Authors Behaving Badly: Jacqueline Howett
[There's a followup here.]
This is a bit old, but think of it as well aged drama. It's the case of Jacqueline Howett, self published romance writer and 57 year old woman. BigAl of "BigAl's Books and Pals", a little known review site as far as I can tell, posted a review of Howett's The Greek Seaman -- commence pervy jokes. It's a brief review. Though he has some criticisms regarding the editing, he also has praise.
[...] I think you’ll find the story compelling and interesting. [...] However, odds of making that final click are slim. One reason is the spelling and grammar errors, which come so quickly that, especially in the first several chapters, it’s difficult to get into the book without being jarred back to reality as you attempt unraveling what the author meant.
Howett arrives to defend her honor, accusing the blogger of not downloading the "clean copy" and declaring she "will stick to my five star and four star reviews thanks." She then pasted three positive Amazon reviews of her book to prove her point. BigAl replies, claiming he did download the latest version and saw no formatting issues, only grammar and spelling problems.
I received the email on 2/7 asking that I download the a new copy of the book, which I did. I verified in my library software (Calibre) that this was the version I had and read. However her [Howett] note above as well as the email mentioned formatting. At least when I talk about formatting I'm referring to issues of conversion from the source (a Word .doc file or whatever) into an eBook so the text flows correctly on the Kindle and so on. I say [saw] no issues I would attribute to formatting. [...]
I'll also point out that in the first two chapters alone I found in excess of twenty errors that ideally would have been caught in editing and proofing. Some were minor, but all have the potential of disrupting an enjoyable reading experience, depending on the specific reader and their sensitivity to such things. Here are a couple sample sentences from the first two chapters that gave me pause and are representative of what I found difficult while reading.
"She carried her stocky build carefully back down the stairs."
"Don and Katy watched hypnotically Gino place more coffees out at another table with supreme balance." *
He goes on to remind her that his review said the story is good and encourages other to check the book out and decide for themselves. The author, however, sees no problems in the examples provided, insists her writing is "just fine" and demands BigAl remove the review.
My writing is just fine!
You did not download the fresh copy.... you did not. No way! [...]
Look AL, I'm not in the mood for playing snake with you, what I read above has no flaws. My writing is fine. You were told to download a new copy for format problems the very next day while they were free at Smashwords, so you could choose any format you wanted to read it in and if their were any spelling mistakes they were corrected. Simply remove this review as it is in error with you not downloading the fresh copy i insisted. Why review my book after being told to do this, and more annoying why have you never ever responded to any of my e-mails? [...]
Who are you any way? Really who are you?
What do we know about you?
You never downloaded another copy you liar!
You never ever returned to me an e-mail
Besides if you want to throw crap at authors you should first ask their permission if they want it stuck up on the internet via e-mail. That debate is high among authors.
Your the target not me!
Now get this review off here! *
Multiple anonymous commenters try to use crazy logic and point out her behavior will hurt her, which causes Howett to accuse them all of being BigAl. She continues to demand he downloaded the wrong copy, but instead of politely suggesting he did so and sending him a clean copy, she continues to accuse BigAl of sock-puppetry, claim people are being rude and the review and comments are abuse, and spew off odd phrases. She then links to a reading of the story done by herself as proof of how flawless her work is, which ends up illustrating that one shouldn't do their own reading unless 1) you have a good reading voice -- there's a reason audio-books use voice talent -- or 2) you're popular enough that people don't care if your reading voice sucks.
And Red adept get out of this!
Just look at your ball all of you....look at you.
Why not just say, okay Jacqueline, thanks for the new copy. Was that so hard to say? I mean it was one day after, and I told all my readers at Facebook the same and they all said thanks Jacqueline, we got the clean copy.
What happened to being polite?
Why read the wrong copy? that don't make sense.
So you need an army now AL to back that up? What are you all twittering about it now?*
Her demands that people be polite continue even as she rants.
Well what should I expect of anyone associated to Big ALs snake pit and rat hole.
You are a big rat and a snake with poisenous venom. Lots of luck to authors who come here and slip in that! *
After spiraling into incoherency, her replies conclude with two, demands people "fuck off". Charming. More on the matter can be read on fandom wank, but Neil sums it up his tweets:
If you ever have dreams of being a writer, please trust me & DON'T DO THIS: http://bit.ly/hEp5LI Just don't. Just.... don't. #CantLookAway 29 Mar via web
Some time between the drafting of this drama a couple weeks ago and this post, Howett deleted her insane comments, but the internet remembers.
This is a bit old, but think of it as well aged drama. It's the case of Jacqueline Howett, self published romance writer and 57 year old woman. BigAl of "BigAl's Books and Pals", a little known review site as far as I can tell, posted a review of Howett's The Greek Seaman -- commence pervy jokes. It's a brief review. Though he has some criticisms regarding the editing, he also has praise.
[...] I think you’ll find the story compelling and interesting. [...] However, odds of making that final click are slim. One reason is the spelling and grammar errors, which come so quickly that, especially in the first several chapters, it’s difficult to get into the book without being jarred back to reality as you attempt unraveling what the author meant.
Howett arrives to defend her honor, accusing the blogger of not downloading the "clean copy" and declaring she "will stick to my five star and four star reviews thanks." She then pasted three positive Amazon reviews of her book to prove her point. BigAl replies, claiming he did download the latest version and saw no formatting issues, only grammar and spelling problems.
I received the email on 2/7 asking that I download the a new copy of the book, which I did. I verified in my library software (Calibre) that this was the version I had and read. However her [Howett] note above as well as the email mentioned formatting. At least when I talk about formatting I'm referring to issues of conversion from the source (a Word .doc file or whatever) into an eBook so the text flows correctly on the Kindle and so on. I say [saw] no issues I would attribute to formatting. [...]
I'll also point out that in the first two chapters alone I found in excess of twenty errors that ideally would have been caught in editing and proofing. Some were minor, but all have the potential of disrupting an enjoyable reading experience, depending on the specific reader and their sensitivity to such things. Here are a couple sample sentences from the first two chapters that gave me pause and are representative of what I found difficult while reading.
"She carried her stocky build carefully back down the stairs."
"Don and Katy watched hypnotically Gino place more coffees out at another table with supreme balance." *
He goes on to remind her that his review said the story is good and encourages other to check the book out and decide for themselves. The author, however, sees no problems in the examples provided, insists her writing is "just fine" and demands BigAl remove the review.
My writing is just fine!
You did not download the fresh copy.... you did not. No way! [...]
Look AL, I'm not in the mood for playing snake with you, what I read above has no flaws. My writing is fine. You were told to download a new copy for format problems the very next day while they were free at Smashwords, so you could choose any format you wanted to read it in and if their were any spelling mistakes they were corrected. Simply remove this review as it is in error with you not downloading the fresh copy i insisted. Why review my book after being told to do this, and more annoying why have you never ever responded to any of my e-mails? [...]
Who are you any way? Really who are you?
What do we know about you?
You never downloaded another copy you liar!
You never ever returned to me an e-mail
Besides if you want to throw crap at authors you should first ask their permission if they want it stuck up on the internet via e-mail. That debate is high among authors.
Your the target not me!
Now get this review off here! *
Multiple anonymous commenters try to use crazy logic and point out her behavior will hurt her, which causes Howett to accuse them all of being BigAl. She continues to demand he downloaded the wrong copy, but instead of politely suggesting he did so and sending him a clean copy, she continues to accuse BigAl of sock-puppetry, claim people are being rude and the review and comments are abuse, and spew off odd phrases. She then links to a reading of the story done by herself as proof of how flawless her work is, which ends up illustrating that one shouldn't do their own reading unless 1) you have a good reading voice -- there's a reason audio-books use voice talent -- or 2) you're popular enough that people don't care if your reading voice sucks.
And Red adept get out of this!
Just look at your ball all of you....look at you.
Why not just say, okay Jacqueline, thanks for the new copy. Was that so hard to say? I mean it was one day after, and I told all my readers at Facebook the same and they all said thanks Jacqueline, we got the clean copy.
What happened to being polite?
Why read the wrong copy? that don't make sense.
So you need an army now AL to back that up? What are you all twittering about it now?*
Her demands that people be polite continue even as she rants.
Well what should I expect of anyone associated to Big ALs snake pit and rat hole.
You are a big rat and a snake with poisenous venom. Lots of luck to authors who come here and slip in that! *
After spiraling into incoherency, her replies conclude with two, demands people "fuck off". Charming. More on the matter can be read on fandom wank, but Neil sums it up his tweets:
If you ever have dreams of being a writer, please trust me & DON'T DO THIS: http://bit.ly/hEp5LI Just don't. Just.... don't. #CantLookAway 29 Mar via web
Some time between the drafting of this drama a couple weeks ago and this post, Howett deleted her insane comments, but the internet remembers.