goodreads « Robin Writes

You’re moving right along, doing your thing, promoting yourself and your books, and all of a sudden—BAM!

You lose friends; people say mean things; sometimes, even, people threaten to “stop” buying your books and say hateful things about you.

What the hell just happened?

People. That’s what happened.

First, it’s really hard to comprehend because you probably aren’t like this. You probably don’t send hate messages and you probably don’t jump to conclusions and you probably don’t spread rumors. And it’s really hard not to take this personally.

I’m telling you, resist that temptation.

Fix the problem, if there is one, and issue an apology and move on. Assuming, of course, that what happened is not at all justified. If it is, you’re kinda screwed . . .

A couple years ago, there was a message board circulating that said some not-very-nice-things about me. These people assumed that since RHP was a new publishing house, we were either A) crooks and criminals or B) clueless. On this particular site, folks seem to jump to conclusions quite a lot; there are many long-time writers on there who seem to “know everything.” I use the word “writers” because most of these people haven’t been published; I reserve the term “author” for ones who have.

I addressed the concerns mentioned with simple answers; those didn’t satisfy a few people, but I stopped. I’d answered their questions. An RHP author saw the thread and jumped in and said, basically, hey, RHP is JUST FINE. I SIGNED WITH THEM.

End of story.

Last week, an RHP author had a social media account hacked. No other explanation. The alleged post, of which I only saw a screenshot, was completely out of character for this author and anyone with half a brain would have realized that.

Sadly, it seems many people do only possess half a brain; I started receiving email. Not the author—no one asked the author. They felt it necessary to email the publisher and threaten not to purchase any more RHP book if we didn’t immediately remove this author.

One of them also couldn’t distinguish between “your” and “you’re,” but I digress . . .

I didn’t ask if they had EVER bought an RHP book, although I did tell one of them that I doubted they’d intended to “place a large order.” Whatever that means.

It was kind of a cluster there for a couple days.

Long story short, the author issued both a private and a public apology via social media, as did RHP. Okay, RHP’s post was a little weighted on sarcasm, but come on! DON’T jump to conclusions, right?

Lesson: periodically Google yourself, see what’s out there; check your social media accounts for “bad” things. Fix problems immediately. And issue an apology.

Then forget it and move on.

Yep, as a writer—or a human being—we’re all called upon at times to deal with the pettiness of daily life. Sometimes, that can seem ever present, ever constant, and PUBLIC. The truth is that it’s really none of those things.

A couple weeks ago, I received an email from that strange site, Goodreads. The one that is supposed to be about readers sharing their opinions of books but has, sadly, become a huge advertisement. I was pretty excited a couple years ago, when I finally created an account there. But then . . .

First, Goodreads allowed someone who had NOT read my first book, Reduced, to rate and review it. It was pretty obvious that she hadn’t read the book, and so I complained; I was positive this was someone who had been bashing me personally, on and off, for a few weeks before the book was released.

Goodreads removed the review, but not the rating. I complained a second time when someone marked a book as having one star AND as on his or her “to read” shelf. How can you rate a book if you haven’t read it? Again. Goodreads finally got back to me and said that some members “rated” books as to how BADLY they wanted to read them. Um, okay. Whatever.

Once, I had “librarian” status there; then it disappeared. Goodreads never could tell me why, they just kept saying to re-apply; never heard anything else.

And every time I log on, I have at least 25 invites to “events” in which I have zero interest. Online “events.” Ugh.

So, not a fan.

Back to the email, and the point of this whole thing: Goodreads said that I had to “disclose” that I had published some books, according to the FCC, any time I rated or reviewed them. I had not done so. My bad. If anyone wanted to know WHO I was, they could click on my name and go right to my profile. It says there, in plain English, that I own Rocking Horse Publishing. Duh.

[I could also add a comment about how the US Government concerning itself with book reviews is just plain ridiculous, but that’s probably better left for another day and another topic.]

So this morning I have a message from an author about an anonymous blog post talking smack about RHP and the author and me. It was related to this “disclosure” mess, but led back to a review on Goodreads that was POSTED OVER A YEAR AGO.

The reviewer had said there were “errors.” I asked if she could send me a list, so they could be fixed. Truthfully, there were a few, but mostly it was formatting. The problem was that she didn’t SEND me a list, but added her response to the review thread itself. I was astounded, and pointed out, nicely, that I had expected a PM.

Here’s where it gets weird: someone else recently added to that year-old thread and said I shouldn’t have complained. Complained? I was just surprised that the reviewer had posted publicly instead of PMing me. And again, A YEAR AGO. I’d forgotten all about it.

And THEN—someone anonymously blogged about the thread. What? Zip back up to my title: Idiocy.

Here’s the thing: give it all five minutes of your time and move on. Consider the source—in this case, anonymity, a janky website, and something that happened A YEAR AGO. In Internet time, folks, that’s like a decade.

Oh, and Goodreads? If someone wants to know who I am, tell them to click my name. Look me up on Facebook, or Google, or Twitter, or wherever. And anonymous bloggers? Get a grip; you’re really not that important. Especially when you’re “anonymous,” your Goodreads profile is “private,” and you have nothing better to do than troll around, looking for something to cause trouble.

Why, then, am I writing about you? To show everyone how ridiculous you really are. And to laugh at you. Yes, I said that. And I’ll stand by it. We used to have a word for you, but I’m sure it’s no longer PC to use it: shit-disturber.

Writers, there are a lot of these folks hanging out online—I suspect they used to hang out in their mothers’ basements before the Internet came along. Now we have to deal with them. Yay.