Category: Writing

Mar 5, 2011 by

Cult of Nice

So here’s the thing:

Authors cannot prevent their agents/editors/publishers from picking up a book by another author, even if that author personally hurt their feelings.

Reviewers cannot prevent other readers from buying books, even if the author of that book personally hurt their feelings.

Hurt feelings aren’t very professional. Normal, yes. Human, yes. But not professional. Sharing them in public can affect your professional reputation. By that, I mean your reputation within a profession, whether as producer, consumer, or critic, regardless of whether it is your primary source of income or simply a hobby.

Behaving like a human causes other humans to treat you as such. This can work in your favour, or it can work against. Frequently it does both. Your professional reputation depends on who it works against and who it doesn’t. Hurt feelings seem to be particularly polarising, and sharing them in a public venue needs to be done with care, to minimise the chances of them working against you in future.

An author’s professional reputation can prevent authors from being picked up by agents/editors/publishers. It can prevent their books being read. A reviewer’s professional reputation can prevent readers taking their reviews seriously.

Some people both write both books and reviews. They need to be very, very good with words, and very, very professional about keeping hurt feelings out of public arenas, or their professional reputations take a double hit. This doesn’t mean they have to like everything they review. It just means they have to be professional in how they review it. If a reviewer (whether they are an author or not) only writes good reviews (or only writes bad reviews) this impacts their credibility, and thus their professional reputation as a reviewer. This frequently carries over into their professional reputation as a writer.

If you are an author who also reviews, there is a chance that at some point you will find yourself in the company of people you have reviewed. If both of you are professionals it shouldn’t matter how you rated their book. If the idea of people around people you’ve reviewed makes you uncomfortable, may I suggest not writing reviews? If you behave professionally, but the reviewed author doesn’t; hey, you have the higher moral ground. Enjoy it. Your professional reputation will come out of it much cleaner than theirs.

A negative review can prevent an author blurbing your book. Not having a blurb doesn’t stop that book ending up on shelves (or e-shelves). Blurbs are meant to help fans of one author find similar authors. If you didn’t like that author’s book, there’s a good chance that those who did won’t like yours. There’s also a good chance that the author’s agent/editor/publisher also has a different taste in books to you, and your book won’t appeal to them. Try sending it to the agent/editor/publisher of a book you did like. You’ve probably got more in common.

In conclusion: Publishing is like any other profession: if you are vocal about your dislike of a company’s products, it’s probably not a good place to seek employment. Try applying to a company you like instead.

However, this doesn’t make the Cult of Nice mandatory. In fact, it’s unprofessional. It damages the credibility of reviewers and lends itself to shielding the bad behaviour of others. If you can’t handle the idea that the people you are talking about may be reading what you’ve written, don’t write it. If you can’t handle reading what others have written about you, don’t read it. If everyone’s professional, it shouldn’t matter either way, and if people behave unprofessionally… well, that’s their reputation, not yours.

There is no YA Mafia. Go about your business…

(Prompted by:

Becca FitzPatrick’s Be Nice
Stacia Kane’s Publishing: It’s a Business! And it’s Hard Sometimes
Holly Black’s YA Mafia and the Ruination of Careers
Dia Reeves YA Mafia
Stacia Kane’s Reviews are for Readers
Cleolinda’s My New Layout is Teal and so are my Deer
Sarah Rees Brennan’s Hang up the Fedora: Reviews and the YA Mafia
Jane Little’s On Bloggers, Reviewers and Readers #Ivegotyourback

)

I apologise for abusing the phrase ‘professional reputation’ quite so extensively. I shall make up for it by attempting to insert the phrase ‘amateur reputation’ into a future post.

In Reading, Writing
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Feb 28, 2011 by

Motivation Monday

You have until midnight GMT tonight to enter the Hammer films giveaway! Don’t miss out on a chance to win!

Publishing: Brian Price – owner of small press Chivalry Bookshelf, which publishes manuals and textbooks relating to the Society of Creative Anachronism, and other related businesses – is accused of failing to pay royalties, providing shoddy goods, and selling items he doesn’t have the rights to . In answering these accusations, he admits some of his authors haven’t seen payment of royalties since 2006. Academic Librarian ‘Lady Charlotte’ does a little digging and turns up evidence Price has plagiarised other works in his own books, and a possible problem with the insurance for one of the SCA clubs he owns. Funnily enough, Price doesn’t come back to answer these accusations. The whole thing’s ongoing, and it looks like it’s going to end up in court at some point.

Interest-Piquing: Churnalism, a tool for checking if lazy journalists have just copy-and-pasted a press release. Also, a historical currency converter, which not only works out currencies but relative worth, too.

Procrastination: Beyond Victoriana, a blog looking at multicultural perspectives on steampunk.

In Monday Motivation
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Feb 21, 2011 by

Monday Motivation

Publishing: So Tools of Change took place, which was liveblogged and livetweeted all over the web, and has sparked an interesting flurry and vaguely related blogposts. Jennifer Laughran explains how, as an agent, she goes about subbing to various publishers and imprints. Carrie Ryan talks about what she expected when she became a full time writer. Amanda Hocking shares her thoughts on why self-publishing is the harder route. Stephanie Laurens discusses the future of publishing.

Interest-Piquing: The former CEO of Boders UK (remember, it closed a few Christmas’s again?) talks about where Borders USA went wrong. Hindsight is fifty fifty, isn’t it? The FTC are investigating Apple’s new in-app purchasing rules.

Procrastination: www.bookbyyou.com, and Cleolinda Jones’s hilarious experiments with it.

(shh I deleted InsPiring because I couldn’t think of anything and there’s lots of links anyway!)

Don’t forget, there’s one week left to enter the competition to win 21 Hammer films.

In Monday Motivation
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Feb 18, 2011 by

Did you keep a diary?

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(If you’re annoyed at the radio-button nature of the poll because you recorded day to day events and private thoughts, which took up more pages?)

I couldn’t do diaries. I tried a couple of times, but I always shied away from writing down anything I didn’t want to share, and I didn’t have the discipline to simply record how I spent my time.

I remember when I was about 11 deciding to have a go. My mum had taken me to buy my first bra, and I remember being too embarrassed to describe this even though I wasn’t planning on ever sharing the diary with anyone, so I wrote the entry as though I’d bought tons of bras before.

I joined livejournal in my teens, and I still keep it up (I keep it mostly separate from my professional writing) though not as regularly as I used to. Having an audience made it easier for me to commit to it, whether that audience interacted with me or not. I never made use of the ‘private’ feature because if there was something I wasn’t willing to share I simply wouldn’t write it down. As I’d already discovered, if it wasn’t something I was comfortable with it didn’t matter whether it was for me or anyone else; at least in my own head I didn’t try and lie to myself!

What about you guys? Private journals, public blogs? Did you give your diary a name and address entries to it? Did you have your hopes set on being a future Samuel Pepys?

In Polls
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