Over at The Book Pushers they’re talking about writers and reviewers. The post author found a rant about rating books on Goodreads. Among other things the ranter said:
1. Positive reviews are okay but never rate books on GoodReads unless it’s 5 stars, even if you didn’t like it that much.
2. Authors are liars.
3. Authors hate GoodReads. And never go there. Except when they do. In which case they get angry.
4. Bad reviews=lack of word of mouth=lack of sales.
5. Even if you rate a book 4 stars authors will look at your profile, see what your average is on books then get mad if you don’t like their book above the average. Then they’ll go through all your books to see which ones you liked at 5 stars and sit around wondering why you liked those and not theirs.
6. If you ever want to be published you should never rate books on GoodReads.
Which earns a great big gigantic WTF from me.
My GoodReads star average is 3.81, which translates to most of the books I read being closer to “I really liked it” than “I liked it”. But for this author that isn’t good enough. Clearly it’s 5 or star or nothing. Sorry babe, but you just aren’t that special. But don’t take it personal, most people aren’t that special because I reserve my 4 stars for books that I think should be required reading. Most books don’t get there. Even the really good fun ones that I recommend to everyone.
And I know a lot of authors who are active on GoodReads, because I know a lot of authors who read period and love sharing the books they adored. They like hosting giveaways, putting up samples, and very rarely do they read (or admit to reading) review of their books. I sometimes go and like all the reviews of my book, without reading them. Heck, sometimes I read them, like last week when I was redoing my website and looking for a small handful of blurbs to accompany certain book pages.
But most authors I know also know reviews are opinions, and they have little to do with us and everything to do with the person writing them. If you can’t stay like steel you don’t read them. Period. You don’t troll reader sites looking for reasons to hate people or be angry.
Plus, bad reviews do not equal lack of sales. Bad reviews can and do sell books. Bad reviews are word of mouth. No reviews = no word of mouth. Apathy is a far worse thing than people hating your work.
I have to ask, what author has the time to dig through the other books a reader has liked or not and compare their own book to it? Who does that? Shouldn’t you, I don’t know, be writing? Or hanging out with your family? Or hell, playing Farmville is more productive and more fun. So why waste time on that? and the truth is, people don’t. Some people might, but the big people, the majority of people, even authorly people just don’t give a flying fuck.
You win some, you lose some. No one likes your book universally and if all you’re getting is 5 star reviews then people are blowing smoke up your ass and don’t care enough to give you an honest opinion. If you don’t get honest feedback you can’t push yourself and GET BETTER.
Finally, Stacia Kane had a point when she blogged about this and pointed out that you have to be careful because once you become established as either a writer or reviewer people start taking your opinion differently. They add more weight to it.
Also, once you’re published you never know where your work will end up. Editors and agents will ask for blurbs and reviews on your behalf, and yeah, it’s human nature that if you’ve trashed a few authors in your travels they might not want to spend their time trying to help sell your book. (By the way the same is true of booksellers and your fellow readers. Spend all your time snarking about them, or being rude and the next time someone asked them about a book they just might say “I haven’t heard of it” or “I didn’t like it/heard it wasn’t great” instead of gushing about it.)
You do have to think about what you’re doing and consider if running a snark blog is worth generating some ill will. Whether you believe in that bad review completely or whether you’re just being petty, or clever. Whether you’re willing to take the fallout if people take your opinion wrong, or it pisses them off, or whether there are better places to vent.
You absolutely can be a reviewer and a writer. Many people have done it. Pick up a copy of Publishers Weekly and thumb to the reviews and look at their list of reviewers. Many of the reviewers over at Monster Librarian are authors too.
It can happen, if it’s something you keep professional and something you consider the ramifications of before hand. Most authors just don’t have the time to do both. Or the desire.
But be careful in implying one cannot be the other, because it’s very close to saying that author shouldn’t be readers and I can think of no better way to kill the art of writing than that.
