The Selection Debacle

As someone who's only been book blogging for 8 months, I was aware that professional authors have been known to attack bloggers for negative reviews.  At this point, my blog is relatively unknown and I do not generally post negative reviews, so this has not been a problem for me thus far.  This piece by Wendy Darling shocked me.

Breaking the Silence: The Selection Debacle


Authors have a right to take pride in their work.  A book can take months, even years, to write and to be lucky enough to have it published is an accomplishment to be celebrated.  It’s not an easy feat, but then to outright attack another person just because they did not care for the work demonstrates a real lack of maturity. 

As a reader, I have a right to my opinion.  I am allowed to tell people how I felt about a certain novel and the fact that instead of just telling my closest friends, I am now posting it in a public forum should not change that.  Wendy Darling posted her negative review in a respectful manner, but the author and the publisher chose not treat her in the same way. 

While I am happy that both parties chose to privately apologize to Wendy, the fact is the whole incident was should never have occurred in the first place.  The author and the publisher should have had the common sense to understand that this was opinion of one person and not the masses.  By attacking one negative review, they have damaged their own reputations more so than blogger’s bad review ever could have. 

Where does this leave me?  Well first of all, I will not read be reading The Selection.  Even though it was on my “to read” list before this debacle, I simply will not support an author who condones this type of behavior. 

Will I break my silence on negative reviews?  I’m not sure.  This has certainly opened my eyes to the risks of doing so, but I’ll just have to wait until I have read something less than thrilling to find out if how what I am willing to state or in this case…not state.