In the annals of book promotion, this has got to be up there with the all time bad ideas. A paperback book was hurled towards President Obama seconds after he completed a Democratic rally in Philadelphia on Sunday, but aides say the incident in no way affected the event. […] Read more…
So rarely does the universe provide such an enlightening conflation of shallow facile consensus political wisdom, along with elitist literary snobbery as we have in this column by Maureen Dowd. Dowd has gotten the memo, that Christine O’Donnell is the designated political chew toy for this political cycle. O’Donnell is Read more…
(NOTE: I’m going to start posting (some) political stuff on my blog again, the experiment with two blogs didn’t really work, and no one needs another political blog anyway.) Again with the asshats I say. And we have some wonderful hats of assness this time in the person(s) of a Read more…
UPDATE: (3/31/2011) Fixed a typo someone pointed out on Reddit. I’ve written enough about authors that have shown very public displays of ill judgment that it seemed to be almost mandatory that I talk about Mr. Patrick Roscoe (his name is not a link because you absolutely must hear the Read more…
There is a certain class of people who combine stupidity, deep-seated insecurity with a pathological need to control. The worst place to put these people is in a position where they are charged with keeping people safe. Case in point: We have a report (found here) of an unnamed vice Read more…
More inappropriate author behavior from Candice Sams from the ever-growing comment thread on Amazon. Here an enterprising commenter found an interesting plea on her Facebook page. (And here’s an LJ post with the full text in case Amazon deep-sixes the original comment.) So here we have someone pulling a reverse Deborah MacGillivray, piling on a reviewer and then calling out the internet stormtroopers to game Amazon. What follows is her Facebook plea, with my commentary in red.
Hi all,
If you have the time or the inclination…might I prevail upon you for a small favor?
Would you please click on the link that I’ve inserted…go over to Amazon.com and just click YES under… the helpful reviews left by amazon reviewers, Harriet Klausner, C. Roberts and Tammie King (these are wonderful ladies who first gave me a chance when I started writing about thirteen years ago and I cannot thank them enough). [What is with this woman and ellipses? I thought I had an ellipsis problem, but three random ellipses in the same paragraph? And since when do reviewers “give you a chance?” That’s the sort of acknowledgment one usually gives the people who buy your book.]These lovely reviewers left very kind remarks but were undercut by two individuals who are known as hit-and-run reviewers (reviewers calling themselves BBB and LB Taylor). [So not only do negative reviews reflect badly on the book, they are undercutting poor Harriet Klausner. Coming soon, Amazon reviewer cage matches.] These two people repeatedly give very poor rankings on books; they’ve done this many, many times. [A guy in the comment thread actually did an analysis of LB Taylor and the rankings of those reviews fall on a pretty nice (and flat) bell curve.] (more…)
I’m late to this party, but when I found it via Making Light I couldn’t resist blogging about it:
Candace Sams, author of Electra Galaxy’s Mr. Interstellar Feller (mass-market paperback, Dorchester/Love Spell), has exploded all over a comment thread on Amazon. She’s posting as Niteflyr One, but the comment thread has her ID’d as the author as of comment #8.
Head’s up, newbie writers, it is a bad idea to comment on reviews of your work. It’s a really bad idea to start a flame war over your work. The following is on page #2 of 26(!) pages of comments:
NOTE TO READERS: authors leave themselves open for attack by having their work posted for sale…they hope that if there’s anything engaging about the books, someone might say so. They hope that if others don’t like the books, they will find a more tactful, professional and mature way to express themselves. They (the authors) hope that so-called reviewers (often shameful people who abuse the power Amazon provides) will not directly try to keep the author from making a living.
That is only a short little segment of a tirade where our author decides to rant and insult her audience. Always a smooth move. You know, if you are this insecure and thin skinned, maybe you should find another line of work. But, as I said, page #2. Hasn’t slowed down a bit by #4:
Because, that’s the way the business works in some New York venues. Only the highest paid authors won’t have their manuscripts ripped apart by some editors. As to my bad author behavior…I’m getting a lot of email telling me to stand my ground…from people who ARE buying my books.
Lady, an editor “ripping apart” your manuscript is a sign you have a sucktastic editor. And, if your fans told you to jump off a bridge. . . (more…)
Internet trolls are fascinating creatures. They live in the nooks and crannies of the internet, eager to pounce on any unwary passer-by. I find the psychology fascinating, as trolls almost always advocate a political point of view, and do it exceedingly badly. So badly that one is often left wondering Read more…
Michael Wolf decided to make a complete asshat of himself. I’ll let you ponder the following thesis: HarperCollins does not really believe Sarah Palin has written a valuable book—or even that it is really a book, not in the way that HarperCollins has historically understood books, or in the way Read more…
Celebrities belong to a different class of people, they are not subject to normal petty laws short of perhaps murder. Even then, you often see the accused, and the fans of the accused, twist facts to the breaking point to portray any prosecution as persecution. Even when the bastard pleads Read more…