Michael Schmicker's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"
Keep Goodreads a Free Speech Zone
Just came across an interesting discussion going on within the Historical Fictionistas group I haunt. The debate deals with allegations of Goodreads censorship.
In brief, some reviewers have reportedly been threatened by authors upset by a harsh review, or a public accusation (fair or unfair) of spamming or ratings/review manipulations.
Six months ago, owner Amazon responded by issuing new Terms of Service regarding reviews, sparking 230 posts. The string is worth reading, pondering. What think ye?
My two cents? A paste of my post follows:
Aloha all!
I'm coming to this discussion six months late, since I just joined Goodreads a week ago.
But first, full disclosure and a little background before I offer up my humble opinion. I'm a published author -- one book agented by a New York pro (Nat Sobel of Sobel-Weber Agency) which was sold to a powerful, Big Five, mainstream conglomerate publisher (St.Martin's Press/Random House); a second book put out by a small independent press (Watermark Publishing in Hawaii); and several self-published (iUniverse; Create Space; Kindle Direct).
I’m not Everyman author, but my experience may help Goodreads reviewers better understand what makes an author (hopefully very few) act irrationally to criticism. Here goes:
I've worked at my trade for over 30 years, first as a newspaper journalist, then a magazine writer, then magazine editor, then finally book author. In the traditional, social pecking order of our craft, the book author is king. When you finish one, you feel you’ve arrived.
It’s daunting and difficult to write anything thirty chapters long, though non-fiction more easily structures itself. Journalists routinely turn feature articles into good books, like my friend Neil Weinberg when he worked at Forbes (Look up “Stolen Without a Gun”). Fiction is the true crown jewel of our craft, the best earning cocktails and canapés, an intellectual soiree, maybe even a mention in the New York Times.
There’s a reason for this respect. A novel is a nightmare for the amateur, and a challenge for a pro. It requires playing with a Rubik’s cube of characters, plot, subplots, pacing, dialogue, style, emotional arc – pieces which must be moved into place in sequence and at the precise moment, to propel the tale forward, hold the fickle reader’s attention, and arrive at a successful denouement. Historical fiction – the novels we devour and discuss in this Goodreads group – raises the complexity another level. How much factual history should be inserted? When? Where? (To paraphrase Willie Nelson, "Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be writers.")
Any fiction, even bad fiction, is exhausting to write. The craft is difficult, lonely, and decidedly anti-social – just ask my wife or my son. George Orwell captured it perfectly. "Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
And then you face Judgment Day. The high from selling a 70,000 word novel approaches rapture, but few get called; the low from receiving your 25th query rejection, or a blistering Goodreads review, can be soul-scarring. So there’s a reason some authors badly mishandle a negative review.
That said, nobody owes an author anything.
If all our “blood, toil, tears and sweat” (thank you Winston) produces a mess, or a ho-hum, and someone calls us on it, we need to swallow hard and start rewriting – or prove the reviewer wrong by finding other readers who believe we’re the next Philippa Gregory or Bernard Cornwell.
Censorship is simply a bad idea.
Short of legally actionable libel (extremely rare), Goodreads management should stay out – don’t sweep away “avoid author” shelves, don’t remove reviews alleging author spamming or manipulation of ratings/reviews. Let reviewers skewer or gush to their hearts content.
Group Moderators are the only police we need. They know the beat, the neighborhood “characters,” and can better mediate between an aggrieved author and a rogue reviewer when some isolated incident of egregious falsehood or unwarranted ad hominem attack occurs.
Jeff Bezos should enthusiastically embrace the free speech banner at Goodreads. He’s the bloody owner of the iconic Washington Post, for heaven’s sake (search Goodreads for “All the President’s Men” if you’re too young to remember Watergate).
But it’s also good business. As Forbes magazine contributor David Vinjamuri noted around the time Amazon swallowed up Goodreads (3/29/13), “Amazon has been wrestling with review fraud in the past year. Because book reviews on Goodreads are identifiable (tied to a social profile), they are harder to manipulate. This may add a new and more credible review source to Amazon’s internal reviews. The average book review score is lower on Goodreads, and the variability is wider, making Goodreads reviews more useful to readers. “
And to serious writers.
Keep Goodreads a free speech zone.
In brief, some reviewers have reportedly been threatened by authors upset by a harsh review, or a public accusation (fair or unfair) of spamming or ratings/review manipulations.
Six months ago, owner Amazon responded by issuing new Terms of Service regarding reviews, sparking 230 posts. The string is worth reading, pondering. What think ye?
My two cents? A paste of my post follows:
Aloha all!
I'm coming to this discussion six months late, since I just joined Goodreads a week ago.
But first, full disclosure and a little background before I offer up my humble opinion. I'm a published author -- one book agented by a New York pro (Nat Sobel of Sobel-Weber Agency) which was sold to a powerful, Big Five, mainstream conglomerate publisher (St.Martin's Press/Random House); a second book put out by a small independent press (Watermark Publishing in Hawaii); and several self-published (iUniverse; Create Space; Kindle Direct).
I’m not Everyman author, but my experience may help Goodreads reviewers better understand what makes an author (hopefully very few) act irrationally to criticism. Here goes:
I've worked at my trade for over 30 years, first as a newspaper journalist, then a magazine writer, then magazine editor, then finally book author. In the traditional, social pecking order of our craft, the book author is king. When you finish one, you feel you’ve arrived.
It’s daunting and difficult to write anything thirty chapters long, though non-fiction more easily structures itself. Journalists routinely turn feature articles into good books, like my friend Neil Weinberg when he worked at Forbes (Look up “Stolen Without a Gun”). Fiction is the true crown jewel of our craft, the best earning cocktails and canapés, an intellectual soiree, maybe even a mention in the New York Times.
There’s a reason for this respect. A novel is a nightmare for the amateur, and a challenge for a pro. It requires playing with a Rubik’s cube of characters, plot, subplots, pacing, dialogue, style, emotional arc – pieces which must be moved into place in sequence and at the precise moment, to propel the tale forward, hold the fickle reader’s attention, and arrive at a successful denouement. Historical fiction – the novels we devour and discuss in this Goodreads group – raises the complexity another level. How much factual history should be inserted? When? Where? (To paraphrase Willie Nelson, "Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be writers.")
Any fiction, even bad fiction, is exhausting to write. The craft is difficult, lonely, and decidedly anti-social – just ask my wife or my son. George Orwell captured it perfectly. "Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”
And then you face Judgment Day. The high from selling a 70,000 word novel approaches rapture, but few get called; the low from receiving your 25th query rejection, or a blistering Goodreads review, can be soul-scarring. So there’s a reason some authors badly mishandle a negative review.
That said, nobody owes an author anything.
If all our “blood, toil, tears and sweat” (thank you Winston) produces a mess, or a ho-hum, and someone calls us on it, we need to swallow hard and start rewriting – or prove the reviewer wrong by finding other readers who believe we’re the next Philippa Gregory or Bernard Cornwell.
Censorship is simply a bad idea.
Short of legally actionable libel (extremely rare), Goodreads management should stay out – don’t sweep away “avoid author” shelves, don’t remove reviews alleging author spamming or manipulation of ratings/reviews. Let reviewers skewer or gush to their hearts content.
Group Moderators are the only police we need. They know the beat, the neighborhood “characters,” and can better mediate between an aggrieved author and a rogue reviewer when some isolated incident of egregious falsehood or unwarranted ad hominem attack occurs.
Jeff Bezos should enthusiastically embrace the free speech banner at Goodreads. He’s the bloody owner of the iconic Washington Post, for heaven’s sake (search Goodreads for “All the President’s Men” if you’re too young to remember Watergate).
But it’s also good business. As Forbes magazine contributor David Vinjamuri noted around the time Amazon swallowed up Goodreads (3/29/13), “Amazon has been wrestling with review fraud in the past year. Because book reviews on Goodreads are identifiable (tied to a social profile), they are harder to manipulate. This may add a new and more credible review source to Amazon’s internal reviews. The average book review score is lower on Goodreads, and the variability is wider, making Goodreads reviews more useful to readers. “
And to serious writers.
Keep Goodreads a free speech zone.
