Sunday, February 8, 2015

How Do Authors See Reviewers of Their Books?

There's this article that I came up upon as I was scrolling through my Twitter timeline. It was a story of how author, Amy Spalding, made a Goodreads Young Adult Bingo, during her spare time.

This garnered a lot of attention from both authors and reviewers, both positive and negative. It especially hit some reviewers.



I am a reviewer and as much as I found myself reading the bingo card, got a good laugh from it, analyzed I was some of the boxes to be filled and then realized that other reviewers got to see this, it hurt me.
I for one see a lot of goodness in books, so you may not actually see me write incredibly long rated reviews. The lowest I've ever made was a 3 and I think it was still good. Like how Hazel of Stay Bookish put it, there's just some positive reviewers, like myself.  But there are also those who know how to get it out there and are not afraid to give their constructive criticisms about authors and their works, in Juhina's case for example.

How do authors' exactly see a critic of something they work hard for? Especially when they get low reviews, how do they manage? I mean, do authors directly talk with the reviewer and diplomatically debate about it or do they say harsh things to the reviewer? Or do they keep quiet? Keep quiet but hold grudges?

This is where a tension between a reviewer and an author come in. It could be good or bad depending on the situation and sometimes, we as reviewers, just don't really know what authors think about what we write about their book. From what I believe, reviews are made for the consumption of the consumer and not of the producer, meaning the readers should matter first with the reviews.

But with what's been happening lately with the book blogging sphere, there's something there that could not be properly pinpointed. Remember that issue with the author who started stalking a reviewer after a bad review? Boy, was that newsworthy! And at the same time, this issue is too. Would hate ensue from an author who gets a bad review? It's somehow hard to understand and hard to grasp since I am also fairly new to this industry. However, I do believe it is important that there's a level of professionalism in terms of giving criticisms as well as receiving them. 

Here's to authors! Can you please answer these few questions? We'd love to hear from you, maybe?



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