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chances are you’ve heard about poor behavior from other anonymous writers.
I’ve been on Twitter for nearly two years now, and I’ve heard stories that fit all over the “horrific idea” spectrum—stories that I often didn’t want to believe. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen agents and other publishing professionals tweet about things writers have done or said to them that have made me cringe.
Then, a few nights ago agent Jessica Negrón said this:
Do we pay attention to online behavior when considering a potential client? You bet we do.
— Jessica Negrón (@loladeee) April 2, 2013
How you behave—both on the streets and online matters. If you’re an unagented writer and you’re looking for an agent to fall in love with your book, then you are searching for representation. Someone to represent your book, yes, but also by extension represent you.
And no self-respecting agent wants to represent poor writer behavior.
Even if you’re not searching for representation, bad behavior can impact your sales, as well. I can guarantee that writers who respond to negative reviews with scathing tantrums won’t get very many reviews, and will certainly turn away readers who look at the reviews before buying and come across your online hissy fit.
The point is this: if you’re serious about your career as a writer, then you need to compose yourself professionally. In other words:
If you feel the need to respond to a rejection in a manner that makes the agent feel as hurt and angry as you are in the moment—don’t.
If you get the urge to bash other writers for any reason whatsoever—don’t.
If you feel the need to talk about how your work is superior to others in your genre—don’t.
If you feel the need to be anything other than perfectly respectful to your peers, to publishing professionals, to people in general—get off the computer and vent. Just don’t do it online.
What do you think about bad online behavior (from writers or otherwise)? Have you ever witnessed an online incident?
15 comments:
Great post. Tweeted it. :)
Thank you! ^_^
I agree with it all! It's sad, though, that most of the people who need to read this probably wouldn't.... :-|
Probably not. But I felt it was worth discussing, anyway.
Definitely! :)
Is it ok to give scathing comments to a customer who gives you a one star review because they had a problem downloading your kindle book from Amazon? That happened to me and I ranted at the guy because he doesn't understand how incredibly hard it is for independent authors to garner any attention whatsoever, and how we pretty much need a perfect five star average to compete with all the fools who get their friends and family to give them five star reviews on Amazon. That's the only time I got angry at somebody. My only other bad behavior is that I winge a lot but I'll be damned if writers don't have a hard time of it. I just want to write but I have to be a marketing guru too and I suck at that at the most basic level!
Image is crucial for a writer. People are going to want to or not read your work based on your personality a lot of the time, so if you paint yourself in a bad light, it will only reflect poorly on your writing. Basically, if you've got something negative to say, don't, lol. Great points, Ava!
Unfortunately, indies in particular have a bad reputation. Most of us are sane, reasonable, professional people just trying to do what we love for a living--but there are a (very) vocal minority who insist on throwing tantrums.
Matthew, while getting a one-star review does suck--especially since the customer was really giving the bad review to amazon, not to you--I think that ranting ends up hurting more than it helps in the long run.
So...I'm going to have to agree with Girlnone. I personally don't believe that it ever looks favorably for the author to rant at a customer for any reason whatsoever. As Girlnone said, in your case the customer was giving Amazon the poor review, and while I understand it still affects your star average because Amazon doesn't differentiate, any reader who scrolled through your reviews and read why the customer gave the one star would have understood that it wasn't really your fault at all. Unfortunately now with the rant, you may turn some readers away.
As for your second point, you're right that writers have a hard road. Unfortunately the marketing bit is something that we can't escape nowadays, particularly if you're self-published, because the brunt of all of the marketing (like everything else) falls on you. But that's how it is and it's something we just have to learn to accept. As I've said before, no one said the life of a writer was easy. :)
All the best!
Agreed.
Thank you, Margaret! I like the way you summed it up with that second to last line. Concise, to the point, and entirely true. :)
It's not uncommon for the minority to act loudly enough to create a bad impression of the majority. You're entirely right, and it is unfortunate. Hopefully over time people will come to understand that by and large, most indies (and writers in general, really) are a group of respectful, passionate people who know how to behave.
I was going to say the same thing, Grace! On the other hand, I'd like to mention that it's not just the occasional *writer* who behaves badly online. There are people who don't know how to behave well in the internet sandbox all over the publishing world.
Oh, that's entirely true. I just focused on writers because that's the large portion of the audience for this blog. But you're right, it's not just writers.
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