Negative Book Reviews and Tagging Authors

Over the past few weeks, in an attempt to distract myself from NaNoWriMo, I stumbled across an interesting topic bookish people were discussing. Bad book reviews and tagging the authors in them. Apparently, writers should never do book reviews and if you are doing a book review you should never tag an author in a negative one. As a book lover and writer, I have done my fair share of reviews, positive and negative and tagged the authors. However, after reading some of these post I started thinking, am I doing the right thing?
Firstly, let us discuss the fact that writers should not do book reviews.

The argument made here is that it is self-promotion and that if all your reviews are not rainbows covered in unicorn vomit an angel farts then you have the chance of offending agents and thus ruin your chances of ever getting published.

Right. It is only self-promotion if you leave a review saying. “Want to read something like this but better? Read…” If you are not doing that, and only mention in passing during your reviews that you are a fellow writer, you are not self-promoting. Now onto the fact that it ruins your chance of getting published. I do not buy into this, I am sorry. While yes, you may not make the best of impression and maybe there are a few agents who take your truthful review close to heart, but does that mean every agent out there will follow suit? I doubt it. And even if it did happen, there is always the route of self-publishing to go down.

Negative book reviews and tagging the author. The points made here are as follows: It makes you look bad and like you crying out for attention. We should be supporting each other, not tearing each other down. You make the author feel bad and discourage them from ever writing again. And most annoyingly, you should only tag authors in books that you are reviewed in a positive light, building them up and letting the wold know about them.

I tag all authors in my reviews, good, bad and in the middle. I do not do it for attention, I do it out of fairness in all of my reviews. I do not give special treatment, all my reviews are done equally. I do not care if it makes me look bad. I do pro’s and con’s of books that are not 4-5 bookmark ratings. If I was attention seeking, all I would say in a bad book review was, ‘What absolute crap! Can’t believe this was published, author should pay me back and then jump off a bridge, saving the rest of the world from their stupid thoughts.’- Actually, I could say much worse, but out of sleep deprivation I find my nasty, witty comments eluding me.

While yes, we should all be supportive of each other, I feel that only tagging authors in good book reviews is a form of tearing others down. Should they all not have an equal chance to have our titles and names known? If we only tagged those that are worth tagging, how do we help those that are new and struggling find their way? How will new readers discover authors of 3 bookmarks and below if everyone fails to tag the author or just doesn’t write about the book all together? How will a reader decide for themselves, see a review-good or bad- and decide they want to read the book? I believe that tagging authors in all reviews will for one, build up their name and get people talking about them, readers discussing the many points of the book and help new readers discover them.

You make the author feel bad and discourage them from ever writing again? Really? Put it this way, if the author is so fragile that a single negative review from a blogger is enough to bring them down, then they should not be in this line of work. Also, if they went through the agent route, chance are they have been hit with so much negativity and rejection that they look at negative reviews like dust they wipe away from a shelf. Publishing is a nasty business. I have had more than my fair share of rejection letters. ‘This is not what we are looking for.’ ‘Not interested.’ ‘You are not for us, best of luck.’ And the more insulting, silence, no reply. If this has not discouraged you from writing, then a few bad reviews won’t.

The last point they made was how you should only tag authors in books that you are reviewed in a positive light, building them up and letting the world know about them.

I have such issues with this. It is much like the supportive point. In only tagging the 4.5-5 star rated books, how is that helping fellow authors? I find this to be insulting to both authors and fellow readers. I love reading reviews on popular books, seeing the good and the bad points. I love discussing them with people, seeing the different view points. If we only wrote reviews of the superb books and ignored all the others, where is there room to discuss? Not every loves the same books. People love the Divergent Trilogy, I hated it. I can give reasons why, have a discussion and listen to why people loved it. That is the beauty of books, of having an opinion.

So in short, I will continue to tag authors in all of my reviews. To me, it does not matter if a book is fantastic or horrible, I treat them all the same and go about the same processes. I do not believe in special treatment simply because I liked a book more than others.

I believe in constructive criticism. With my bad reviews I go in depth and explain what I liked and what I didn’t like, and why. If the author happens upon my review and reads it and they think about what I said and learn from it, all the better. For instance, if I made a point that there was too much ‘he said, she said and the dialogue wasn’t entirely believable’, and in their next novel they changed that than I will feel like I have helped them in some way rather than just ignoring them.

As a fellow writer, I welcome negative thoughts with merit. I try and take what they say and understand it. They didn’t find my main character relatable, okay, let me see how I can change that. My first person point of view is boring and generic, alright, let us dabble with third person POV. Not all negative reviews are bad as long as there is a solid explanation and though behind it.

Some books have such a fantastic rating on goodreads when in reality they book was awful. Fifty Shades of Grey anyone? Or how about popular YA series that are getting star ratings based on their covers or a single character they loved? As an author, I would find it more insulting and hurtful that my book was given 5 stars based purely off of its cover or a male character. That is not a judgement on the writing or even the story.

There is not a single book that is perfect. Every book I have ever read has flaws and I point those flaws out even if I loved the book. And as I do with tagging authors, I judge books fairly and will always do pros and cons of books. Not because I am slamming the author, though there has been a few occasions where I questioned how a book like that could get published. I do not do it for the attention, but because I feel that all authors should be treated equally and when a bad point in a book is there you, as a reviwer point it out. I give honest reviews, here and on goodreads. I will not conform to this coddling generation that shies away from negativity because someone’s feelings may get hurt. It does not help anyone to grow and become better if everything is sunshine and unicorn farts and everyone gets a participation trophy. Will the author’s feelings get hurt, yeah probably.

In short, if you do negative book reviews, or any kind of reviews keep at it. If you tag the author, director or actors don’t stop to conform to what others are doing. Keep at your own thing if you feel what you are doing it right, if you are doing it respectfully.
What do you think?