Don’t Feed the Trolls

Every now and then a reader or an author’s friends take a dislike to a certain author and/or her book/s. This dislike typically takes the form of posting negative reviews on the various public forums distressing the maligned author. Often the reviewers attack the author, not the book. Sometimes they give away key parts of the plot, spoiling it for any future readers. Sometimes the “reviewer” hasn’t even read the book, but their friend “told” them it was bad so they give it a 1 star rating anyway.

The worst possible thing the author can do is reply to the troll trying to explain about the book or berating the troll for publishing spoilers. Just as bad is the author asking other people to reply on her behalf.

This is called “feeding” the troll. The troll becomes even more angry with every counter argument and the fight escalates.

The best thing an aggrieved author can do is ignore the review and hope that the excitement dies down quickly and everyone forgets about it.

Even better is for an author to ignore every review, good or bad, and never get involved in public discussions about personal opinions. A treasured 5 star review is celebrated in private or with trusted friends, and a poor review is also only read in private and never ever commented on publicly.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

21st Century Netiquette

Here’s some basic hints for chat loop/internet etiquette. If this all seems to be common sense, you’re right, it is. It’s just that way too many people forget their manners online.

So here we go.

Wrong publisher: No, don’t tell everyone on the chat loop for publisher A that you have a book releasing tomorrow from publisher B, or one that you’re self publishing. The most you can do is tell them you have some “exciting news” on your personal blog and post a link to the blog. (not to another publisher’s website, or to Amazon etc!)

Read it before hitting send: Yes we’ve all seen some screamingly funny YouTube videos of people who sent a rant to the entire email list instead of to one person, or worse a rant about someone and included them in the copies. Read the “to” field before clicking on “send” and especially before hitting “reply all”.

Don’t spam your loops: It’s fine to tell a general loop about your book. It’s even fine to tell them twice, but don’t keep posting the same blurb and excerpt over and over again. Talk about another book, or about your blog, or even about your cat, then give them a new excerpt from the book.

Never ever post advertising about your books on someone else’s Facebook timeline. That will get you unfriended very quickly.

Truncate long messages: On yahoo chat loops there’s always people on digest. The last thing they want to receive is ten messages with the same excerpt repeated repeated repeated. If you are just saying thank you, or congratulations, or a few words, clip the message. Delete the blurb and the excerpt, just leave the title and author’s name, and maybe a website link in case the person on digest can’t find them in earlier posts.

Take 1:1 conversations off loop: If a discussion topic has dwindled to just two or three people, take it off loop and talk about it as long as you like on your private emails. The other three hundred people on the loop have obviously lost interest in this discussion long ago.

Change the subject line: Often a discussion will wander through various topics if it last a while. When the topic changes alter the subject line to reflect the new topic. That way people who had lost interest will know you’ve now moved on to something else that may interest them again.

Finally NEVER abuse anyone online. Someone will take a screen shot and even if you delete it the post may come back to haunt you or ruin your writing career.

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.

Message to Authors: Be Nice

I was at a Romance Readers convention a few years ago, and a voracious reader said there were a few authors whose books she’d absolutely loved, but because of their behavior she never bought their books anymore.

She’d gone to a book signing on the other side of town, travelling by bus with two little kids, because she loved this author’s books so much. With her she took a cherished hardback copy of the author’s book to get it signed.

Money was tight and the reader couldn’t afford to buy the author’s new book after paying bus fares etc, but she was happy just to see the author in person, exchange a few words with her, and have this favorite book signed. It was worth the long trip and the hassle with little kids, she thought.

When she finally got to the head of the line, the author sneered at her not-new book and refused to sign it. She would only sign a book bought new from this store this day.

That author saw only dollar signs, not a reader who loved her books and had made the effort to meet her idol in person. An idol with clay feet apparently.

It would have taken the author one minute to sign the book, and she would have kept a loyal reader who would still be buying her books today.

Helen Woodall

helen.woodall@gmail.com