There is a new brou-ha-ha in the author blogging world. As often happens, I found out about it on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog. Basically there are accusations of a “YA Mafia” who have the power to prevent authors they don’t like from being published. Both Scalzi and Holly Black have written funny and scathing rebuttals. Basically, authors are too lazy to sabotage other people’s work. Even if they did, the agents and publishers would ignore those types of requests.
Alas, the publishing industry does not, and cannot, protect (online) reviewers from insecure authors.
I’ve seen authors post comments on negative goodreads reviews (and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this go well).
—comment by phoebenorth
WORD. A couple years of ago I defended a friend’s bad review on Goodreads. The author in question is very successful and writes books, screenplays, and comic books. Yet bad reviews seemed to shatter his world. I realized that the author had to be extremely insecure. And he had to have the last comment despite claiming that we were the ones who kept the thread alive. Continue reading
