Well if some of you were on twitter tonight you may have noticed some tweets about a debate that went on on Goodreads. There was a not so healthy debate about bashing an author personally. Now I do not agree with this at all. If you do not like a book then by all means state that you did not like it and why you did not like it, do not go and call an author "a sorry excuse for an author". Well someone on Goodreads did and this made some people very angry. It made all of us who love the industry as a whole very upset.
You are allowed to state your opinion and you are allowed to disagree and you are allowed to not like a book but it is very disrespectful and down right rude to personally attack an author. Now I know we all agree with this but clearly some people do not. I am not going to name any names I just wanted to rant a little bit about this. It made me very upset and I am not even the one who was publicly bashed the way that this author was. Now this author is a New York Times bestseller and I absolutely adore her work but of course not everyone is going to love an author's work we all know this. But to top it off this person hadn't even read the book that she was "reviewing".
I just wanted to update everyone on the blatant disregard and un-professionalism that still goes on. Now mind you this person was young but they weren't young enough not to know that it was just plain rude. It started a giant comment war on Goodreads. It just sickens me that people are still so narrow minded and plain, excuse my expression "out of it". But as we all know this has been brought to the attention of many authors and will most likely be shown to a publisher or two. What does that say for the person who was just plain nasty? Well it definitely does not look well on their part. I tried to voice some reason which just ended up in another childish comment or two but hey stuff happens right?
I just want to apologize to any author who has been "personally" attacked and even though we may or may not know them personally when they see things like this it still hurts! I know I would be a little unhappy with a comment like that. I love the industry and I respect the "hell" out of authors. I know that it is a long and "painful" process to get your work out there, and I commend everyone of you who stick with it and keep making the world a more wonderful place with your amazing imaginations and the wonderful worlds you suck all of your readers into!!
Enjoy Your Week Everyone :)
What a great blog post. I took part in this Good Reads debate, more like an war, and agree with you fully.
ReplyDeleteIt saddens me, greatly, to see an author that I adore and have great respect for be attacked in an rude and childish way.
Like you I will not name names but most of those commenter's were unreasonable and disrespectful towards everyone, not just the lovely author, and are still treating people with disrespect as we blog.
This is so sad.
Thanks for blogging about this. We need to raise awareness about problems like this and get the message across to readers that attacking an author is not the way to do it. Just write an polite book review and don't threaten or bash.