There are some writers who, when an article of theirs has been published in a 3rd-party publication like a newspaper or professional journal/digest, will then read and follow the readers’ comments and feedback, and then reply to the readers and debate them and correct misunderstandings, or - in some more flamboyant cases - will get into quarrels with the readers themselves.
Is it rather unbecoming of an author to engage reader comments like this - kind of like going into the peanut gallery?
I don’t see why. That attitude seems a relic of print media, where we the audience are here solely to receive the author’s wisdom, and any interaction is if he/she deigns to answer any letters to the editor. Online publications aren’t like that, nor should they be. if you’re brave enough to put your material out there, you should be brave enough to defend it.
that is, from reasonable debate. Trolls need not be acknowledged.
In principle, no. Why should it be problematic or “bad form” to engage with your readers?
I can see why many journalists and columnists wouldn’t do it - they arguably have better things to do then to get into online debates with overly hostile trolls arguing in bad faith.
Of course, it is definitely bad form if writers respond as if they are on 4Chan or Youtube comments.
Also, you should be capable of engaging in reasonable debate yourself, and not let your own emotions cloud your responses. There are a number of well-known cases of writers who damaged their reputation and status with their readers by responding in a less than reasonable manner.
Years ago Aaron Sorkin got frustrated with West Wing fans on an Internet site and posted some nasty things. The network ended up having to forbid him from posting on the site. He then wrote the entire incident into the show.
Not unbecoming, but a little goes a long way.
I lose interest— and respect— rapidly when an author doesn’t know how to pick their battles, whether it’s a blogger, columnist, or restaurateur who writes a verbose, passive-aggressive retort to every subpar Yelp review.
I don’t know if it’s bad form, but it brings to mind an experience I had where I read a book, rated it poorly, left a negative review, and immediately received a response from the author apologizing profusely and telling me how terrible he felt about my review. I then felt compelled to cheer him up. It was… awkward.
It’s best to stay away. There’s no way an author can come out looking good.
It’s not that it’s bad form; it’s that you can easily end up looking like an asshole.
The exception is if the original article is on the author’s web page/blog. Even then, it can be dicey.
Better to respond via your own social media outlets than to respond on other businesses’ websites.
Yes. That path leads to the Dark Side, and becoming like Anne Rice or Laurel K. Hamilton, etc.
You should read The New York Review of Books. Lots of back-and-forth between authors and critics.
The author of a recent sports biography (which got a fair amount of attention in major publications) went after a negative reviewer on Amazon in post-review comments, arguing that the one-star review (on grounds other than book quality) was unfairly dragging down his overall ratings. It was kind of startling.
*A short while before this I had posted a laudatory review giving his book four stars. I half expected the author to challenge me for not having given him the full five stars. :dubious:
It depends. In Scientific American and similar publications, the author will answer reasonable questions, clarify misconceptions and the like and that is all positive. In more politically oriented periodicals, such as NY Review, authors sometimes engage in debates that simply show that the author and reviewer have real differences of opinion. But even there sometimes reply merely to assert that the reviewer missed something important.
I blog, and I vanity search and often find my blog posts shared and commented on elsewhere. Whether I engage really depends on the forum and the comments themselves. If it was a place like this where I felt there was something to be gained by engaging (fighting ignorance, either mine or the commenters’), then sure I’d do it. If it was a forum for people with views diametrically opposed to mine who were only hate-sharing it and could not be argued with, I wouldn’t waste my time. But I don’t think it’s bad form if other writers choose to do it.
Of course there are also writers who make up fake identities to reply to comments about their articles. Now that is bad form.
Also, for the record, it is bad form to track down the writers of bad reviews and hit them with bottles.
There have been a couple of cases where I’ve read mixed reviews that nevertheless were positive enough that I had some interest in looking for book - until the author stomped in with insane complaints. One example is a book about a teddy bear solving a crime in Venice, which sounded silly but potentially amusing - but in response to a mild review, here FunBITS: Bears in Boats Fighting Crime - TidBITS the author posted thousands of words of complaint in dozens of posts - of which this "That’s straight out of Fitzgerald and Keats, my friend. Straight out…and VENICE UNDER GLASS is more a lyrical prose poem to Venice than anything else! " is the most mild and least self-aggrandizing.
What do you mean by “like this”?
Read and follow readers comments? Not unbecoming.
Correct misunderstandings? Not unbecoming.
Debate them? Has the potential to become unbecoming, but isn’t inherently.
Quarrel? Well, that is often unbecoming, but not always, some commenters deserve more resistance, and who better to offer it that a good writer?
It 100% depends on the person and what was said. Just like some people write stupid shit online that outs them as ignorant troglodytes, authors can easily do the same. But many are articulate and clever and educated, and their online responses can be just as interesting to read as the original work.
The only real issue is when authors you thought were articulate and reasonable prove themselves to be ignorant troglodytes online. I guess those guys had good editors, because usually it’s hard to hide ignorance like that in a larger work. Usually, authors who write stupid things online also publish stupid things in print, and authors who publish intelligent essays, articles, books, etc., usually write intelligent things online, too. So it can be quite disconcerting when that pattern doesn’t hold.
I am aware of one case where an author came out ahead; a reviewer gave routinely gave bad reviews apparently to provoke controversy (after all, if an author responded with a letter of rebuttal for publication, the author had provided free material, bound to draw attention to the reviewer’s magazine). Asimov was baited into one cycle of complaint (provoked, if I recall correctly, by a review of “The Earth is Room Enough” - a collection of stories all of which take place on Earth - that accused Asimov of being unable to write anything but galaxy-spanning fiction), but lucked out when the reviewer next contrasted Asimov’s (supposedly) lousy next work, with a book by Paul French that the reviewer did like - Asimov’s next letter just noted that he was Paul French…
Here’s Asimov’s telling of the story I, Asimov: A Memoir - Isaac Asimov - Google Books - I got some details wrong. Sorry about that.
Here is Asimov’s first article of rebuttal
Futures-Past Editions: THE HENRY BOTT-ISAAC ASIMOV FEUD PART III: ASIMOV'S REPLY
And here is Asimov’s second letter, all sweetness and light Futures-Past Editions: 1955: ASIMOV BURIES THE HATCHET WITH - AND NOT IN - HYPERBOLIC REVIEWER HENRY BOTT
My favorite example of an author writing to a reviewer was by David Drake - when a reviewer said if he’d seen “real war” he wouldnt’ write the way he does (Drake is a Vietnam veteran, who absolutely has seen real war, and has pictures to back it up), Drake started inserting horrible characters (generally pedophiles) named after him in his stories & books.