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*headdesk*.
Unprofessional author is unprofessional. Or: there is a damn good reason that you don't respond to reviews and this is fucking well IT.
This is now the second professionally published author who has come to my journal and displayed their fail (the first being Lois McMaster Bujold who MammothFailed epically). Do I have a beacon out that says, "Welcome to the Fail Lounge. Feel free to take your pants off!"?
Let me just enumerate, for any one listening, the biggest reason that it is not a good idea to respond to reviews: you're not going to change their minds. Ms. Stein certainly did nothing to make me feel differently about her book.
Have you ever heard of an author going to a reviewer, arguing, and honestly changing someone's opinion? Has it ever helped that author look like a better person, improved their sales?
If it has, please throw me a link. Because all I can think of are the many authors (*coughcough* Alice Hoffman *coughcough*) who have done it to their detriment.
This is now the second professionally published author who has come to my journal and displayed their fail (the first being Lois McMaster Bujold who MammothFailed epically). Do I have a beacon out that says, "Welcome to the Fail Lounge. Feel free to take your pants off!"?
Let me just enumerate, for any one listening, the biggest reason that it is not a good idea to respond to reviews: you're not going to change their minds. Ms. Stein certainly did nothing to make me feel differently about her book.
Have you ever heard of an author going to a reviewer, arguing, and honestly changing someone's opinion? Has it ever helped that author look like a better person, improved their sales?
If it has, please throw me a link. Because all I can think of are the many authors (*coughcough* Alice Hoffman *coughcough*) who have done it to their detriment.
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~M~
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I am not a confrontational kind of person.
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I'm sorry that you felt that way, especially on my journal. Because I consider this my house on the interwebs, and that shit doesn't fly with me.
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I still respect your reviews. I guess I would just never be brave enough to do them myself.
I will probably also watch what opinions I voice on the internet in the future.
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Know that this journal is a safe space, and if you wish to express your opinions here, I will not permit anyone to make attacks on you, flame you, or otherwise be disrespectful toward you.
I don't know if I would call my reviews brave. Okay, so maybe somebody comes along and yells at me. It still doesn't mean I face the kind of racism that people of color in America face. If anything, I feel like such a coward. I feel like it is insufficient. I mean, so I read and I say, "Hey, I thought this was bad" or "I thought that was a big racist".
Does it help? And what things did I miss? What racist tropes am I putting into my novel without realizing it? What mistakes will I make that hurts others who have been hurting for too, too long?
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I do think your reviews are brave because it's not always easy to stand up to people who disagree.
I respect what you're doing and how you're learning as you review. As someone who grew up during all the violence of the 60's, I've tried to be mindful of the way I treat all people, especially PoC. I have a lot of wonderful non-white folks in my life and I try to be constantly mindful of the way I portray all people in my stories.
So, I respect what you're trying to do and I appreciate the opportunity to learn through your observations, too.
I would never want to disrespect anyone, their beliefs, or their ways of life.
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I know nearly nothing on the subject. Sorry.
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Rich Dansky actually is a scholar and a gentleman. :) He's also Jewish, and one of his sisters works at the Holocaust Museum. From the moment he took over as line developer on Wraith, he'd wanted to do a book about the modern-day legacy of the Holocaust for the realm of ghosts, and a few years in, did. The announcement drew a lot of flak from people bent on tarring him and the project with everything imaginable and some not. Someone reported him to the Anti-Defamation League, who gave him a puzzled call, interviewed him, and ended up supporting the project.
At first I found a bunch of the criticisms quite plausible. It wasn't long before that White Wolf had done some just atrocious handling of other real-world issues. But the quality of Rich's response persuaded me to give it a real chance, and out of it came a lasting friendship as well as a well-earned sale. He made a bunch of other converts during that flamefest, too.
But it really is the exception to a sound principle.
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The only author I can think of who has responded without failing to a not-so-favourable review of her book is Nora Roberts (http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2008/07/12/review-tribute-by-nora-roberts/#comment-167008), who did *not* argue with the reviewer or commenters to try to change their minds.
But then, possibly there's also a difference between a bad review in the sense of poor plotting or unbelievable characters or "this book did not work for me buti'mnotsayingitsabadbook" and calling an author out on their privilege (not that authors can't or haven't flailed around and insulted their audience based on the former type of review alone)... (And Nora Roberts is an author who seems to like the word "exotic" to describe non-white people, so either she has not been called out on it yet or chalks it up to a "difference of opinion", which, well.)
Has it ever helped that author look like a better person, improved their sales?
I don't know about the better person part, but I seem to recall Elizabeth Bear
braggingposting that her book sales increased after the initial round of racefail09.no subject
As for Elizabeth Bear, I think that given the time lag in the reporting of sales to the author (if I remember all my publishing factoids), the sales would have mostly taken place before the RaceFail09 comments. Of course, I could be wrong. But I think it was delayed so that the sales increased pre-fail. I think.
But I suppose the "there's no such thing as bad publicity" cliche has a reason for existing, maybe.
Of course, talking about it makes me a little annoyed because I was a former fan until the fail came around and then I was just angry. 2009 has been the year for pro authors in SF/F to really fail, hasn't it?
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Romance genre bloggers have a tag called "Authors Behaving Badly" (http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Authors%20Behaving%20Badly%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8); I don't know who started it, but it seems to have caught on in some circles. It's not so much about the content of their books, as their often unsolicited and less than courteous replies to criticism. Just imagine if Romance started bringing up stuff about race and privilege. *facepalm* (Er, not to say that that genre doesn't need some major overhaul too, because it really does, but I would imagine the fail to be epic. And not to say there aren't already people discussing race issues - among other issues - in romance novels, just that it doesn't seem to have caught on with that fandom at large, or not from what I've seen.)
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You're a much bigger, better person than me because I still haven't gotten there. I can't pick up things by (for example) Orson Scott Card anymore. I did, at one point, love and adore the Ender series so much that I bought all of them in hardback. Now, I can't even stand having them on my shelves. It feels like a violation of the only really safe space I have, and that's my shelf, my house, my inner thoughts.
Just imagine if Romance started bringing up stuff about race and privilege.
Oh yeah, that would be very, very epic. I think there have been some discussions of racefail in Romance on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books (http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/) but nothing consistent. They did take a few book to task for their completely ludicrous portrayals of various Native American peoples with the words "savage" or "wild" in the title as well as the absolutely laughable content inside.
Imagine if ALL genres started doing the same? I think there's a lot of racism that doesn't get spoken about in other places, not just SF/F or Romance. Frankly, I think mainstream literary books could use a good going over. Hell, all American literature could!
like santa, i have a list
I think there have been some discussions of racefail in Romance on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books but nothing consistent.
Yeah. It's not one of the factors they look at often when they review books or talk in general about the issues in romance tropes.
They did take a few book to task for their completely ludicrous portrayals of various Native American peoples with the words "savage" or "wild" in the title as well as the absolutely laughable content inside.
IIRC, that was more due to plagiarism (and terrible writing) than racism, though, and I seem to recall ferrets being involved...
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You said it. I hope that if I am ever lucky enough to be published that I will have either someone to look over my shoulder or the good sense not to argue on the internet about reviews.
And I'm glad you thought my review was fair. :)
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I mean, the other day, I got a Google Alert for Adiós-- I clicked it and it was to a blog review, which-- holy hell, the book came out over three years ago, right? And it wasn't the most favorable review. The characters and story were too perfect with a side of squick (which, admittedly, the squick had never occurred to me before, so it surprised me). It wasn't completely negative. Apparently, my voice and writing were kicky and perky and some other adverbs and really, deserved better than my shitty plotting and storytelling.
Yeah... I was mildly annoyed. But then, after I got over the initial annoyance and back into my right head, I realized that a) this post had no responses to it and b) who cares? It's this chick's opinion and she's entitled to it. I don't happen to agree. If (and big if there) I had chosen to respond in my blog, what it would have amounted to would have been this: I refuse to apologize. I can't write the book that everyone wants because then I'd be writing a book for every single reader out there, not the book I want to write. Adiós was not only my first published novel, it was my very first young adult novel after four adult manuscripts. I was feeling my way through the process and learning what worked and didn't work. The book, for me, still works. Clearly, it worked for a lot of people, given the reviews and awards it garnered. It's not going to work for everyone-- for some it was too simple, too easy. What I was trying to do was present a story that showed how even when things are "easy" they don't come without cost and you can still grow from the situations that are engendered. If people don't see that or choose to not see that, well then, I would question whether I was successful.
Overall, I think I was, because I have yet to receive a consistent criticism about that book. The people who have disliked it, have done so for varying and in some cases, vastly different reasons, so all I can put it down to is personal preference and that, I can't do a thing about, so why waste the bandwidth trying, right?
Very little positive can be gained by going onto a reviewer's site and publicly losing your mind. But a hell of a lot can be lost.
And to quote Jimmy Malone from The Untouchables: There endeth the lesson. *g*
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And the response that she deleted before reposting the other one that I linked to? Well, let's just say that it made her look even worse. I think she forgets that LJ notifies via email of any reply (unless you turn the option off), so I have a copy of it sitting in my inbox. Nothing is ever lost on the internet.
Very little positive can be gained by going onto a reviewer's site and publicly losing your mind. But a hell of a lot can be lost.
I believe this is now quote of the week material. Because YES YES YES. This. Right here.
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And trust me, I'm no one's idea of a saint. I am very, very human with a nasty temper and I get angry and I want to vent and scream and decry the lack of intelligence of a reviewer who doesn't get it, but if I do it, I do it in a setting amongst friends (as you've seen in some of my closed posts) or in person, to my husband or a friend or even the dog.
And if I ever publicly act like a complete unreasonable ass, feel free to take me out back and smack me upside the head with a 2x4.
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I posted a review of "the Becoming" that pointed out some of the racial issues in that book and Stein replied to that review very defensively to that response and seemed to think that pointing out that describing her sole Asian character (a housekeeper, btw) as "exotic" could be offensive and problematic was the equivalent of calling her a GIGANTIC RACIST.
What people didn't see was the first response she posted then deleted, which was even WORSE.