making. A rave review that compares it favourable to something I hate is just as likely to make me not go ahead as a negative review.
i’ve been paid to write fiction before and I also write reviews of stuff, so this struck chords with me.
– reviews serve different purposes. An article designed to help others decide if a book or a film is for them or of interest to them can be rather different from one that offers criticism (by criticism I mean analysis, offering a particular reading, etc, of course). Wendig might be unhelpfully conflating the two.
– there are so many books being written and published. I’m not convinced that every single one of them needs to be. Writing as a creative outlet is great, but not every piece of writing needs to be published, and not every author deserves to make their living from it. That sounds mean in itself but it’s not meant to be. I’m not saying ‘only the elite of really good writers deserve to be published’. By all means, writers should keep going, keeping going will improve most people’s work. But there should be a level of awareness about the actual, objective quality of the work and of the state of the market.
– creating a bubble of nice positive feedback only does nothing to actually help authors achieve that awareness. What everyone else said about constructive criticism being the only sort of response that helps you get better. Just being told ‘that’s great!’ will encourage you to make the same mistakes.
– saying ‘this is shit’ is bad reviewing just as much as ‘this is awesome!’. You need to say why, either way. Once you say why, you allow debate.
– If someone says nice things about something that is bad, for the sake of not being mean, I will never take that reviewer’s recommendations seriously again. So the reviewer who is nice for the sake of nice is potentially costing the authors they review sales, cos no one trusts them. Sorry, Wendig – you being nice about someone now means I’m less likely to buy their books.
– people who can’t understand the difference between criticism of their work and attacks on themselves are likely to be people who aren’t mature enough to be good writers.
As a reader I find reviewers that only post positive reviews essentially useless because I can’t tell what their standards are. How can I trust you to tell me whether a book is any good if as far as I can tell you like everything you read? I’ll read reviewers that have different tastes than me, but I won’t read reviewers who’s tastes are indecipherable.
I’m also much more likely to buy the books of someone who writes well thought out negative reviews, as I expect an author who can ruthlessly take apart the work of others to apply that same ruthlessness to their own work and be a better writer as a result.
As someone who has worked in a creative field off and on for the past 20 years, criticism is just part of the scene. Not everyone is going to hate or love your work, and if you can’t accept the criticism, perhaps you should be in an entirely different field! Positive or negative, it should be looked at from several different perspectives and then used as a way to move forward and develop. I’m tired of the “everyone wins an award” mentality. We’ve become too politically correct on every account.
As far as a negative review from an author–if they are a good writer, I could care less if they have left a negative review for someone else. Aren’t they entitled to an opinion too? I personally love your whole “50 Shades” gig, you have pointed out things that are wrong with these books that I didn’t even notice. Just because there are so many people who have jumped on the lovin’ it bandwagon doesn’t make it “War and Peace”. It is badly written from so many standpoints. As I told a friend–“if it weren’t for Jenny and her great recaps, I would probably have read it, with red pen in hand, and corrected it as I read.” And cringed a lot as well.
If it weren’t for your 50 Shades reviews, I wouldn’t have discovered your writing, and would have missed out on reading “The Boss” and “The Girlfriend”–both books I love, and I don’t usually read that genre!
[…] Authors and negative reviews – So does Jenny Trout, aka Jennifer Armintrout. You know, the author who skewered the Fifty Shades books. […]
As someone who has written plenty of negative reviews, I think the important thing to remember is that “reviews are for readers.” So when I read a negative review from someone else, I want to see specifics regarding what they didn’t like in a book — the writing style? the anachronisms if it’s historical? the plot holes? the characterization? or what the book seems to be trying to say? Because those are the things that will make me decide if the book might be for me, even if it wasn’t for that particular reviewer. And I’ve read quite a lot of books because I was intrigued by very bad reviews. (Sadly for those authors, I’m a library person, so I’m not putting much money in their pockets. But I do read their books and then talk about them!) For instance, I have “September Girls”, by Bennett Madison, close to the top of my to-read list precisely because of the many vehement one-star reviews over on Goodreads.
The fact is that different people are going to see different things in any book — things the author put there deliberately, and things s/he did not. And it’s valuable to all of us to be able to point out what we find and honestly discuss our reactions. It’s not like there’s any such thing as “the perfect book” with which no one can find fault. I completely expect readers to find objectionable material, worldviews, metaphors, etc. in my own books, should they ever get published.
When reviews step into the territory of slagging the author rather than the book (see: so, so many Cassandra Clare haters), then I have a problem. Let’s leave the personal vendettas out of the book talk. But otherwise, knowing what people hate about a book is just as valuable to me as knowing what they love.
And Jen! When I started your 50 Shades reviews lo these many months ago (May 2012), I emailed you and you replied — and I was so very thrilled to hear from you! I had no idea things were so bad for you at the time. So this is just to let you know that you really made my week back then, and the exchange still makes me smile. 🙂
[…] read another great post about this subject on Jenny Trout’s blog – Authors and Negative Reviews. I pretty much agree with everything she said there, so go read it and tell her how great she is. […]
I’m not published (yet) but I’ve been writing fanfic for close to twenty years now (and now I feel old), and I’ve learned to appreciate both the negative and positive reviews. So long as they actually have some substance to them. Love it? Tell me why. Hate it, and want to burn it to the ground? Again, why? Just telling me that something I wrote sucks isn’t going to help me make it suck less. But, if you tell me, “Hey, I’ve got an issue with this particular aspect, and this is why,” then I can look at my writing and think, “You know, they’re right. I can do this better.”
And from a reader standpoint, negative reviews are like flames to a moth, sometimes. The whole reason I checked out Twilight and 50 Shades was because I’d read so much about how utterly bad they were, and I had to check it out for myself. And then I had to share the horror with others. Negative reviews giving free publicity to bad authors.
But if I read something because of the negative reviews, and then I discover that I loved it, well I’m going to recommend the shit out of that book to everyone I know.
It may just be me, but I have always considered the “Be Nice” mentality to be a very privileged thing and I find most of the people who espouse it are straight white men, Chuck Wendig being a perfect example.
While I personally have nothing against Wendig and nearly everything I’ve heard about him seems to indicate he is lovely bloke with a lot of useful advice for writing, I have read exactly one of his books and it was honestly one of the worst books I have read in the past five years. Blackbirds, as it is called, is about a woman called Miriam Black who can see how people die when she touches them. It looked interesting and it had a really awesome cover. I could tell you about how boring it was, how thin the plot was, how it was padded out with tedious Meaningful Dreams, how the protagonist seemed reactive rather than proactive in regards to the plot, but honestly my main problem was thus:
The constant and casual misogyny, homophobia and ableism, most of which came from the protagonist’s mouth.
I am a queer woman with a mental disorder. That is an identity that does not disappear when I read. So when I read something like Blackbirds, I don’t care who the author is, I just want to make damn sure as many people as I can convince avoid this book. I have told everybody I know to avoid this book. If I am talking about books with people, I will always mention Blackbirds and tell them to skip it. And I always tell them why – because this book hurt me. I was looking for entertainment and I found an unwarranted, stark reminder that society believes me to be worth less.
I can’t “Be Nice” when a book does that and I want to save other people from that hurt. I don’t care if you are the biggest author or the smallest, I will call you out on your shit as publicly as fucking possible, and I don’t care if it costs you readers.
I know that isn’t the case with every book and I am well aware that this is simply Wendig’s opinion and he isn’t advocating that anyone censor themselves if they don’t wish to. I simply believe as no one has to time to read every book, I want to know someone’s honest opinion, so I know whether I should invest my time and money into it. I also think authors reviewing books frankly to be a good thing. To pull an example from my arse: if Terry Pratchett likes a book, there is a good chance I will like it; if Stephenie Meyer does not like a book, there is a fair chance I will enjoy it.
Sorry if this was off-topic or rambling.
Long time lurker. Just wanted to post to say please never ever consider suicide again. You mean more to people than you will ever know.
All the best to you!
Jen, I second krissy. I had no idea you were feeling that way at the beginning. I could tell you that your family and your IRL friends love you, but you already know that; so I’ll add that if you were to committ suicide, a random girl on a far away land (this would be me, in Italy) would cry.
We love you, Jen! ^__^
I read Chuck’s post and then yours and I come away with – first and foremost – what in the FUCK doesnYMMV mean?!
I had other thoughts, of course, but this was all I could think about upon finishing. Maybe after I find out I’ll re-read and come away with a worthwhile primary thought.
I really hate the acronyms.
IDK about you, but Your Mileage May Vary. Or Very if you are on Facebook, LOL. 😉
I’m sorry, this is off-topic, but can I just say how much I love the fact that Chuck came here and commented and how incredibly civil and friendly and sensible you’re both being? It’s just SO nice to see in this era of internet mud-slinging (and I’m fans of both of you, so it was doubly nice in that way). 🙂
[…] I’ve been mulling things over after reading Jenny Trout’s Blog about the “Be Nice” vein beating away in the body of Writing for Masses. For those not […]
1. i seriously love reading your blog.
2. every other job out there has some sort of performance review, whether it’s a formal annual thing with your boss or it’s your customers not leaving a tip. i don’t understand why anyone would think that their profession is the exception to this. you can actually harm someone by not stating your honest opinion of their work. making mistakes is how we learn. but how can an author learn if they don’t realize that they’re making mistakes in the first place? i’m sure every successful author out there has one or two books they wrote at the start of their career that they hide in the darkest part of their attic because they are so ashamed that they wrote such an awful thing. but they had people who gave them honest reviews and they got better. no one should expect that their first book will be an amazing bestseller. sometimes it happens but not often. read your negative reviews as well as your positive ones. learn what does and does not work in your books. then take that advice and write something new. i feel that this is even more important with the flood of self-published ebooks that has come our way. if you truly want to get in this writing game, learn to take criticism. if you can’t handle it, keep your writing to yourself.
also: if you’re crappy at your job in the real world, you get fired. that tends to make you lose money. if you’re crappy at your job in the publishing world, you should also get fired.
I read Blood Ties, and yes, it was a pretty fucked up world, but that was kind of the point for me. If it wasn’t, who wouldn’t want to be a vampire? Not everything is pretty, and sometimes the best stories come out of people struggling with fucked up worlds, and sometimes doing the right things, and sometimes not. Perfect heroes, or heroes whose flaws and mistakes are trivial and have no lasting impact are a dime a dozen.
I also liked American Vampire for similar reasons. The faerie series, eh, not so much. I had a hard time relating to or developing an empathy for the characters.
But I think you shouldn’t be afraid to build worlds and characters that are seriously flawed, fucked up even. I’m reminded of the rape at the beginning of Mad Max, I know a lot of people found it gratuitous, but for me it was an ice cold plunge into the realization of just how fucked up that world was, and how big a sacrifice some were willing to give in order that the rest of that settlement would have a shot at survival.
THIS. This is one of the reasons I love the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series so much. It has a lot of elements that make me feel uncomfortable while I’m reading it, but the world is basically a fantasy version of an era where all that problematic shit happened in brimming abundance. If George R. R. Martin had created a medieval-based fantasy world where everything was hunky dory and no one had to face the shittiness of sexism, classism, racism, ablism, (insert brand of awful here), etc. it would feel trite and contrived to me.
[…] critical or negative reviews. And then, when I was reading at Jenny Trout’s website, another blog post dealing with the same […]
Adventure time IS awesome!
And I think you hit the nail on the head here. It seems that some of these authors see the readers as little more than wallets with eyeballs.
I put a poll on my blog to try and get some data on how readers percieve negative reviews.