Yeah, I suck at blogging.  I admit it, half the time I can’t concentrate because of job happenings around me that pull me away from my computer, other times I sit down, look at my keyboard, and fall asleep.  It’s been a very, very long winter.

But I was browsing through my facebook when I saw a link to a blog where the writer was blasting a well known, and well loved, author saying how they thought that said author should quit writing because she didn’t like the single book she read by this particular person, despite the fact that Madam Writer had several other highly popular bestsellers under her belt.  Needless to say, the blog author was blasted with comments calling her out, etc.  In fact, it’s still going on, I just checked the number of comments and it has gone up ten more in five minutes.  People are livid, and I honestly can’t blame them.  I won’t link to the article or mention the author being blasted here because that’s not what the point of this post is. 

No, the point is that I can’t help but wonder if, even though the blogger might truly feel the way she wrote about the author, I can’t help but think that she wrote what she did in an effort to garner attention.  Duh, right?  It’s no secret that negativity and negative opinions/publicity brings in attention.  Everyone has an opinion, and everyone wants to put their opinion out there and argue with people who don’t agree with them, etc.  That’s human nature.  But I find I get a little irritated (ok, a lot) when someone writes or says something in a majorly negative way just to get attention and comments.  Some people call it good marketing ploy, I call it more negatively being spewed into an overly negative world.

But negativity gets attention.  I checked the other blog posts, and her positive themed ones had one, two, three or no comments.  The blatant, blasting negative one?  Has over 600 comments and counting.  Which I honestly think is sad that someone feels the need to stop writing a positive themed blog in order to blast negativity everywhere in order to garner attention/views/comments.

But negative press sells, too.  Look at “The Da Vinci Code” and all the other books that were challenged by churches, challenged in libraries, etc and got attention because it made the public curious, so they bought the book/checked the book out themselves which in turn equaled sales for the author and a climbing up the best seller list.  Did these books deserve the attention?  Some yes, some no, some whatever, but it happened and I’m happy for the writers and I’m happy that people are reading.  I just hate some of the tactics that are used to gain the attention.  And I was hesitant to write this very confused (and confusing) post because I didn’t want it to seem that I was doing the same.  I’m just generally baffled and trying to work my way through things.

Part of business, I guess.  Someone could probably say I did the same with my ebook price rant, but honestly, I was (and still am) very baffled by how publishing houses think charging the same for an electronic book as they do a paperback/hardback is ok.  But then again, doesn’t always stop me from buying them, plus it doesn’t bother me if people comment on my posts or not.  I just write, to write.  If people get things from my words, great!  If they don’t, great!  That’s what makes this world a wonderful place.  :)