{"id":8582,"date":"2016-01-21T13:06:59","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T21:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/?p=8582"},"modified":"2016-01-21T13:06:59","modified_gmt":"2016-01-21T21:06:59","slug":"on-reviews-comma-bad-and-engaging-comma-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/2016\/01\/21\/on-reviews-comma-bad-and-engaging-comma-not\/","title":{"rendered":"on reviews, comma, bad, and engaging, comma, not"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seanan McGuire posted an article today on why you need to leave reviewers alone<\/a>. Authors Behaving Badly is kind of a perennial lol-topic in reader circles, and a stunning<\/em> percentage of those stem from authors reacting – badly – to negative reviews.<\/p>\n

She has a bunch of good reasons why you don’t engage such reviews, even if they’re just being mean. And all that’s fine. But a couple of people have posted about how hard that is, and I realised there’s something Seanan didn’t<\/eM> say, to wit:<\/p>\n

If you’re staring at a negative review and itching to say something, don’t<\/em>, not just because of all the obvious reasons, but because being reviewed at all<\/em> – no matter how<\/em> negatively – is a kind of compliment in and of itself.<\/p>\n

Remember that. Even vendetta reviews are compliments, really, because they mean the reviewer thought you were important enough to talk about<\/em>, even if just to try to take you down<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And leaving aside vendetta reviews – like the Rabids attempt to game Goodreads – a sincere but negative review also<\/em> means they thought you were worth the actual time<\/em> they spent. Even if they don’t admit it, the facts on the ground are that you<\/em> were worth the time they spent actually reading or listening to or watching your thing, and<\/em> the time they spent writing a review about it.<\/p>\n

Remember: no matter how much they may’ve hated whatever they’re hating – and let’s say they hated it a lot<\/em> – they still cared enough to take the time to write and post a thing<\/em> about your<\/em> work. In a world flooded<\/em> with opportunities to read\/watch\/listen to\/react to material, they listened to yours<\/em>, and wrote about yours<\/em>, which means that you’re worth that<\/em> much to them, at very least.<\/p>\n

And it’s not symmetrical. They’ve handed you the big advantage. After all – you’re not writing about them<\/em>, now, are you? No.<\/p>\n

Good. Keep it that way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Seanan McGuire posted an article today on why you need to leave reviewers alone. Authors Behaving Badly is kind of a perennial lol-topic in reader circles, and a stunning percentage of those stem from authors reacting – badly – to negative reviews. She has a bunch of good reasons why you don’t engage such reviews, [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-of-indie-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8583,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8582\/revisions\/8583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crimeandtheforcesofevil.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}