Friday, 4 May 2012

Authors Behaving Badly #1



Authors Behaving Badly: When Authors React Badly to Negative Reviews and Criticism!

Or: How NOT to Handle Bad Reviews!


When an author puts a book out into the world they must know it's not going to get completely positive feedback. All books, throughout history, from Hamlet to The Da Vinci Code, have people who love them and people who hate them. And most authors handle the negative reviews pretty well (even if they're crying inside).


However, some authors decide that they want to fight their critics. Some get personal. Some get downright nasty. Did someone say car crash?


I was originally going to post one article on this but so many authors have behaved badly that I thought I would make it a weekly feature!



Authors Behaving Badly #1

Jacqueline Howett and 'The Greek Seaman' fiasco.



Who is She: Jacqueline Howett (Adult Fiction Author)
Who She Responded Badly to: Big Al from 
What Made the Fur Fly: On his book blog, Big Al gave a somewhat negative review of an e-copy of Howett's book 'The Greek Seaman'. He commented on the bad writing and the strange wording Howett had used on a few occasions. Howett came across the review and began a vitriolic war of words with Big Al in the comment section on the review...catapulting it into internet fame and opening Howett up to a whole shit storm of criticism! Even though she has now taken down the majority of her comments many of them still remain, including comments in which she resorts to the somewhat questionable tactic of copy and pasting in 5 star reviews from Amazon. 




See the full review and her comments .


Looking at the Amazon stats for 'The Greek Seaman' it seems Big Al may represent the masses. Sorry Jacqueline.



Next Author Behaving Badly: Leigh Fallon and 'Dickie-ing' the System!

59 comments:

  1. Wow that's shocking!
    I look forward to this section every week :D

    Reply