AnimeJune's All-Natural, All-Positive Alternative Reviewing Method

Things have been getting very stressful on the internet lately. I've noticed a lot of conflict, a lot of name-calling, a lot of negative energy. Especially surrounding authors and bloggers of negative reviews.

Negative energy can be a very destructive force to the delicate creative constitutions of authors. The slightest stiff breeze of criticism can wilt a lovely novelist in the bud! Dozens of authors have cried foul (and just plain cried - salty, literary tears onto their university editions of Jane Eyre) over being "assaulted" and "bullied" by the pure non-positiveness of the internet. Who could have guessed that the internet would become so positivity-challenged, the complete opposite of how the real world is?

Since bullying in schools has now reached the point where children are killing each other and themselves because of it, you can tell how seriously these authors feel when they appropriate this word to describe their emotions when they voluntarily read words on a screen.

I used to be one of those careless people producing that negative energy that is so destructive to creative freedom. But I've seen the light, I've learned from my errors, and I've changed my ways.

I've now become an Alternative Reviewer. Alternative Reviewers use positive and symbolic reinforcement to convey an opinion on a novel that encapsulates one's reaction to it while still protecting the delicate membrane of sensitivity that protects an Author from Bad Feels.

Let me show you some examples of my new Alternative Method:

My positivity-challenged review for Can't Hurry Love by Christie Ridgway was a D. Such a thoughtless, negative letter - and a hard consonant to boot! Hard consonants bruise! Using my new Alternative Reviewing Method, my verdict is now Pineapple.

Can't Hurry Love was a totally pineapple book. You can tell from the obvious symbolic connotations of pineapple what I think of this novel. It is really so pineapple - it's practically a kumquat. Part pine, part apple. It says it all, really - and everything is conveyed without any nasty negative energy.

Or how about my review of Jackson Pearce's Fathomless? I originally gave it a C-. Such an ineffective reviewing method! So unnecessarily and painfully exact! I lived fast and hard back in ... May 2013. I was running with a rough crowd, throwing bolded letters at people with no regard to how hurtful alphabetical symbols in emphasized fonts could be. Truly, letter grades are the flaming bags of dog poo on the front porch of the soul.

Now, as a newly-licensed Alternative Reviewer, I can confidently grade Fathomless with a Downward Facing Dog.

Opinions can be prickly and hurtful and wrong - especially when over-enthusiastic, wickedly articulate, and predominantly female bloggers without Master's Degrees in Literature have them.

So Alternative Reviewing is not so much about expressing an opinion, as expressing a visual feeling. And if you squint a little, you can pretend you got an A. Oh, wait - letter grades! Crap! Does this mean I have to retake that online Alternative Reviewer Course? Aw man, the last time I took it I clicked the wrong link and became an ordained minister... Never mind! Time and place, AnimeJune, time and place!

Remember, when you read a novel that represents women, LGBT individuals, or racial minorities in careless or offensive ways, responding to that with negative energy solves nothing. Okay, so their words might pass blanket judgements on whole swaths of diverse people, but angry capslock is not the answer!  Do you have any idea the emotional toll all-caps arguments have wrought upon the author community? It's gotten to the point where some authors can't even handle acronyms anymore - all they can read are e. e. cummings and ruth weiss! A capitalized letter is not a toy! 

I've learned from my mistakes, and after studying the calming, conflict-free ways of Alternative Reviewing and the Ancient Eastern art of Stock Photos, I changed my review of Jennifer Rush's Altered from a D+ to a Weird Fucking Moustache, instead.

Isn't this better for everyone? Isn't this a much more wholesome, positive, and author-friendly way to talk about facial hai-- I mean books? It's so easy.

Why, even Judith McNaught's Whitney, My Love can be reviewed with this method. It now rates an Elephant Sitting on a Slide. Why?

Because it goes nowhere and it's full of shit! Waka Waka! 

AnimeJune's Alternative Reviewing Method - Placating Entitled, Privileged Whiners with "Artistic" Temperaments Since 2013. 

BEA 2013, Day Two: BEA Blogger Convention

On Day Two Emily and I woke up early to get to the Javits in time to register for the blogger convention. Thanks to the location of our hotel, we didn't have to wake up that early.

Rolling up to Registration, I collected my lanyard, my BEA program, and my food and drink tickets. As the conference started, attendees were offered pretty spectacular totebags (complete with zippers and beverage holders) and some slightly-less-than-spectacular books - including an aggressively-marketed novel called Catena: Journey to Virginland that my fellow attendees and I were having absolutely none of.

The conference started out well - even though I was starving because the BEA Blogger "complimentary breakfast" turned out to be stale bagels and coffee. Thank God I'd smuggled a nut-free granola bar in my purse. A suggestion for next year, conference organizers: fruit is cheap.

Our keynote speaker was Will Schwalbe, who wrote The End of Your Life Bookclub and worked as editor in chief for Hyperion Books. I'd met him previously at last year's convention during the author roundtable, and his befuddlement at the time as to What Bloggers Actually Did left me less than enthused about what he would present as keynote speaker.

An affable man with rounded edges, he started out with some interesting questions - like, how do bloggers define success? And how does our definition of success differ from the definitions of people elsewhere in the publishing industry? He asked a number of bloggers about this and came up with the answer that bloggers define success by their influence, which made a lot of sense. For a lot of bloggers, it's not all about the numbers or the stats or the pageviews, but by how far one's opinion can travel over the internet.

Because we don't only blog - we grouse on Twitter and Tumblr and Pinterest and message boards about our thoughts and feelings about books as well.

He also talked about engagement - how a few really invested, engaged users is better than a lot of apathetic, uninvolved users. Again, I agreed - I have a pretty small readership and social circle, comparatiely speaking (although it's getting bigger), but we're all really passionate about books and express our feelings about it all the time. It seemed like Schwalbe had done his homework about the blogging community - a refreshing change from Jennifer Weiner, who pulled a Gilderoy Lockhart during her keynote last year and made it all about her (and delayed the following panel to sign copies of her own books).

....but then Schwalbe started to backslide. First, he started by making catty comments about Amazon reviews and Amazon reviewers. Which was when I thought, oh no. Then he started encouraging bloggers  to demonstrate forgiveness and cut people some slack about policing web behaviour. How do you define forgiveness, Mr. Schwalbe? If an author acts like an ass on the internet, am I somehow not allowed to let that influence my decision to not purchase or review their work? Excuse me?

And then his speech quickly dissolved into a paternal shaking of the finger at "snarky, savage" reviews, because "kindness rocks!" It sounded like the clueless teacher trying to sound relevant to a room full of reluctant students - only we're not students and we're not children and it struck a painfully wrong chord to be treated as such. It was an irritating echo of Jennifer Weiner's "Fairy Dust" comment from last year.

The thing is, reviews can and do benefit the publishing industry but they are not for the publishing industry. Reviews are not written for authors, so authors complaining about the style of a review is akin to a person walking into a party they weren't invited to and complaining about the food.

Schwalbe then proceeded to recite, tonelessly and apparently without a shred of irony, the chorus to Natasha Bedingfield's pop song "Unwritten." Really, seriously.

Next up, I decided to go to the YA Editor Insight Panel - because, well, I'm interested in editing for YA, and I'm also interested in the sort of decisions and trends that YA editors have been noticing lately.      On the panel was Cheryl Klein from Scholastic, Deb Noyes from Candlewick Press, Jen Doll from The Atlantic, and Emily Meehan from Disney-Hyperion. Attendees were greeted by a mountain of truly excellent free books coming in (something the Adult Editor Insight Panel apparently did not have) and I also got to meet The Booksmugglers themselves, Ana and Thea!

While the editors did speak of trends, mostly they just sold their books (including one where Marie Antoinette is a murderous ghost). They did mention that subgenres are no longer as strict now - YA's definitely getting into cross-genre books that don't have any strict definition. The editors on the panel unanimously agreed that they were looking for and preferred flawed protagonists. No Mary Sues or Gary Stus. I asked them about romance in YA, and they replied it was a bit of a chicken-and-egg deal now - publishers initially acquired a lot of romance, and as a result a romantic plot line is now a reader expectation for a lot of stories.

While there were a few interesting points discussed, it did seem (as a lot of others have mentioned before me) that it was more of a Buzz Panel, and it didn't really have anything aimed specifically at bloggers or blogging. At least the swag was nice.

After that, I attended the Adult Book Blogging Pros panel, mainly so that I could meet the fabulous Jim Hines and Sarah Wendell of Smart Bitches in person. A lot of this panel was stuff I'd already learned - but then, I've been blogging for nine years (yes, nine). Basically, get your voice out there and establish your own style and that will bring in the type of readers you want. My favourite piece of advice from Sarah was let people not like you. Because there will always be people who don't and you can't build a platform around avoiding other people's dislikes.

Mandi Schreiner of Smexy Books (who was also on the panel) advised bloggers to keep it cool when it came to Internet Drama - by all means defend yourself, your close friends and major issues (like Plagiarism), but otherwise, don't get involved in other people's fights if they don't concern you. Internet mobs can turn really nasty, really quickly and misinformation is contagious.

It was at this panel that I realized there were a couple of romance authors who had signed up for the Blogger Con in order to pick the brains of bloggers and find out how to get us to review their books. Honestly, that made me a little uncomfortable, as did a conversation we had about how bloggers shouldn't make their critical reviews funny because it hurts authors' feelings. Sorry, but as I've mentioned before, reviews aren't for authors. You have a critique group and an editor to respectfully analyze your work. Reviews are for readers.

After that came the Ethics Luncheon, hosted by Jane Litte of Dear Author with Richard Newman of Hinch Newman LLP and Professor Geanne Rosenberg of Baruch College. It was a little dry, but thankfully a couple of people from what I like to call the "Tinfoil Hat Table" made it a little more interesting.

The panel members tried to make the session about how bloggers can protect themselves from inadvertently violating American FTC regulations (which consider positive blog reviews of ARCs to be endorsements). So while they were trying to explain that the origins of your review copies should be clearly and conspicuously indicated - the two women seated at the Tinfoil Hat Table muddied the waters with questions like "Why doesn't the FTC go after Fake Mean Reviews?" Um, because negative reviews are not endorsements. This person also started babbling about how she had been asked to join a Cabal of publishers and reviewers who were dedicated to ruining authors they didn't like with negative reviews. Okaaaaay...

The other lady at the Tinfoil Hat Table table who'd claimed to have worked in journalism for many years stated that large newsgroups dodged copyright issues when showing cover art for books by using photographs taken of the books instead of the cover images themselves - which is completely and utterly incorrect. Newspapers don't do that. Entertainment Weekly doesn't do that. It was hilarious but also frustrating because the actual, educated people at the panel were trying to discuss whether displaying a book cover in your review was violating copyright (it isn't - it falls under fair use).

After the Ethics Luncheon, I went to the Blogging Platforms panel, which was an extremely informative and successful panel given by Rachel Rivera of Parajunkee, Stephanie Leary of Wordpress,  Evie Seo of Bookish, and April Conant from Good Books and Good Wine (whose voice, as she'd predicted, was just about shot). There, they explained the differences between blogging platforms such as Blogger, Wordpress, and Tumblr. I came away from that panel with a lot of new information about the different platforms.

Blogger, apparently, is a good starting point for bloggers because it's extremely easy to use and has a lot of options - however, once you have experience and want to branch out with more coding, Blogger's interface can be limited. Oh, and Google also owns everything you write on it. Eep. Wordpress, on the other hand, can be more complicated, but it has greater design options and can easily shift from being hosted by Wordpress to being selfhosted, so a lot of bloggers wind up exporting their Blogger blogs to Wordpress eventually. For now, I think I'll stick with Blogger since it is easier, but I may have to consider Wordpress later.

Next up, I went to Extending the Reach of Your Blog Online, hosted by Mandy Boles of The Well-Read Wife, Malle Vallik of Harlequin, Eric Smith of Quirk Books and Geekadelphia, and Robert Mooney of Blogads. This panel, I thought, was a nice companion to the Blogger Platforms panel because it also spoke of different social media platforms through which to talk about books and promote your blog - like Vine (Twitter but with Video), Rafflecopter, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Spinterest, Triberr, Distillry (how to make sure which of your Twitter followers are "influential" - i.e. have the most followers), and Twiangulate.

After that came the Closing Keynote with Randi Zuckerberg - whose speech was half an hour late because she hadn't brought a working laptop. Not a promising sign when your entire presentation is more about Cool Things On the Internet That Are Tangentially Related to Blogging than Actual Blogging. I took some notes but I don't think I picked up anything I could really use for my own blog.

Finally came the Blogger Happy Hour, where the remaining attendees took their single drink tickets (whoo! Big spenders!) to the bar, around which more swag and free books and book promotions were arranged. Most of the books being given away weren't my thing so I avoided them - and carefully stepped around the piles of (still) unclaimed copies of Catena to speak with other bloggers.

This year's Blogger Convention, barring a few missteps, was a vast improvement over the previous years. There was a greater awareness of what bloggers actually do and a variety of different topics to discuss and learn from - most of which were (or at least tried to be) aimed at how bloggers operate on their own, rather than how bloggers can serve publishers. I liked how most panels had at least one well-known blogger on them, as well as people from other areas of the publishing industry, so we received multiple perspectives on what we do and our impact on publishing.

Mostly, though, I was just glad I survived it enough to speak in coherent sentences with the blogger friends I reconnected with.

BEA 2013 Day One: Party Animals

Yes, I know, I'm late to the Book Expo-recounting party, but I was so twitchy and exhausted and wired when I got home that I wouldn't have been a very good party guest. Instead, I've spent a couple of days resting and getting my bearings instead of taking a swing at the enormous Book Swag Post pinatas like the rest of my peers.

But it's time to get my party hat on!

I flew into Newark on Tuesday - despite my delight at having a direct flight to Newark instead of a host of transfers and connections, my nerves got the better of me and by the time I landed in New Jersey and boarded the train to Manhattan I was gulping and praying and wondering if this whole trip was a huge mistake. A conversation bloomed behind me between two strangers, stemming from a mutual complaint about a nearby sleeping passenger who was taking up two seats, and it led to a contest of oral autobiographies as each stranger catelogued the development of their lives. One was an employee of New Jersey Transit, an immigrant from Kenya and former NYC police officer. The other was a devout Christian, who had travelled the world and survived cancer, to boot.

It was pretty amazing how freely people were willing to share their lives on public transit to someone they would likely never see again, and listening to them calmed me down immensely and brought me back to reality.

I arrived at Penn Station and met my crazy-amazing roommate from Red House Books - Emily! Emily was seriously the best roommate. Every time my anxiety made me fizz and shiver and threaten to spiral around the room like a wildly deflating balloon, she was there to prod me into trying new experiences, or share a joke, or talk about how much we both love YA novels. I'm overjoyed that our meeting on the internet resulted in real-world friendship instead of murder.

After meeting at Penn Station, we cabbed back to our hotel - the Best Western Convention Center Hotel. This Best Western was good in itself - compact, spotlessly clean - and good in regards to its location to the Javits (a three-minute walk away) but rather disgusting in regards to its location in general. The hotel stuck out like a freshly-washed thumb on a particularly filthy hand whose other fingers comprised some greasy auto body shops, a strip club, the type of abandoned-looking brick warehouses that superheroes use as their secret lairs, and a mews for carriage horses. Because who doesn't want to watch some naked ladies while waiting for their car and/or horse to be fixed?

And I haven't even mentioned the train (the choo-choo kind, not the subway kind) that passed beneath the hotel at regular intervals during the day and night.

First on the schedule after unpacking everything was the SimonTeen Blogger Party. It was the first such publisher party I had ever been invited to at Book Expo, and I was excited. We walked to our destination, which turned out to be a lounge outfitted in My Little Pony shades of purple, red, and pink, where raspberry-coloured light refracted off of a giant crystal chandelier. The bartenders served pink cocktails freshened with chunks of watermelon, and over-enthusiastic waiters wandered freely, jabbing platters of sliders and chicken kebabs at guests as if trying to rob people with them. Your money or your juice cleanse! 

Shyer guests could always retreat to the fancy bathroom, staffed by an attendant whose primary tasks were to to hand you a paper towel and pretend you hadn't already dried your hands on the toilet paper in confusion after finding no dispenser in the stall, and gesture obliquely towards a table laid with the traditional American post-bowel-movement delicacies - mint Lifesavers, chocolates, and Tootsie Pops.

I spent the first half hour of the evening chatting with authors and SimonTeen staff - most of them gorgeous, bird-boned 24-year-old publicists and marketing reps with chunky earrings and horn-rimmed glasses who might as well have walked straight out of a Wednesday night CW drama about the New York publishing industry. I also ran into a hugely pregnant and awesome Siobhan Vivian and exchanged some complimentary words on her deft use of unlikeable and difficult female protagonists (I quite enjoyed Not That Kind of Girl).

After that, we all sat in front of a stage while Suzanne Young interviewed fellow SimonTeen authors Cat Patrick, Jason Reynolds, Jenny Han, Siobhan Vivian, Corey Ann Haydu, and Amy Butler Greenfield about their upcoming books. Suzanne Young was a lively and effective interviewer - allowing the authors to answer probing questions about the underlying themes of their works while also keeping the tone light and the pacing quick. The authors themselves were all hilarious, charming and well-prepared - I found myself envying Siobhan Vivian and Jenny Han's easy friendship as they discussed the collaborative process of writing Burn for Burn, the sequel Fire with Fire, and the final novel Ashes to Ashes (currently being written). Jason Reynolds was also ridiculously charismatic as he recounted his various financially-challenged adventures trying to become a successful writer in New York.

After the interviews - it was back to scintillating conversation! I met up with some truly awesome bloggers, including Amy from Good Books and Good Wine - she was worried that her voice was giving out and she wouldn't be able to speak at her panel at the Book Blogger Con the next day. But she still summoned enough energy to commiserate with me about bad author behaviour!

All in all, I would call the event a success - I left the party with Emily fully interested in nearly all the books discussed, which made it all the lovelier when our complimentary goody bags came stuffed with those very books! We got swag before the conference even started! How's that for thinking ahead?

Next up: Day two - BEA Blogger Con!

I'm over at the Booksmugglers today!

I'm over at The Booksmugglers today for their annual Smugglivus celebration - whereupon I reveal myself as the President of the Secret Society of Evil Ladies Bent on World LadyDomination! 

Go forth and read, minions! 

Return to Neverland: Bullies, Stalkers and the Huffington Post

I know it seems that, to those of us in BookBloglandia, every day for the past couple of weeks has brought a new crop of hair-pulling, foot-stomping rage. A new self-congratulatory post from the Stop The Good Reads Bullies page will arrive, patting itself on the back on how selflessly it devotes itself to Internet!Justice. Or several smug and obsequious comments from one of the owner's many sockpuppets will pop up like new mushrooms out of the pile of - well, what people commonly put on mushrooms. Or an intelligent Dear Author post will develop a comments section that slowly spirals down into the pits of madness over whether or not reviews "should" use dirty words like - well, what people commonly put on mushrooms.

Today, blogland exploded when the Huffington Post Books page posted an anonymous Op-Ed article from the Stop The Good Reads Bullies Page - giving STGRB national coverage and validation. Bloggers flew to their keyboards to vent their simultaneous, vitriolic outrage that the Huffington Post would so irresponsibly drive traffic to a website that's endangering and stalking women. It then posted a somewhat troubling apology that admitted they'd solicited an interview with the site weeks ago - and yet somehow never picked up on STGRB's blatant, acidic language and stalking behaviour. While the magnificent Foz Meadows wrote a stirring response that was posted on the Huffington Post Books blog afterward, I discovered something wrong on the Stop the Good Reads Bullies site.

Now, we already know that the STGRB, like a crazed Pocahontas, paints with all the colours of the wrong. But now they've stepped in it. In their comments section of their latest post, an anonymous commenter asked:

  

"The claims the posters are making in the comments of that article [meaning the HuffPo one] are untrue. This site is not posting personal information about people. Do you see any names and addresses? I don't."

 

This prompted Site Administrator "Peter Pan" to reply (the orange emphasis is mine):

 As you can see, "Peter Pan" openly declares that the reviewers who've opposed this site are dishonest, and have made "stuff up without any evidence" and are, moreover, "pretending" to be stalked in order to to "play the victim."

Gee, that's awful! What a horrendous lie! Most especially since now that one peruses the site, there is a remarkable absence of the damning personal information we reviewers have been raging about. Sure, the insults are still there, but we're all for free speech, aren't we? See, STGRB is all about discussing bullying, and the bully culture, and demonstrating slightly out-of-context situations of bad reviews. Clearly, the Mean Girl Reviewer Bullies just made up all that stuff about being stalked and having their privacy invaded because they were afraid of STGRB exposing their evil.

Except nothing completely disappears on the internet. Even stuff that you thought you removed.

 For instance, I conveniently took a couple of screenshots of the times STGRB administrators admitted to stalking people (orange emphasis mine):

Such as here:

And here:

Those are just silly off-the-cuff remarks, right? STGRB wasn't doing the stalking.

Except other people took screen caps, too. 

Note the use of Real Name and Location. The orange squares to the right of the screen indicate the date this cap was taken - proven not only by the calendar but by the existence of the anti-bullying organization banners - meaning this stuff was up before each and every one of those Anti-Bullying organizations demanded the removal of their banners.

But would you look at that same page today:

Where did the Real Name and Location go? 

And it wasn't just for Kat Kennedy. Take this screencap of their old page on The Holy Terror:

Her personal information has been obscured, but it's still perfectly clear how much they posted about her (such as her name, her husband's name, her favourite restaurant, and where she can be found at certain times of day) for everyone to read. The orange squares highlight pertinent phrases and evidence of the post's date. The pink square indicates irony. 

And look at her page now:

As well, there is this page on Lucy:

 Note they indicate her real name, her location, and also where she works in real life, to earn a living.

Here is where they indicate their active search for even more personal real-life information on Lucy:

Once again, the pink is for irony.

Here is their old page for Ridley:

Note how they give her real location and note how they are actively searching for her real name in order to post it on the website. 

Here's how it looks now:

And here is a cap of the STGRB folks commenting about Ridley being concerned about her personal information being posted:

Here is a screencap of their interview with Kenya Wright of Two Fantasy Floozies, in which Kenya asks them about their outing practices:

Here, Kenya asks STGRB about whether they're concerned about the possible dangers that come from being outed:

As you can see, the evidence speaks for itself. No snark or bad language required.

However, you might ask: why bother getting angry, and posting these screencaps, now that the STGRB website has removed the dangerous information? Isn't this what you wanted?

For that, I'll direct you back to the first screencap on my post - you know, the one where Site Administrator "Peter Pan" claims that STGRB never posted personal information, and accused the bloggers victimized on the website of fabricating the fear and unrest and harassment they endured for attention and sympathy. 

This proves beyond a doubt that the removal of this information wasn't an olive branch gesture and it wasn't due to the site administrators suddenly realizing what they were doing was wrong. It was a deliberate posterior-covering measure - likely in preparation for the flood of traffic gained by the Huffington Post article. 

STGRB stalked four women (at least) and posted their personal information online with an admitted disregard for their personal safety - and once the Huffington Post Books article opened the website to more scrutiny, they edited their posts, lied about it, and blamed the bloggers for it. They have offered no apology and demonstrated no remorse.

I'll leave it up you to tell me if you think these are the actions of an honest, righteous organization that is motivated only by a desire for a safe, friendly reading community for all.

My deepest thanks go out to the several awesome people (who shall remain anonymous, unless they let me know otherwise) who took the greater part of these screencaps.

In All Seriousness...

Let's talk about negative reviews. And authors' reactions to negative reviews.

I'm sure by now most of you have heard of the Stop The GoodReads Bullies website and how it's been stalking and terrorizing bloggers known for writing snarky reviews, under the misguided belief that bloggers of that stripe are bullies and harass innocent authors.

Now, while the Stop The Good Reads Bully site is run by one woman and her stable of sockpuppets (not unlike an angry, unstable, literary-minded Sherry Lewis), she is not the only author with this sort of opinion about GoodReads.

And they insist over and over again that their anger is not simply about negative reviews. Oh no! We know how things are! Everyone is entitled to their opinion! We respect negative reviews so long as they're professional!

So, what are these authors really complaining about, if it's not simply negative reviews? Well, from what I can gather, their main problems are with:

1) Snark 
Now, I can sort of get this argument. It's hurtful enough to get a bad review, but one that reviews your book negatively in a comedic way can pour salt on a wound. But just because a review is funny, doesn't mean the reader wasn't paying attention to your book. Bloggers are writers, too. That's the difference between a blogger and the average reader, because when we're done a book, we're compelled to write about it. And for many of us (myself included), it's not enough to write something that covers all the basic points - it also has to be entertaining and easy to read.

I, myself, prefer blogs with a lively and entertaining writing style - not just ones that mirror my particular taste. I have to want to read what they've written, otherwise I just skim to the rating at the end, taking in the relevant bits along the way. Just like authors, we have to be honest to our writing style because that's what makes us want to write. We don't write like that to be mean, it's not a personal attack on you, we write like that to express ourselves.

I do think that snark can be taken too far - but everyone has their own snark saturation point, so it's unfair to set some sort of arbitrary standard for it. If you find it hurtful, STOP READING IT AND AVOID THEIR BLOG. It's that easy.

2) Freedom of Speech
Well, isn't that interesting! Authors complaining about freedom of speech! Specifically, I'm referencing the arguments made on the Bully site and elsewhere that authors have a right to comment on their reviews. Authors are readers, too, you know, and it's not fair that they should be "silenced" and "treated like second-class citizens" while their precious babies are being dragged to the literary pillory.

And, as a matter of fact, they do have that right. However, the general belief that "authors shouldn't comment on their reviews" doesn't come from the idea that they aren't allowed to do so, but rather from the fact that it won't make a difference. The book is already read. The opinion has already been formed. There's no way to retroactively change a person's opinion. So when we say that authors shouldn't comment on reviews, we say it for their own benefit, because at best it will waste their time and energy and at worst will tarnish their public image and damage their fanbase.

Authors shouldn't comment on their reviews, even if the blogger allegedly gets something wrong in their review. Yes, even then. Why? Because "getting something wrong" is so incredibly subjective that you'll be stepping in a minefield just by bringing it up. To paraphrase Joss Whedon, one of my favourite screenwriters - your writing isn't your pet, it's your kid. It's going to grow up and start talking back to you. Meaning - people are always going to get things out of your story that you didn't expect or intend. 

Now, while these two points bring up common author complaints, neither of them constitutes bullying. Bullying constitutes being continually harassed, in such a way that you feel unsafe and cannot escape.

Which is why these first two reasons are bullshit - firstly, the internet is such a vast place, that it's a fairly easy thing to avoid the blogs that don't like your stuff. This blog hated your book? Don't visit it again! This tumblr negatively reviewed your novel? Blacklist it! Block it! Block the users! It's that easy!

Secondly, how in HELL does a bad review or snarky remark on GoodReads make you feel physically unsafe? How in HELL do negative words make you feel "assaulted"? I'd love to see you mosey on down to a battered women's shelter and explain how assaulted and harassed you felt when you voluntarily read a hurtful book review on the internet.

Now comes the third part:

3) Fan Response
Book bloggers, as a whole, are an expressive bunch. Now, as bloggers like Katiebabs have pointed out, when an author misbehaves and the story of this behaviour goes public, bloggers tend to react quickly and furiously and the author often finds herself with an avalanche of negative feedback that may or may not be proportional to the inappropriateness of her behaviour.

This, I think, is where the idea of "blogger bullying" comes from. The author feels like she's being ganged up on. She thinks she's only expressed her own opinion, or tried to correct a misconception about her book, or simply tried to point out with helpful links that other people reacted positively to her novel - and the result is a bunch of harshly-worded comments on GoodReads by complete strangers who then vow never to read her books.

Some authors have interpreted this as harassment and mob mentality, when really, the reason for this reaction is that bloggers are still considered (and even consider themselves) to be lower on the literary foodchain than authors. Authors are high on the literary foodchain - they're the creators, the shapers, those who can fashion sophisticated stories from the raw materials of their imaginations. Without authors, there would be no books to blog about.

So when an author bitches out a blogger, to other bloggers, that's the equivalent of a 200-pound-wrestler picking on a 90-pound weakling. That's a person in a superior position picking on someone in an inferior position, which gives bloggers an urge to defend their own. And that's why we react this way. Now, is this professional? Probably not. And two weeks ago I would have said that an author can't really do anything to a blogger except spew bad words, and bad words are easily blocked, deleted, or ignored, which would be the more mature response (that, and never buying the author's books again).

But the creator of the Stop the GR Bullies website demonstrated a desire to cross the line of professionalism into downright crazy and illegal.

So while I will commiserate with authors that the bottom of a sweaty, martini-drenched book blogger pile-on is probably a shitty place to be, bloggers are in no way restricting their rights, singling them out for punishment because they didn't like their book, or making them feel physically unsafe in their homes.

But despite all the GR Bullybashers' protestations, deep down at the heart of things, it really is all about negative reviews. You don't see authors getting mad at people giving them five-star reviews despite not reading their book (some of them do just that with sockpuppet reviews). You don't see authors bitching out five-star reviews that said their hero was a pirate when he was clearly a privateer. I've yet to see an author question the professionalism, education, upbringing, or literary success of a reviewer who gives her a good review.

Honestly, authors? You will lose more readers through acting like a jackass on the internet than by getting a negative review on the internet.  Danielle Steel's books have been critically pissed on for years and yet she still sells enough books to afford the ballgowns in which she poses on their back covers. Why? Because her fans love her. And last time I checked, there were about 150 million blogs on the internet. One negative review is a drop in the fucking ocean.

Are there examples of blogger misbehaviour? Sure. Reviews that insult the author's personal life are unprofessional. Reviews made without reading the book (or that aren't transparent about not finishing a book) are unethical. Ironically, a blogger who was targeted by the GR Bully Site for inciting "lynch mobs" against authors by publicizing their misbehaviour also broke the news on blogger misbehaviour - specifically, the story of the blogger who got in a snit about an author's misinterpreted Tweet and proceeded to give her book a scathing one-star rating without actually reviewing the book or finishing it. That's dishonest, and the worst thing a blogger can do is be dishonest, because our business is all about opinions and the readers who trust ours.

So yeah, if you're a blogger who gives five-star reviews because you're being compensated for it, or you're giving one-star reviews without reading the book because of a personal grudge against an author, you're not a blogger I want to know or associate with. 

But even so, the very worst a blogger can do is spew bad words. Sticks and stones.What do you think? Are there ways in which bloggers have been unprofessional? Are there ways in which authors can respectfully respond to reviews without criticism? Please discuss in the comments!

Responding to Negative Reviews: Do's and Don'ts

This little post is in response to a recent scandal involving a way-cray-cray website created by a spiteful writer in order to revenge herself anonymously upon snarky reviewers by stalking them, going so far as to post their addresses and personal information online. And all of it in the name of "stopping bullying" (except for *cough* the fact that all the legitimate anti-bullying organizations she linked to refused all association and demanded the removal of their banners from her page). But the fact remains - how should authors react to negative or snarky reviews?

Well, search no more, because AnimeJune has the answer.

So, let's imagine you're a crispity-cool magic-fantastic writer of published novels, and let's say you're innocently surfing the internet when...

EGADS!

 A negative review of your CRISPITY-COOL MAGIC-FANTASTIC NOVEL!

A lot of emotions might be going through your head right now. 

Your first instinct might be depression, because someone didn't like all the cool things you wrote, which means they don't think that you're cool, which makes you start to doubt if you were ever crispity-cool and magic-fantastic to begin with.

Your second instinct might be rage. After all, rage is more productive, right? This reviewer clearly didn't even read your novel, at least not the way it was meant to be read - and he or she is telling everyone how to read it THE WRONG WAY. They're threatening your career! They're spreading lies and misconceptions about how your book isn't crispity-cool and magic-fantastic - WHEN IT CLEARLY IS, BECAUSE YOU WROTE IT!

 Decisions, decisions. What would a truly crispity-cool magic-fantastic author do in this situation? It's not like there's a guide on the internet.

WELL, NOW THERE IS! THE ULTIMATE DO'S AND DON'TS FOR RESPONDING TO A NEGATIVE REVIEW:

DO eat your feelings.

So many magic-fantastic feelings...

DO drink wine. It's nature's Control-Z! And it helps you live longer, like the French do, because we read it somewhere in a magazine. We think.

DO call your mum. DO call your friends. They're your very first fans, after all! They'll understand and listen to what you're going through!

DO cry in the bath. You are an artiste! You are not a machine! Your passionate heart is wounded!

The bathtub of an artiste is a judgement-free zone.

An artiste's feelings are very exhausting. 

DON'T write nasty posts or e-mails to the reviewer. You are an artiste! Your work must be engorged with love, not with hate!

DON'T use the Internet to track down that reviewer's personal information, credit rating, or address.

DO use the Internet to find pictures of kittens!

DON'T go after your reviewer with a knife...

...unless it's to offer them chicken in a gesture of peace! Dark meat or white meat?

Mmmmmm, chicken. The anguished, hungry goddess of vengeance is appeased.

DO keep writing. Writing is YOUR passion, and YOUR dream - you don't do it for the reviewers, after all. You do it for yourself, because you are a crispity-cool magic-fantastic author.

The writing-space of an artiste is also a judgement-free zone. And Mama's gotta make her deadline.

 Lasty, DO remember that you are a crispity-cool magic-fantastic author. If people are reviewing your book, that means people are also reading your book. And the more people are reading and talking about your book, the more people will find out about and start reading your book. And that is awesome.

Eight Years! Count 'em, eight!

It's true.

My blog is now old enough to enter the second grade (*sniff*). Blogs grow up so fast! During that time, I graduated high school, obtained a Bachelor's Degree in English Literature, got a job, moved out, had a story published, had a novel looked at by agents and publishers (but ultimately not published), and discovered a whole, wide, internet world of friends and fellow readers!  I've started and given up so many projects in my life, but I managed to hold onto this one, and I'm so glad you readers did, too. That being said, it didn't start as a book blog. Oh no. But there are still a few gems. 

Stay awhile, won't you, as we go down memory lane?

Year One
1. My absolute first blog post ever, where I muse about the end of high school and the lameness that is the High School Diploma Exam.

2. My exceedingly verbose attempt to find a summer job. with less-than-stellar results.

Year Two
1. Whoring for Candy, a post wherein I relate the surest way to my heart. Hint: It involves sugar.

2. I am the Butter Queen, wherein I lose four teeth but gain 11 movie passes and a free Madagascar watch.

Year Three
This was the year I started to review books - unfortunately, they were all the books I had to read during university for my English degree. Guy Vanderhaeghe, anyone? I was also very heavily into my short-story phase. Submitted a lot of stuff, got rejected a bunch of times.


1. Five Reasons Why I'll Never Be a Great Writer: thanks a LOT, MUM.

2. Ten Rules for Writing Epic Fantasy. I thought in multiples of five back then. For reals.

Year Four
This is the year I morphed into being a book blogger - starting with romance, thanks to the recommendations of the Smart Bitches.

1. My fiction is published for the first time!

2. My first romance review: "Bet Me," by Jennifer Crusie.

Year Five

1. I review a movie so bad it's good (with an Easy Bake Oven of Nazi DOOM): S.S. Doomtrooper

2. I discover Lost In Austen, one of the best Jane Austen adaptations of ALL TIME. ALL TIME.

Year Six

1. I accept a Guest Dare from The Book Smugglers and review Games of Command, the best romance with a virginal cyborg hero I've ever read!

2. I write a blog post that has seriously never lost its relevance, especially now: The Author's Attitude. Geared especially towards authors who get riled up about negative reviews.

Year Seven

1. AnimeJune's Guide to Exploiting the Dead for Fun and Profit - where I take on the recent glut of Jane Austen and insert-paranormal-creature-here fiction. 


2. A commenter under then name "Miss Manners" tells me how very disappointed she is in me for being a Mean Girl Blogger of Meanie Mean Blog Reviews - and I respond with Miss Manners vs. AnimeJune.

Year Eight 
This brings us to 2011 and the start of 2012. I slowed down somewhat in 2011 due to the circumstances of my moving into my first apartment that was close enough to my workplace to walk. No longer having to take the bus twice a day, every day, five days a week seriously cut into my reading time. But I brought it up again by 2012.


1. Against the warnings of my blogger friends, I read Whitney, My Love by Judith McNaught and it seriously hurt my brain.

2. When the Blogger Who Shall Not Be Named Or Linked To was revealed as a plagiarist, I read the comments section in her (non-)Apology Post, which inspired my insanely popular: So Your Favourite Blogger's a Plagiarist.

3. I take umbrage at Jennifer Weiner's BEA Book Blogger con assertion that bloggers should just be shiny happy people and discover the book blogosphere is a small (snarky) world, after all: The Importance of Being Nice.

As you can see it's been quite an interesting eight years, and I have my readers, followers, and awesome blogging buddies to thank for keeping it up for so long! Here's to another eight years!

The Importance of Being Nice

One thing I noticed being discussed at BEA Book Blogger Convention this year was keynote speaker Jennifer Weiner's statement that bloggers should focus our energies on "sprinkling fairy dust" on what we do like instead of blogging about what we don't like.

Given all the spats and arguments on GoodReads and Amazon, and the flamboyant author accusations of the existence of a YA Mafia or YA Opus Dei or the secret secret cliques of "Mean Girl" Bloggers ("her swag bag is so big because it's full of SECRETS"), a lot of people have been given to wonder about the relevance of everyone's mother's favourite saying, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."

Should bloggers all take a deep breath and just focus on being nice?

To that, I have to say: no. If as a blogger, you personally choose to only publish reviews of books you enjoyed, that's definitely your call, but I don't believe that's the mindset all bloggers should have to work by.

1. Book Bloggers are Critics, Not Promoters
This fact was definitely on my mind for much of the blogger convention, since a lot of what was presented in the speeches and panels I was present for dealt with how bloggers can serve publishers. Two of the authors who came to my table at the Networking Breakfast acted under the impression that if we liked how they pitched their books, we'd put them up on our websites. Amy Sohn (whose book I will, amusingly, be reviewing next) actually ranted about those "damn reviewers getting her book wrong" - entirely oblivious to the fact that she was speaking to a table of reviewers.

Because that's what book bloggers are. The cost-effective, positive promotion that publishers want from bloggers is only a by-product of what we actually do. If we like a book, we'll say so - and people will read that and take our recommendations accordingly (by the by, have you read anything by Cecilia Grant or Rose Lerner lately? Please do!). But I don't blog to promote books. I blog to read and review books - and if my positive reviews serve as free publicity, than it's a delightful happenstance! 

I know there are other book bloggers out there who do cover reveals and contests and memes now for books, even ones they haven't read, which can explain the confusion. There probably are bloggers out there who feel they are book promoters rather than critics. I can only say that from my personal experience as a blogger, who reads other book blogs, and who's discussed this matter with a fair number of other book bloggers, that the majority of us got into blogging to review and discuss books, not promote them. And honest reviews and discussions will naturally produce reactions both positive and negative.

2. Honesty Trumps Positivity
One concern I've heard come up in discussions with book bloggers is the notion of integrity and honesty. There was that whole kerfuffle in the U.S. a couple of years ago about whether bloggers should explicitly mention in their book reviews where and how they received the book - based on the readers' worry that a blogger would be more inclined to write a positive review of a book they received for free than a book they paid for themselves.

Now there's an interesting situation - readers distrusting a positive review! But shouldn't all bloggers just want to bake a cake with rainbows and sunshine in it so that we can all eat it and be happy? What about Jennifer Weiner's fairy dust?

Authors and publishers may worry about negative reviews, but to bloggers and, more importantly, to readers, their main worry is dishonest reviews. Did this blogger really like this book, or are they being paid to like it?

While I've read and enjoyed some "positive reviews only" publications (Locus magazine is one), I've noticed that readers and other bloggers tend to distrust them unless the blogger explicitly mentions that they choose not to review books they didn't like. I like to call this the "Paula Adbul Effect." That delightfully kooky former American Idol judge couldn't give a coherently negative critique to save her life - she was always sunshiney and supportive of all the performers. But because of that, her positive critiques had no impact on the audience or the voters. You could never tell if she really was physically incapable of disliking something, or if she was just too afraid of audience censure to really admit what she felt.

Simon Cowell, on the other hand, despite being kind of a prick, always gave really detailed critiques of the singers - so on those occasions when he did give an effusive response, you could tell that he meant it. Viewers felt they could trust that his opinions were honest.

That's not to say you have to be cruel to be kind - after all, Randy Jackson was far less of an ass than Simon Cowell, but his remarks still carried weight because he pointed out both the positive and the negative aspects of a competitor's performance.

What I'm saying is, positive promotion only works if the readers trust the source. There's a reason people fast-forward through the commercials on their DVRs - commercials and advertisements are nothing but positive. However, they're made by people with a financial stake in the product's success, and viewers know that. No one in the world likes every book they've ever read. Just like every contestant on American Idol isn't going to be a shining beacon of musical enlightenment. If you want to promote your book effectively, it's better to gamble on a positive review from a blogger known for their honest reactions to what they read than to hedge your bets with a literary cheerleader.

Well, then, you may ask, what's wrong with every blogger simply being transparent about only writing reviews of books they like? Why not just not post reviews of books you don't like, and let the utter lack of press speak for itself? See my final point:

3. There's No Such Thing As Bad Press
This is the kicker - even if someone is giving your book a negative review, they are also reminding people that your book exists. Its name gets brought up, its cover is revealed, it sticks in the human memory and consciousness, which translates to what jumps out at you when you go to bookstores. If no one is talking about your book at all, and no one knows about it, good or bad, how is anyone supposed to find it?

I can also ask you, as a fellow writer, which is better after submitting something to a publisher - a rejection in the form of absolutely no response, a standard "not for us" rejection letter, or a detailed letter explaining what didn't work for them? I can tell you I would rather have people telling me what they didn't like about my book than not talking about it at all and leaving me wondering whether they received it or even read it.

One of my personal rules of Blogger Etiquette is that if I accept an offer of a free ARC, I will review the book. Even if it's negative - because it demonstrates that I took the time to read the book cover to cover, took the time to analyze it, and spend hours thinking about it and writing about it. Even if I dislike the book, I respect the work that went into making that book, and I demonstrate that by crafting a detailed review of it.

It takes time and effort to write a review, even a negative one. It takes no effort at all to say nothing. So really, which response is less respectful?

This is my take on it. I'm not going to stop writing negative reviews, and I don't think you should, either. We blog because we like expressing how we feel about books. And some books are going to make us screaming, hopping, hair-pullingly mad - so we're going to express that. To Snark or Not To Snark is a different argument for a different time, but for now, let your Lit-Nit-Picking Freak Flag fly.

BEA Day Three: And Now We Say Goodbye

For the last day of Book Expo, I started it out with breakfast with my blogger friends Ana and Katiebabs. The place Katiebabs had suggested wasn't open yet, so we stopped in at a bakery instead, where Ana enjoyed her first soft boiled egg! Poor Katiebabs was so excited about the cover reveal for the next J.R. Ward book, but she didn't have internet access!

After that, we all cabbed to the Javits Center and parted ways. I, myself, was unsure of what to do at the Javits. If things were quieter on Wednesday than on Tuesday, things were downright silent on Thursday, and there was really only one book I was interested in, so I contemplated just skipping out and going sightseeing.

But as you can tell - I'm so weak.

I stayed until about 1:00 so that I could get David Levithan's Every Day, but also managed a few other finds - a Sarah Mayberry romance, Carnival of Souls, and Fathomless (which sounds like a really interesting and dark retelling of The Little Mermaid).

EDIT EDIT EDIT*** Ah! Mea culpa! There is more - I wrote this rather late at night and totally forgot - but there was a little more to my BEA tale. Due to pure luck and not actually knowing what was planned, I ran into a line of people at the Penguin booth in the afternoon who said they were waiting for John Green, so I got in line. As it turns out, John Green showed up to unveil the newest cover for An Abundance of Katherines, whose new design was chosen from a contest. The winner was there (she was from New Jersey, and it was also the day of her prom) and John Green handed out copies of the new edition, signed by himself. I proceeded to record the whole thing only to realize after he'd disappeared behind a curtain that I'd neglected to press the "Record" button. Ah well! END OF EDIT.

After that I went sightseeing - I decided to walk from my hotel all the way down Fifth Avenue and windowshop like no tomorrow. Didn't buy anything - not only because everything was astronomically expensive, but also because with all the books I'd grabbed I knew I had no room left in my luggage. But I took lots of pictures!

And after hoofin' it all the way down Fifth, I explored the glorious main branch of the New York Public Library.

I limped back to the hotel after that, but not before getting rained on and finding out that one should never take the availability of a New York cab for granted. I flew out the next day, but not before exploring Central Park and discovering that Children's Day is the absolute worst day to visit Central Park's tiny, rather sad zoo. 

And that was basically my Book Expo New York adventure! Would I go again? Um ... I'm not sure. Probably not, actually.

I mean, it was fun to get lots of free books - but I live near a library. I can get free books anytime I want. Honestly, I was looking for more of a social experience, the kind I got from going to writers' conventions like RWA National. I got a little of that from the BEA Book Blogger Con, but I was sick for half of that. BEA itself wasn't very social, in fact. It was a little isolating, particularly for a blogger. I think if I went as a publisher or a librarian or an author, I would be able to take something other than books away from the event, but as a blogger, I felt like a spectator.

But maybe I'll go looking for other conventions to go to. Ones that are closer to what I'm doing now (writing and blogging YA, romance, and fantasy), that aren't quite as expensive as RWA National, that have a great social element and opportunities for meeting new people. 

For now, I'll go back to my regular job (vacation's over, sob!) and start E-mailing the people whose business cards I received!

How were your experiences at BEA?