Witty Little Knitter

Yes let's talk about the Goodreads-bingo that made the rounds on twitter. No I am totally not procrastinating revising for my exam tomorrow.

First: the majority of those squares are the typical 'buhu these stupid reviewers just don't read my book the right way and don't understand it'-whining and should rightly be ignored. But I will also admit: I have seen a few of these things mentioned on the card and rolled my eyes. And do you know what I did after I finished rolling my eyes? Searched a more helpful review because I have enough sense to know what to make of a review that says 'Iek there are gays in this books and that's disgusting' or one where the name of the main character is never spelled correctly. 

So: dear authors: no, these reviews will not cost you readers (possibly only a couple of homophobes who would have hated your book as well so you're actually saved from more bad reviews). So why spend time being angry at things that won't affect you?

I mean you could be looking at pictures of kittens instead which is a so much more valuable use of your time.

Just think about it: idiots on the internet or kittens? Don't tell me that is a hard decision.

So we established how negative reviewers written by homophobes, racists and other idiots can affect authors (to recap: not at all).

Now let's look at this from the reviewers side: any negative review, and by that I mean not only those that complain about the existence of any minority in the book but also those who just complain that the minority-character is too flat, the book in general too boring or full of plotholes or any of the things you complain about in negative reviews, can result in one of these things:

1. The author ignores the review and everybody involved goes their way happily
2. The author angrily subtweets the review and mocks the reviewer
3. The author posts a link to the review on one of their social media-sites, thereby calling up all his fans to yell at the reviewer in question.

Now if wrote about liking this bingo or any comparable post I can never be sure if a negative review might not lead to you doing 2) or 3) and while I might not notice mocking subtweets about me but I will notice hordes of fans coming to my review calling me stupid (in the best case) or telling me to die (in the worst) and this is very much a situation which I would like to avoid because in the time I have to deal with these idiots I cannot look at pictures of kittens and not being able to look at kitten-pictures makes me very sad.

So, yes, public whining about bad reviews will persuade me from reading your book much quicker and more thoroughly than any negative review ever could.

/gets of soapbox

Also here's a picture of Anderson Cooper with a kitten: