One Thursday (and only one) With Erin

“Erin? Who’s Erin? I didn’t even know MacGregor Literary HAD an agent named Erin,” you might be saying. I actually started just about a year ago, but have been keeping a low profile where the blog is concerned while I learn everything there is to know about the business in preparation for staging a coup and re-naming the agency “Buterbaugh Literary.” I’m almost ready to put my plan into motion. In the meantime, thanks to Amanda for letting me fill in today! *Step one: replace Amanda– Check.*

With all the outlets clamoring for authors’ time and attention when building a social media presence, it can be easy for authors to get into the habit of constantly feeding their Internet pets- Tweet four times, update Facebook status, post new blog, chime in on Goodreads discussion group, engage, engage, engage! While it’s true that you have to make regular appearances at any of these places for them to be truly effective in building your platform, I’ve noticed a negative side-effect of the “feed the Internet” mindset among authors: namely, a lack of good judgment when it comes to responding to both positive and negative feedback/commentary at their various Internet watering-holes. Your responses to reviews and comments have the potential to seriously derail your PR train, so take a look at some of the scenarios in which authors tend to sabotage themselves  and see how your response practices measure up!

Responding to reviews:

-Don’t respond to negative reviews.
This is hard. I’m a person who always likes to have the last word, and when a bunch of strangers who don’t know you and don’t seem to understand your book begin to post lackluster reviews to Amazon or to Goodreads, it can be extremely tempting to provide an explanation or defend an aspect of the book the reviewer dislikes. I saw this recently on Facebook; an author posted a link to an online publication’s review of her upcoming book, and the review, while very polite, made reference to a couple of issues presented in the book on which the reviewer disagreed with the author, and pointed out a few areas where the reviewer found room for improvement. Not a rave, but not a horrible review; nothing personal or devastating or mean-spirited about it, but the book’s author commented on the post where the review appeared and defended herself on every front, saying the reviewer had “misunderstood her” on a few issues, quoting parts of the text to prove to the reviewer that certain criticisms were invalid, and maintaining that some of the other areas found wanting by the reviewer were the result of conscious choices as a writer. To someone who’d never read the book, met the reviewer, or met the author, the author came across as insecure and unprofessional. A review is an opinion piece, not an attack against which you have to defend yourself, and hijacking the comments to justify your choices as a writer or to try and make the reviewer retroactively like your book better by explaining it is inconsiderate and ineffective.

-Think twice before responding to a positive review.
It’s only polite to say “thank you” to someone who posted a good review of your book, right? It might seem like good manners to respond to a positive review, but for a reviewer who doesn’t know you, having you show up in the comments section can be a little uncomfortable, even if you’re just thanking them for a good review. It can cause readers to assume a bias on the part of the reviewer– the author thanked him for the good review, does that mean it was written as a favor to the author?– and wrecks the comfortable feeling of anonymity that fosters honest reviews. This is especially true on sites such as Amazon and Goodreads, where most reviews are not written by professionals in the industry, but by regular readers/fans: they may have loved your book, but that doesn’t mean they want to be your internet buddy. Book reviews are written for the benefit of other readers, not for that of the author, and an author who makes a big deal out of good reviews can give off a bit of an Oscar-acceptance-speech vibe- they already gave you the award, you don’t have to thank each individual person who voted for you! The exception to this is when thanking people who did write their reviews as a personal favor- friends with blogs, authors you traded reviews with, etc. These people will usually make reference to their relationship with you in the review, i.e., “SET IN STONE is the debut novel of my good friend and writing partner Gary Morningside.” In these cases, it’s completely appropriate to post a brief thank-you, either as a comment or as a post on your site– “Thanks to Rick Waverly at the New England Book Collective for reviewing SET IN STONE!” Your best response to a positive review is to post a link to it on your Facebook page or blog so as to get as many people as possible to read it.

Responding to comments:

The internet has gone a little nuts with interactivity. There are hardly any social media outlets without a comment feature where users can dialogue with each other and respond instantly to new content. People can comment on your blog posts, Tweets, Facebook statuses, YouTube videos, and, in most of these places, they can comment on other comments. As an author, you have to be especially careful with how you interact with people in these forums. Having a firm policy in place regarding how and when to respond to comments could literally save your career.

-Comments on your blog
Comments made directly to your blog or Facebook posts are usually the most personally relevant and the most openly friendly. Blog comments tend to be made by regular readers who’ve read your blog for awhile, like what you have to say, and feel comfortable engaging with you. The way they see it, you started the “conversation” by posting a blog entry; their comment is an indication that they’re engaged and willing to talk back. Responding to comments on your Facebook page or blog is a great way to build relationships with your readers– to thank them for reading, to comment on things you have in common, and to show that you appreciate the time and attention they’re devoting to your posts. Depending on the amount of comment traffic you get, you may not be able to respond to every comment, and in fact, you probably shouldn’t– a page full of rubber-stamp “Thanks for commenting!” responses from an author devalues that response very quickly. Three or four personal responses per post, evenly distributed between regular readers and first-time commenters, make every visitor to your site feel more significant because they see that you are actively engaged with your readership and responding thoughtfully.

-Negative comments
Negative comments about you or your work can show up anywhere: your blog, a blog that links to yours, a book trailer on YouTube, a Goodreads discussion board, a review– you get the idea. YouTube is a shining example of why users shouldn’t necessarily have the option of responding publicly to everything posted to the Internet– pick a video at random and take a look at the first page or two of comments. No matter how non-controversial the content is, nearly every comment thread contains political rants, racial slurs, personal attacks, debates on religion– your basic smorgasbord of potentially offensive remarks. Because of the personal and informal nature of most comments, you may be more tempted to respond to a negative comment than you would a more formal post, such as a review; after all, you reason, people comment because they want to dialogue, so it’s fine for you to engage. So, you respond to a few negative comments, just  to clear up a misunderstanding on the commenter’s part, or to assert yourself when you’re being bullied in a thread– I mean, if you don’t defend yourself, those negative comments could wreck your image, right!?

Wrong.  This kind of thinking is responsible for thousands upon thousands of stupid, pointless, winner-less Internet fights, and nine times out of ten, the best move for your career is to WALK AWAY from negative comments.  If you don’t have a thick skin and a whole lot of self-control, the Internet comment monster is going to chew you up and spit you out.

You may remember the Applebee’s receipt debacle from a few months back. Long story short, an Applebee’s employee compromised a customer’s privacy by posting a photo of a receipt on which a customer had given a really lame religious excuse for being a crappy tipper. Internet-commentland got riled up for a bit, as it does, with people criticizing and name-calling on both sides, and the whole thing would have gone away and been forgotten if not for Applebee’s complete and total self-destruction on their Facebook page. R. L. Stollar, news editor at the Eugene Daily News, wrote a fabulous and comprehensive synopsis of the whole train wreck, but it boiled down to some poor Applebee’s PR rep using the company Facebook page to argue with and attempt to pacify thousands of individual commenters- for every one defensive response to a comment, a hundred more ridiculing the company’s actions flooded the thread. Though an extreme example, the Applebee’s events still serve as a warning against what can happen when one well-intentioned, level-headed person attempts to force the Internet at large to play fair– it’s not going to work, so your best bet is usually not to play. (Note: if you are lucky enough to find yourself on a comment thread where everyone is being civil, dissenting opinions are being presented without name-calling, and people are offering cyber-hugs to their enemies, by all means, engage– I’m not saying such an environment is nonexistent, just very, very rare. Like, unicorn-rare.)

Finally, remember that there are always going to be a few people with horrible grammar whose sold aim in life is to sit at home and tick you and the rest of the Internet off. Don’t let negative reviews or comments scare you away from smart social media use, and don’t let one jerk with a third-grade grasp of punctuation get under your skin. Keep going with what’s working well for you, continue to take advantage of every opportunity to improve, and, as always, don’t forget to make time to WRITE, because a great platform is pretty dang worthless without a book to sell. 🙂