One of the great beauties of the World Wide Web is that it gives all of us an opportunity to behave badly in a public and indelible way. No longer are our misdeeds restricted to the sloppy memories of inattentive friends and family. "Do you remember when she did that?" "Oh, I heard something different. Hey, where did you get those totally cute shoes?"
So, if your friends are simply too negligent to keep track of your bad behavior, there are dedicated souls somewhere on the World Wide Web who will invest the time to be properly shocked. These gallant deeds result in what is called a kerfuffle or perhaps a brouhaha. (Fancy people call them contretemps.) Often shenanigans is thrown in. Kerfuffle is nice because it makes you think of a chocolate and popcorn snack, but brouhaha is better for colder weather: "Come sit by the hearth and I'll fetch ya a nice steaming bowl of brouhaha."
What was I saying? Oh, yeah, bad behavior. Lately authors have been accused of acting badly by actually reading their reviews and commenting on them. And also harassing the reviewers. And even, gasp!, rating their own books with five-stars on Goodreads and telling fans and friends to "like" good reviews. Sensitive people have been having conniptions and the vapors.
But the World Wide Web has room enough for bad behavior from everyone, even corporations because, corporations, my friend, are bad-behaving, data-mining people, too. This bad behavior seems to flare up more with YA fiction. Which is to say, females who love books are ganging up against other females who love books.
The latest brouhaha concerns Agent #1 who read a negative review of her author's hugely hyped book on Goodreads. Agent #1 posted who's-this-bitch! messages to her author and then summoned forces to troll the reviewer's blog and Goodreads review. The reviewer, quite popular because she is a terrific reviewer (one of my personal fave's), was justifiably offended. The reviewer kept her cool, but her readers and the author's fans went at each other, and there was a lot of virtual hairpulling and shrieking.
A fandango of hootenanyesque proportions erupted about a bad review of Julie Cross's The Tempest. The Book Pushers (having severe banner envy!) has a rundown of this calamity.
It's nice to think authors can control the behavior of their agents or should speak out publicly against an agent's bad behavior, but ha ha ha ha. If you think your employers have behaved badly, do you post an apology to the customers on the World Wide Web? Try that and tell me how it works out for you.
A lot of readers and bloggers claim that sites like Goodreads and Amazon are there for readers, not authors. They are wrong. Goodreads and Amazon are there for profits. Let me repeat that: Goodreads and Amazon's sole purpose is to make profits.
A major component of their business models is to acquire valuable content for free from reviewers and readers. There's a reason that neither site has a "no star" rating. There's a reason that the day a controversial book is published on Amazon, it will have hundreds of five-star and one-star reviews by people who have not read the book. There's a reason people can rate a book on Goodreads that isn't even available as an ARC.
And there's a reason Goodreads wants members to tweet and post to Facebook (can we say "face recognition technology" anyone?) directly from their site and to take polls and answer questionnaires. This is a vast data-mining operation and you can be sure that the company is going to make the big bucks selling the data. Amazon isn't interested in offering a public service. Amazon is interested in selling products.
I am appalled at the agent who went after the reviewer. It's one bad review. A few (or even many) bad reviews aren't going to destroy an author's career. Pride and Prejudice has over 14,000 one-star reviews at Goodreads. I especially like this one: "For several pages a lady remarks to a man about what wonderful handwriting he has. Not exactly gripping material." This is also fun. "I know I'm supposed to like Elizabeth, but she just talks smack the entire novel."
Isn't it fun reading that people slam my books, especially because I think I'm so clever? Yes!
Which is to say, bad reviews are part of the fun.
Do I draw lines on bad behavior? Yes, I do not like when authors, reviewers or agents personally attack another. I know of an author who gave out a reviewer's home address and children's names and I think that is horrible and unforgivable. I do not like the anonymous trolls, or readers who start calling each other bitch, and confirming the worst opinions of female behavior as backbiting, sneaky, and conniving.
I am annoyed by 1) authors acting like anyone who doesn't like their books should be punished; 2) bloggers acting like their reviews shouldn't be read by authors on the aforementioned world wide web; 3) readers acting like authors should be role models instead of writers; and 4) agents acting like psychotic helicopter moms for their authors.
More later this week.
GRATUITOUS VIDEOS OF THE DAY
The theme is bad behavior. Bad, wrong, evil. I like this Supernatural tribute, but I can't embed it, but this is good, too.
