To tag or not to tag—when author feedback gets personal

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From The Bookseller:

Would you walk up to an author at a book event, or on the street, and tell them how much you hated their book? No? But by creating a public work of art, surely authors are opening themselves up to scrutiny and should be prepared to take the rough with the smooth?

The idea of directly confronting an author with negative feedback may seem ridiculous—but it’s exactly the subject of a debate raging in social media. Many will have stumbled across the Twitter thread started by American sci-fi author Elizabeth Bear last week, in which she described any author tagging as “rude”.  As with many controversial opinions on Twitter, this sparked immediate attention—was it wrong to tag authors in reviews at all?  Or just the negative ones? Do all authors hate being tagged? Is it part of the job and a useful chance to get feedback, or just another sneaky form of cyber-bullying?

According to Bear, her original comment was slightly misinterpreted: “Of course, nobody minds being told, ‘I love your work!’” she explains. “The problem arises when an artist is placed in a position of having to seem to ignore, to endorse or to publicly disagree with criticism (even positive).” In other words, the real issue for Bear is having your hand forced—being baited not just to read reviews but to engage, even if by omission. In times gone by, responding to reviews was a rare phenomenon, save the odd newspaper-letters-spat. But isn’t simply being present on social media an invitation to engage?

Many authors on Twitter were quick to defend the bloggers and reviewers who—after all—bring much-needed attention to new releases, with several expressing a desire to be tagged in reviews no matter their content. “As an author, I love to hear readers’ opinions, good, bad or indifferent, so do like to be tagged,” explains UK thriller writer Matt Hilton.   

Others, like author Dawn Goodwin who pens psychological thrillers, felt being made aware of negative feedback was a useful way to improve their work going forward. “As an author, I like being tagged, opening a discussion with a reader, learning more about them. I think it makes me a better writer and I’m always appreciative of someone taking the time to engage with me,” she explains.

Link to the rest at The Bookseller

3 thoughts on “To tag or not to tag—when author feedback gets personal”

    • A tag is a way to notify the author that a comment has been made on a social network platform, For example on Twitter typing my handle (@AshleyRPollard) will send me the post.

  1. My observation that those who would call out the agents aren’t those who have agents, because we already know that agents are relics of a legacy world that is slowly dying.

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