On Bad Behavior and Author Tantrums: Why It's Bad for the Indie Writer Community (or I Bet You Think This Post Is About You) (an IWSG post)

I live with a fairly harsh critic. Food critic, that is. She's hard to please when it comes to what she wants to eat. She's always been that way, my daughter. The boys were always pretty easy, but, when my daughter was a baby, we'd spend an hour, easy, just trying to find something that she was willing to eat when she was hungry. Talk about a nightmare! We were so glad when she learned to talk and could tell us what she wanted.

The problem, these days, is that the dinner selection most nights is pretty narrow. As my wife says, "A hunk of meat and some vegetables." If my daughter was rating dinners at our house, most nights would get one star from her. In response, I work with her as much as possible to make her school lunches interesting for her. [On the other hand, the boys take the same thing every day and are more than happy with it.] It's a small price to pay and works a lot better than me throwing a tantrum at her every night because she doesn't want to eat what I cooked.

I've known those parents, by the way. The ones that yell at their kids if they don't want to eat dinner. "This is perfectly good food, and you will eat it!" Or something like that. It makes the kids scared to voice their opinion... even when asked.

And that goes for readers.

But let's look at book bloggers, first. If you travel around to the blogs of book bloggers and take a look at the ones who will not review indie books (which is most of them), you will find two reasons repeated across most of the blogs:

1. The books aren't very good.

2. If you say the books aren't very good, you get attacked by the authors for saying it.

Basically, an author approaches a book blogger and says, "Hey, would you be willing to review my book."

The blogger says, "Yes, but it will be an honest review."

The author says, "Oh, yes, of course! That's what I want! An honest review!"

When the blogger gives the book a 1- or 2-star rating, the author explodes, "How could you do that to my book? My book is awesome! You're just stupid and didn't get it!"

Sometimes it's not actually the author but a friend of the author "sticking up" for his/her friend, but it amounts to the same thing.

From experience, I'm going to say that this happens a lot. I'm guessing I've done about 40 reviews of indie books at this point (no, I'm not going back to count), and I've had that response at least half a dozen times, now. That's significant. It's even more significant if you reduce the overall number from books I've reviewed to authors I've reviewed, which is a considerably smaller number.

And, then, maybe it makes sense as to why readers tend to stay away from indie books. When the author of the book attacks you for a negative review, it makes sense to stay away from that author. Unfortunately, it also makes sense to stay away from all of those indie authors (because traditionally published authors don't tend to attack reviews in the comment section on Amazon (maybe that's because the publishers keep a rein on the authors and prevent them from doing that, I don't know)); you can't tell which ones haven't grown up enough to not act like a 3rd grader over a negative review.

Of course, the whole thing can be even worse if you are another indie author, because many of these tantrum throwing authors will retaliate for perceived bad reviews by seeking revenge against you through the giving of fake, 1-star reviews, including getting their friends and/or family to join in "the cause" of giving that guy "a taste of his own medicine."

And, yes, this is a situation I'm going through, right now, as you know if you follow my blog. The author in question, along with his sister, have been fairly free about 1-starring everything I've published and bashing the cover art done by the talented Rusty Webb. What we'll call the drama around this situation prompted Tony Laplume to ask me "why?" Why review books at all if it leads to situations like this one? I think that's a very good question, because the whole thing seems... well, let's just say it's a minefield, and there's no way through it without setting some of them off.

I think there are three main reasons why indie authors need to step up and give honest reviews to their fellow indie authors:

1. It helps to legitimize the field of indie publishing. Right now, the general view from the outside is that indie writers are all busy shining each other's crap and saying how good it is. Basically, we all go around giving each other 5-stars on our books no matter how bad they are, so you can't trust indie writers. [This is, by the way, the point of contention between me and the other author. He believes that all indie authors (or, at least, the ones who are his friends) deserve the automatic 5-star rating because, in his words, "selling books is fucking hard."] However, when indie authors will step and give real, actual, honest reviews, it shows readers they can trust the field in general. Honest reviews are good for everyone.
2. Following that, it's good for the readers. Your readers deserve to be able to scan through reviews, if they so wish, and use them to reliably choose a book they think they will like. When the reviews are all gushing, fake, 5-star reviews, the reader gets gypped and chooses to not by more indie books. Also, giving the honest review can shine a light on tantrum-throwing authors. Invariably, tantrum-throwing authors attack the reviews in the comments. For readers who use reviews to help choose books, that can serve as a warning of which authors to stay away from. It a lot of ways, it's better for you, as an indie author, to be attacked than an unsuspecting reader.
3. Finally, it benefits you, as a fellow author. If you review one of your friend's books with a less than stellar review and s/he turns into a green rage machine and unfriends you and... well, it can be all kinds of things that happen after that, you will find out who your friends actually are and who of them are just using you because they think they can weasel some good reviews out of you. You don't need those people. Honestly, you don't.

I'm not going to say this is an easy thing to do. It can be especially difficult to just sit and take it. I mean, I want to go and refute every one of those fake reviews posted by Dilloway's sister. I want to do that. But I'm not going to. It looks bad. As I said, readers need to feel safe, and they need to feel safe to leave negative reviews if they so desire and, even though her reviews are fake, if I go and comment, it will look like I'm one of those authors who will go after people for leaving negative reviews. As indie authors, the best thing we can do is support each other in leaving actual, honest reviews and, more importantly, support each other in taking actual, honest reviews.

And, you know, stand up to the bullies who will use their power to retaliate against you with 1-star reviews. There are things you can do together to make what they're doing meaningless. But that's another post... or you can just email me to find out what you can do to help.

It's Time For You To Grow Up (part 1) (an IWSG post)

Let's start with a story:

My wife is a data analyst. It's a job that requires some math skills. Not a lot. Not like calculus or trig or, even, all that much algebra, but it does require some maths. There's a lot of working with percentages and fractions. There are a few months each year when her job is really busy and requires lots of overtime. Last year, not long before the rush, one of the people in her department retired. Like any good company, to get through the busy time, they hired a temp. A temp with the potential to stay on. That was rather than hire someone permanent for the position at the point when they still had time to do that and provide adequate training, but that's another story entirely.

Now, the temp they hired seemed qualified for the job, which was not the full job, just some of the lower level routine stuff that required a lot of time. She looked qualified on paper, anyway, and got through all of the interviews and stuff. However, when it came time to do the job, she couldn't math. At all. It was almost immediately apparent that she wasn't going to work out, and there was still time to hire someone else. But, guess what, that's not what happened.

What happened is that they kept her on. The initial hope, I think, was that if they kept working with her that maybe she would "get it" and be able to do the job they hired her to do. But, no, that didn't happen. She never "got it" and, in fact, for a while, she made more work for everyone as she continued to not get it, because she would spend time doing a task (more time than it should have taken) and, then, someone else (usually my wife) would have to go back and re-do the task because it hadn't been done correctly. Eventually, after weeks of this, she became a kind of glorified filing clerk, because that's the only thing she could do.

I want to point out at this point that she was, as my wife put it, "a perfectly nice person, very sweet." She liked her. Everyone liked her. There was no one that thought she was a bad person or a dumb person or anything like that. But she couldn't do the job. And, yet, the people who should have told her that she couldn't do the job were unwilling to do their job of letting her know that she wasn't working out. Nothing positive came out of the situation.
1. It created more work for everyone involved.
2. It caused the marginalization of the temp as they looked for tasks to keep her busy because they couldn't give her any real work.
3. It created a false sense of hope in the temp as the message she received was, "you're doing fine," even though everyone knew that wasn't the case. But, you know, they kept her on, so she must have been doing something right, right? No...
4. It caused resentment toward the people who should have stepped in and said, "Hey, you're not ready for this work, yet. We need to let you go and find someone else." And, maybe, she never would be ready for it or, maybe, she just needed to get reacquainted with her math skills. No one will ever know, because no one ever told her that she wasn't doing the job. They just kept decreasing the level of the tasks given to her.
5. She was never told in what way she failed at the job. When the time was up on the job, they just didn't retain her. There was never any feedback on what she could have done to be kept on.

And, see, that's the real issue. No one ever told her what she was "failing" at, so she never knew what to get better at. Well, other than my wife explaining the same errors to her everyday, to which she would always reply, "Got it!" in a way that seemed the first few times that she really had gotten it. But that, having a coworker try to show you what you're doing incorrectly, is not quite the same as having your superior, the person who has the ability to tell you they need to let you go, sit you down and explain to you where you're not meeting expectations.

See, no one wanted to be the one to hurt her feelings.

Wow.

So I'm just going to say this:
Screw your feelings.
And, yes, that sounds more harsh than I really mean it, but, still, screw your feelings.

The problem is twofold:
1. Indie writers who hold their friendship for you hostage in order to get good reviews.

And, man, have I run into this one. I've lost count of the number of "friends" I've lost over negative reviews, but I'll just say this: If our "friendship" is conditional upon me saying that I like what you write, then we have no friendship. If I can't say to you, "You know, I don't like this one," without you yelling, "Well, you're not my friend," then we're already not friends. Or, likewise, if I can't say that about something some friend of yours wrote. It's the same thing. All I have for you is this:

It's time for you to grow up.

2. Indie authors who are unwilling to give honest reviews to their friends because they are scared of losing their friendships.

I know you "think" you're supporting your "friends" by giving them positive reviews of their not-better-than-average books, but, really, you're just making it harder on everyone, yourselves included. Every 5-star rating you throw out there that should have been a 3 or a 2 or, even, a 1 is destroying the credibility of the indie book market in general. You know how I know? Because I see it said repeatedly by book reviewers who refuse to review indie books and by readers who will not buy indie books (sure, they'll download free stuff because who cares if it's free). They see all the false positive reviews out there and have learned that you can't trust indie authors. I'm sorry, but the fact that you are out there lying (because you are lying) about the quality of your "friends'" books is making my job more difficult. And, you know, it's encouraging them to continue to write the same crappy stuff rather than working on getting better. What I have for you is this:

It's time for you to grow up.

 Here's the thing, people say it all the time, "If you want to be a writer, you better develop some thick skin," and that's true. Except it's not about having "thick skin." It's about learning separation. The things people say about your work are not things they are saying about you, and someone can very validly say, "I don't like this thing you made, but I like you." When you flip out about that and do the virtual equivalent of yelling, "Then, I'm not your friend," you're acting like a first grader. At best. And, well, if that's where you are developmentally, then you need to go find something else to do with your time, because, frankly, writing is not for you. Or, at least, writing for anyone other than yourself. You need to do what Dickinson did and store it all in a trunk and leave it for someone else to sort out after you're dead.

But here's the other thing about being a grown up, and maybe this comes from having spent so much of my life as a teacher, you have to be able to tell people when they haven't done a good job. If the only thing you can do is tell people "good job" because you're worried about hurting someone's feelings, you need to grow up, too. This is not a dinner party where you nod politely and tell the host that the substandard food is "wonderful" and "delicious." In fact, that behavior at a dinner party will lead people not to come back and leave the host wondering why. You know, since everyone said they loved the food the previous time. The problem here is that in this "dinner party," we're all responsible for the food and, when we go around telling each other "oh, I love that" when you actually want to spit it out then that's the food that gets served. But, see, we're not the guests. Readers are the guests and, when they keep coming to the indie writers' banquet only to find a bunch of crap food that the all the "cooks" are saying is wonderful, well, then, those readers will decide that ALL indie food is crap.

Basically, if you are unwilling to give a negative review, you shouldn't be giving any reviews at all. The whole thing where you opt out of reviewing the books you don't like and only giving reviews to books you do like would be like me only giving As and, maybe, Bs in my classroom and leaving all of the other kids gradeless. It doesn't help the situation.

So, no, when I read a book that I don't like, for whatever reason, I get to say I don't like it and, even better, I get to explain why I didn't like it. Other people can then come along and figure out if they want to try it. So, if I say, "This one is too sweet," someone who likes sweet things will go, "Oh! I like sweets! I'll try this one." Or, if I say, "This one was too salty for me," someone else has the option of saying, "Oh, yeah, I don't like lots of salt; I'll stay away from this one."

Honesty is important in reviews. Period. It's not about treating my "friends" like they're five and saying, "Oh, it's beautiful!" and hanging it on the refrigerator. So sorry if you think that's what this is all about. There comes a point when even parents quit hanging those things up. Usually right about the time the kid realizes the drawings are actually pretty crappy.

So, just to reiterate, if you're approaching this whole indie writing thing as if it's some weird support system of giving good reviews to your buddies so that they won't feel bad, well, just grow up. Actually, and excuse the language (or not, I don't really care), it's time for you to grow the fuck up.

[This post has been brought to you in part by Alex Cavanaugh and the IWSG.(But, mostly, this one is just me.)]