I think that the pseudo-intimacy created by online interactions can be a bad thing for the author/reader connection in several different ways. Not just in terms of foot-in-mouth-syndrome to the oh-god-someone-take-the-modem-away-before-they-alienate-their-fanbase incidents, but also in terms of reader expectations putting pressure on the author (ala GGRM) and also the increased opportunities for crazy-stalker-type shananigans (ala M.L).

It’s why I’m damn careful about reading author blogs these days. I don’t know if it’s a failing in me, but I’ve gone off a few people, to the point where I stopped enjoying their books. Not to do with personal politics, but to do with behaviours exhibited. Either my newly negative opinion has crept over into my reading of their writing, or the experience has pushed me into reading between the lines of their writing in a way I hadn’t the perspective to do before.

It’s not a new phenomenon mind; I suspect that if Louisa May Alcott were writing today and had a blog I might be a tad irritated with her given her notorious flounce regarding fannish expectations of the day!

Or would that be mash up. Thank you mashable.

Or would that be tweeters.

Hah! I hope I’m the FIRST to tell ya

(Did you already know?)

Years ago, before I understood what the internet was really capable of, I liked to comment on my LJ about books I’d read. I didn’t think of these as “reviews.” Most of them were less than a paragraph long! My commentary was for my friends, who, at the time, were the only people on my LJ friends list, go figure. But I still had a statistics-tracking do-hickey in my mood icons, and I also recorded IP addresses of commenters, because I had once suffered a stalker, and once was more than enough for me, thank you very much.

So then one day some anonymous commenter made some very hurtful remarks to me regarding my book comments, and suggested that, because I was an aspiring author (obvious from my LJ profile) and hadn’t yet landed an agent or editor (wasn’t submitting my stuff at that time, thanks again!), my opinions were somehow invalid or worse. Opinions like, “I didn’t like this one as much as her last book.” And then she went on to lecture me about how I shouldn’t post my real name on my LJ, because publishing is incestuous, blah blah blah, and now I was surely never going to get published because I had taken “pot shots” at authors. Pot shots like “I love [author]‘s writing, mostly, but I wish I would have loved this book more than I did.”

So, I looked up the commenter’s IP address on my statistics-tracking do-hickey (I don’t use it anymore, I just disabled anonymous commenting, but I think it was called LJ-toy?) and low and behold, it appears to have belonged to an author whose book I had read and made a luke-warm (tiny one paragraph long) comment about. It wasn’t even a negative review, just… meh.

Well, now I tell everyone I know not to buy her books. I would have kept buying her books even after a meh experience. Not every book is a perfect fit for me. But not hers. Not after that.

But then again, I did write a full quasi-negative review once of a book by Michelle Sagara, and she contacted me privately to thank me for it! And we ended up exchanging several long emails about what it was in the book that didn’t quite work for me, and how much I loved her other (Michelle West) books, and where I would never have bought another book in that particular series before, because I didn’t like it, now I buy them just as a show of support, because I still love her Michelle West books, and she was so kind in her emails I was willing to give her Michelle Sagara books a second chance. And I’m really glad I did.

I guess the moral of the story is: If you ARE going to respond to a negative review, just remember that you might be turning a mediocre reading experience with ONE book into a BAD experience with an entire author. So don’t be an asshat.

Or, y’know, do like you say to do, and don’t respond to reviews at all. *grin*

Had the author responded publicly to my post, however, I think (even with the gratitude) it still would’ve been a little uneasy-making. Not for me, since in this case I was complimentary, but for anyone who disagreed. Author presence can have chilling effect!

But all the same, it’s still really nice to get a private thank-you from an author when they’re appreciative, so long as the conversation ends there (and isn’t used as starting point, as though the good review were a bribe for attention by reader). Or maybe that’s just the Southerner in me doing the talking right now…

I could not agree with you more here.

Responding to ANY reviews is a bad, bad idea.

I’ve broken this rule once or twice by thanking someone (who I do know personally) who has given a Noble Dead book a nice, detailed review . . . but you are soooooo right that responding to positive reviews could lead to responding to negative ones.

I think Anne Rice lashed out at some negative reviews once and her reaction ended up all over the Internet. Yikes.