≡ Menu

Friday Coffee & Bookish Speaks – Author Feedback

Today I am drinking an Italian fresh roasted coffee that was left on our doorstep as a surprise!

What are you drinking?

I have to be careful with this topic because it’s a touchy one for me. When I say author feedback I am talking about their feedback on my reviews. Of course, I appreciate when an author likes my review and they express it makes them feel good. The point of my book blog is to be encouraging to authors.

Yet, sometimes that encouragement comes in the form of a critique. When I get a defensive feedback because of the critique part – I’m not a fan. Especially when it’s done in my comment section. When I critique an author it’s for their edification not up for debate. I have had a couple of authors give me feedback publicly on things they didn’t like about the review. Like I said, I’m not a fan of that. Yet, I am learning, it comes with the territory.

I wouldn’t say I have a right perspective about this. I confess I am super sensitive to feedback I perceive as negative. I work really hard to give an honest and fair  review. Sometimes this includes pointing out what didn’t go so well. If you are going to be defensive about it a) reconsider your career as an author -a big part of your career is based on readers feedback take it like a grown up! b) If you still want to be an author but feel the need to comment, be professional about it. I would prefer if you contacted me in private.  Some authors are like petulant children and it makes me upset.

In conclusion, most of the time author feedback is great from the professional ones who are eager for a good opinion and are most appreciative. Thankfully only once in a while do you get an author who acts unprofessionaly. I just take it in stride because when it’s good its great and for all the times authors are excited I can stand for the few times they are not. Yet personally I wish they would keep their defensiveness to themselves. How exhausting it would be as an author to defend every critique you didn’t like! I know I find it exhausting being the recipient of it.

How do you feel about author feedback on your reviews? How do you think authors should handle critiques?

{ 2 comments… add one }

Leave a Comment

CommentLuv badge

Next post:

Previous post:
http://writingpearls.com/friday-coffee-bookish-speaks-author-feedback/
writingpearls.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-26
44659
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:DSIUF3U3DWEDIFCZO6JYBC5AOC26MSL5
<urn:uuid:a03c8494-22c6-4e41-b32c-3f6384bb39dd>
2017-06-29T03:53:30Z
216.92.212.35
text/html
sha1:PAKVTHXOIZ43NJH3AF6WY7IANHROPIZE
<urn:uuid:33fc720c-0aa0-4bdd-afa6-5cd27f772004>
http://writingpearls.com/friday-coffee-bookish-speaks-author-feedback/
length
response
<urn:uuid:593456de-ba21-4f10-b9bb-a4c1ebada004>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-185-224-197.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-26
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for June 2017
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf