Tagged: author drama
Discussion: Author Drama
It’s sort of known that in the book blogging community, at one time or another you are going to have author drama. You can be the nicest, sweetest, most agreeable person ever and an author is pretty much guaranteed to attack you for one perceived slight or another. It’s unfortunately inevitable, particularly if you’re like me and accept books from self-published authors, who are disproportionately responsible for author drama. You can read of my experience with one such person here.
What I want to know is this: Have you, as a book blogger ever experienced author drama? What happened? Or, if you’re an author that does book reviews, have you ever been attacked by a fellow author? Or, somewhat worse, if you’re an author that doesn’t review books have you ever been attacked by another author for a different reason?
Don’t name names here if you’re not comfortable doing so but I’d appreciate it if everyone would share their experiences. The majority of author-blogger interactions are perfectly fine and even friendly but sometimes bad eggs crop up. It’s unfortunately part of reviewing books online and I in no way mean to insinuate that only authors initiate drama; plenty of book reviewers do the exact same thing.
The Best and Worst of August 2013
It’s hard to believe August and therefore summer are over. Here in Saskatchewan we had absolutely miserable weather for 3/4s of the summer and it’s only really been nice these past two, maybe three weeks. Oh well, that’s life I guess.
Anyway, August was a bit of a hectic month for me. Life-related things took over so I didn’t get as many books reviewed as I would have liked, an author suggested I kill myself and I ran a few giveaways. August was also my second most successful month in overall statistics since I reached 6,545 views with 3,899 unique views. That’s pretty good for me, especially considering that I just reached my 500 follower milestone. I hope to hit my 500 review milestone this year as well!
But what were my most popular posts this month? Let’s take a look at the statistics:
1. The Day an Author Suggested I Kill Myself
2. Why Girls Hate Game of Thrones—A Rebuttal
3. The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome
4. The Ugly Side of Book Blogging: A Particularly Bad Example
5. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton
None of these are a surprise, especially the first one. The reaction from the book blogging community to that particular incident was both swift and relatively severe. I know it inspired a lot of fellow bloggers to start ‘do not read’ lists, which is good considering what the author did. I’ll just leave it at that. The other posts are either old favourites, ones with good SEO **coughGOTcough** or ones to do with my little author trouble. None of the ones appearing on this list are surprising in the least.
So what were my worst posts this month, you ask? Well:
1. Just Thought You’d Like to Know
2. The Mad Reviewer is Open for Submissions
3. Mary, Bloody Mary by Carolyn Meyer
4. The Princess, The Crone and the Dung-Cart Knight by Gerald Morris
5. The Surprising Benefits of Book Reviewing
Really, there are no surprises here either. These posts are either really dated like the first one back when I celebrated my 50th review or are just unpopular books. It’s too bad since the two books on here are good, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. Seeing as no book/post is on the 5 worst list every month I won’t lose any sleep over it.
That’s how my August was. How was yours? How did you enjoy the summer? Was it warm where you live? Did you find any good books?
My New Review Request Policy
As anyone who’s been on my blog for the past three days knows, I had a bit of a nasty incident when an author reacted badly to my refusal to review his book. Even though in my review policy it says in bold letters I am closed for business. The fact that he wanted a review despite this policy is not unusual, but his over-the-top reaction was definitely unusual. For that I’m thankful.
However, this incident and the drama that has resulted because of it (partly my own fault, but still) has made me re-examine how and when I accept book review requests. Do I really want this kind of drama anytime soon when my health is getting worse and I’m working six day weeks? The short answer: No.
That’s why I’m going to do one thing for sure and see how it works and depending on the results I may do one of several things:
I AM COMPLETELY CLOSING THE DOORS TO ANY UNSOLICITED REVIEW REQUESTS (BOTH PUBLISHERS AND AUTHORS) UNTIL 2014.
Yes, this can be perceived as letting the bad authors win and letting good authors suffer. The latter will certainly happen as I know I’m one of the more self-publishing friendly book blogs out there. Yes, good authors will suffer because of my policy and I will be limiting myself because I will not be finding good books that I otherwise may have stumbled upon. At this point, I frankly don’t care. Book blogging has always been and likely will always be a hobby for me and when a hobby stops being fun it quickly becomes work.
Now, depending on how fast I get through my backlog and whether any further drama results out of this recent incident or future incidents, I may do one of several things:
1. Reopen submissions once I clear my backlog and write a disclaimer on my review policy that I reserve the right to refuse or accept requests for any reasons, not limited to my level of interest, how busy I am, book length, the phase of the moon, etc.
2. Finally take Mark Lee up on his offer to work as part of The Masquerade Crew and have someone else handle all author book review requests and any attached drama. This means that I won’t be dealing with authors firsthand which can be a blessing in certain circumstances, but also a pitfall because I love most authors.
3. Steal The Masquerade Crew’s idea and have open submission weeks where only one genre is able to submit. After I’ve finished reading all the books submitted in that limited period of time, I’ll have a submissions call for books of another genre and so on and so forth. Either that or have one week every quarter where anyone within my review criteria can submit. The idea here is to limit the number of submissions.
4. Permanently close review requests and only seek out authors whose books I feel I will like or old authors whose books I’m pretty certain I will like. This appeals to me because of the level of control I have, but I know I’ll be missing out on a lot of good books out there.
5. Reopen requests in the fall like I had planned but write a pillar post in which I politely explain why ignoring review policy criteria is a great way to get rejected and that it’s the author’s fault for such a rejection.
In truth, I may do one of these to the letter or combine several of them to create a strategy that works for me. But until then, my review requests are completely closed.