writers vs. critics then--and now. Writers are encouraged (expected! in some cases) to be personalities online. So . . . does that mean responding to reviews, or not?
I've got a very strict "do not engage the reviewer in their space" personal rule. I do occasionally thank someone for a review, but only if I'd had contact with them beforehand (gave them a review copy, say), or if they actively tag me on a social media platform that allows that (like Twitter) and therefore obviously wanted me to see it, and in those cases it's as minimally as possible unless they invite more interaction.
I think it's different if they ask you questions or want to have a discussion in YOUR space. I chat with readers in my webcomic Patreon and comments as much as they want. But I wouldn't go onto another blog where people were talking about my comic or books unless I was invited. I've even been (for the most part) steering clear of people having discussions about my books in LJ and DW blogs that I follow.
As for responding to reviews in your own online space, which is a little more equivalent to a lot of what you were talking about at the above link (if these people had had blogs, they would SO TOTALLY have used them) ... so far I haven't had a situation come up where I wanted to, so I'm not sure what I'd do. In general I've been more of a "complain about it privately but smile in public" person when it comes to criticism of my writing. I think your blog/twitter/etc is your own place and you can do what you want there. Some writers have a reputation for coming out swinging at their detractors. I don't think that'd ever be me. But I guess it would also depend on the nature of the criticism -- if people are all over the internet saying something that's really wrong about me and my books, I might want to use my blog as a platform to set the record straight, as opposed to using my blog as a platform to lash out at every bad review, which just seems like bad form to me.
I used to keep lists of my reading on my (read-by-a-dozen-people) blog, with little two-sentence reviews (because my friendslist were mostly also SFF fans and this was a way to share recs with them). A fairly big-name author must have been ego-googling, because they showed up on one and did a really snitty correction to a pretty positive review (about a small detail about the language they'd devised), with an eye-rolling emoji. It did not make me keen to read more of their books. (It also made me write fewer reviews, so the book chat on my blog went down.) Why did they bother? It didn't improve their day or mine, it certainly didn't improve my opinion of them, it didn't make any difference to the weight of critical opinion on their books...
Yeah; back in an earlier decade, when I used to post on a different blog about books I'd read (not reviews so much as just chatting about my recent reading), I still remember having an author show up in my comments to argue vociferously with me about a minor technical point in a post about a book I'd otherwise really liked! He was VERY adamant that I had completely missed the point on the thing I hadn't liked about the book.
It didn't leave me with an urge to read more of his books.
Yeah, I have stopped reading a couple of authors who had a habit of drive-by snotty comments in otherwise unvisited blogs in which their books were discussed. Not even slammed.
I think it's different if they ask you questions or want to have a discussion in YOUR space. I chat with readers in my webcomic Patreon and comments as much as they want. But I wouldn't go onto another blog where people were talking about my comic or books unless I was invited. I've even been (for the most part) steering clear of people having discussions about my books in LJ and DW blogs that I follow.
As for responding to reviews in your own online space, which is a little more equivalent to a lot of what you were talking about at the above link (if these people had had blogs, they would SO TOTALLY have used them) ... so far I haven't had a situation come up where I wanted to, so I'm not sure what I'd do. In general I've been more of a "complain about it privately but smile in public" person when it comes to criticism of my writing. I think your blog/twitter/etc is your own place and you can do what you want there. Some writers have a reputation for coming out swinging at their detractors. I don't think that'd ever be me. But I guess it would also depend on the nature of the criticism -- if people are all over the internet saying something that's really wrong about me and my books, I might want to use my blog as a platform to set the record straight, as opposed to using my blog as a platform to lash out at every bad review, which just seems like bad form to me.
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A fairly big-name author must have been ego-googling, because they showed up on one and did a really snitty correction to a pretty positive review (about a small detail about the language they'd devised), with an eye-rolling emoji. It did not make me keen to read more of their books. (It also made me write fewer reviews, so the book chat on my blog went down.)
Why did they bother? It didn't improve their day or mine, it certainly didn't improve my opinion of them, it didn't make any difference to the weight of critical opinion on their books...
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It didn't leave me with an urge to read more of his books.
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