As an author and a blogger I can say with all CERTAINTY. You do not argue with someone who has given you bad reviews (status updates) or who didn’t like your book.
Once you put something out there, it is out there, forever. You have given the population the right to judge your work how they see fit, whether they like it or not. You do not have the right to stalk or harass an author or reviewer.
There has been a giant bru ha ha on good reads….again. Kathleen Hale wrote an essay where she tries to paint a blogger, Blythe, in a really bad light, http://www.donotlink.com/framed?565100 but all she succeeds in doing is chronically the fact that she basically stalked this blogger for months, going as far to pay for a back ground check and lie to obtain her address. Also note that this author was told not to engage and did so any way.
This has caused many good bloggers that I have been friends with for years to place this author and her books of DNR lists and refuse to review. I am one of them. I try hard not to help out authors who attack reviewers; it is, in my opinion, in really bad taste. Possibly something Weird Al should have put in his song Tacky.
Kathleen Hale has gone into the black hole that STGRB has. A place where all I can have for her is pity and disgust.
Stalking is a crime and I think Kathleen Hale should be held accountable for spending months online and physically stalking this blogger. This is tacky behavior from any author. Think about it this way: the blogger spent maybe a few days reading this book and then moved on…the author wasted months of her life obsessing over something as trivial as one bad review.
Publishers need to really tell their authors to let this go and that they will not support any sort of contact between a reviewer and their author unless it is in a positive way (like giving away free book copies.) Maybe even teach a class on it.
My support for this particular blogger stands.
Wanna see other bloggers who wrote about this?
http://dearauthor.com/features/essays/on-the-importance-of-pseudonymous-activity/
http://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/blog/the-choices-of-kathleen-hale
