I have spent a good portion of my life trying to find ways not to offend people. What can I say? I am a slightly introverted, slightly anxious, writerly type. I will admit, however, this can, at times, be problematic and time consuming. When I was teaching College English, I would find myself writing paragraph after paragraph in the comments on a student’s essay to break the news to said student that the paper would be receiving a “C”. In turn, the student would often look at the grade, not read the comments, and say something like, Meh.

Now that I’ve switched careers, this quirk of mine has raised its angsty head in a number of new areas. Including, as I’m sure you have gleaned by now, in that tricky, tricky area of when to thank reviewers. I read this post from Carina Press, and the comments left me even more confused.

I mean, I get that you don’t want authors intruding in a reviewer’s space. Believe me, I do NOT want to be that awkward teenager that walks up to a group of another teens who are happily chatting and say, Hey guys, only to have the entire conversation go dead. I mean, heh heh, I’ve kind of been there, done that. But sometimes you really want to tell reviewers that, you know, their words made you weep tears of happy, happy joy. Is that so wrong? Are there circumstances where author/reviewer love is not forbidden? If the reviewer tags you by social media? Maybe then? Or does that still limit their freedom to hate your next book?

I’d love to hear people’s opinions on this.