Dear angry author

This post is in response to this graphic

I know this has been said before by people much more eloquent than me but here is my take

I am a free reviewer
I pay for the books I get out of my pocket
Or
I get them from netgalley
I am not paid for this
Reading and reviewing books is my hobby
I do this for me and for my enjoyment
Same reason I blog here 

this is mine
It is my crafting time
My gardening
You would not walk up to someone who made a baby blanket and tell them the blanket is worthless because of errors
You would not walk passed a garden and say it sucks because of the inclusion of wildflowers
Well my grammar and lack of punctuation on my posts are because I am lazy and busy
Since I blog and review for me how it looks is up to me
If I want gifs there will be gifs
If I want nothing but Joe shirtless doing body rolls
It will happen as a matter of fact it is happening HERE in this post because nothing says happy Wednesday like Joe

Your book

 if it has errors I will call you on it
Because unlike me
You are expecting to get paid
If there are things in your book I do not like
I will downgrade you stars for that
Why?
Because I did not like it and people who follow me have similar tastes to me they will want to know if they should spend their money on it
This is word of mouth advertising
The same thing happens when I talk to people in real life
Now about reviewing with one star and flouncing
Or DNF
I tell people I did not like it
I tell them why
I give it a 1star
I let people know I did not finish and my personal reasons for not finishing

and yes sometimes the book is just not my taste

I do not expect everyone to write for my tastes nor do I expect to like everything that is written 

I will give just about anything a shot 

but if I am either not in the mood for that type of story 

or I find something offensive or annoying or not for ME in your book I will stop reading

I have a right to put my opinion out there

As do you 

however

this graphic is petty behavior 

if the reviews bother you ignore them

free reviewers are doing this for THEMSELVES

we do not get paid to write up a review on goodreads or amazon

the whole ranking books based on stars is really arbitrary 

some books I have read and gone back later and either added stars or taken them away 

some books I read a second time and wonder WHY did I give it ___ as a rating 

does this affect your sales 

possibly 

many people do not like to give a book that has all 5 star ratings a try because of that whole fiasco of bought reviews and friends ranking books just to inflate it

I know several reviewers who read book reviews looking for some 3 stars or even 2 stars looking for honesty 

Reviewers down rating for presence of drugs alcohol and sex

so what? if someone does not want to read about it and they PERSONALLY do not like it they do not have to 

My personal favorite was the reviewer thinking the female character was whiny 

I myself hate a poor female character in a book I like to see her grow I want to see the character change and mature through the course of the story same thing with the male character (remember I review mostly romance)

if the characters do not grow and change after you have put them through something I am going to get annoyed and yes I will lower a rating if I do not like the character.

I am disappointed in this happening it is something that should have stayed off the general internet and stayed with you and your friends it is petty and childish. In this world word of mouth advertising is how you will get your books sold 

all reviews count 

good bad and in between and even the ones with what you see as meaningless gifs

be gracious thank them for giving it a shot you never know who might read that review who might decide to give your book a try because of the gif or because someone mentioned something in their review even if THEY did not like it something that strikes someone else

I am always VERY thankful for the chance to read a book especially when I get it from a publisher from Netgalley or when an author says hey Sue read this for me

I guess what I'm trying to say don't be petty 

THIS was not edited on purpose 

 

Dear angry author