Seriously authors, what is it about negative reviews that draw you to them like kittens to catnip flavored milk? Ignore them. There is no good aftermath to reacting to negative reviews.
Today's ABB is actually a husband behaving badly. Maybe not "Candace Sams is calling the FBI bad", but it's pretty abhorrent behavior for any author, let alone a professional one.
Author Emily Giffin recently received a one star rating on her book
Where We Belong, which released last month. The review read as follows: (
click here to go straight to the review)
This book was so disappointing. I have read all of Emily Giffin's books, and have found that her last few books are getting worse and worse. Where We Belong had the ability to be a great story. However, telling the story from two points of view, Marianne and Kirby, led there to be little depth to either character. Also I found both characters to be very unlikable. The story was trite and unbelievable. I also found that Giffin put a very negative spin on adoption. Giffin's last books have been a disappointment and this one was no different.
A little light, but overall it's not some angry missive where the reviewer is just slinging bile. It's one of the more mild negative reviews I've seen out there and I've seen some reviews that completely rip a novel to shreds and use it as kitty litter. (Not that those kinds of reviews are wrong, just that people can and have been more harsh in their criticisms of things.) The reviewer did at least try to state why they didn't like the book.
That's where Giffin's husband stepped in. I'm posting the following exchange "as is".
Really? An "avid reader" that has written one review in their entire existence on amazon. Beware people. Psycho alert.
UES says:
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What an incredibly petty and mean comment, Emily Giffin. And you must have forgotten that by clicking on "a reader from ATL" we see your signed diatribe against another author who's unfortunate enough to share your name. And now you're calling someone a "psycho" simply because she didn't like your book? Jeez. What a horrible human being you seem to be.
Since you'll probably delete your comment once you realize you've been caught insulting a reader who didn't like your book, I'll do others a favor and post your comment here:
"a reader from ATL says:
Really? An "avid reader" that has written one review in their entire existence on amazon. Beware people. Psycho alert."
Classy, huh?
UES, I'm not Emily Giffin. I'm her husband. I see the link you're referring to and I suppose when that issue came up Emily responded from my computer. My issue is this - anybody is entitled to express their opinion and I don't want to ever discourage that. But I get sick of seeing these posts by jokers who have never reviewed a book and write a one line, one star review because they have some other issue. You, in fact, use some pretty hateful language yourself. I was merely sticking up for my wife who, as a matter of course, doesn't read the reviews on here. If somebody hates the book then fine but some of these are not objective reviews.
I truly am an "avid reader" of Emily Giffin (love her books!) but I am also the daughter of a restaurant owner. On behalf of my father, I check reviews daily, and oftentimes find myself wanting to reply in defense. Of course I agree that everyone is entitled to an opinion; however, it's extremely frustrating to read reviews from people who review out of spite, hatred, or some other personal reason rather than write an educated, unbiased review. Props to Emily's husband for recognizing a lame reviewer and sticking up for his wife! :)
I've read all of Emily Giffin's books and love them all. My only complaint (or rather, wish) is that she has more books published!
Ash says:
Can I just point out that "avid reader" did not even spell the main character's name right?? Further proof he/she did not read it. After seeing her name so many times on the pages that mistake stuck out to me like a sore thumb! And good for you, Mr. Giffin, I love to see a husband stick up for his wife and I truly believe it was warranted!
Bravo to you, Emilys Husband, for sticking up for your Wife!:) I have not had the privilege of reading this one, but if anything like her others, then I'm sure it's wonderful!:)
I too think it's wonderful that you're sticking up for your wife Mr. Giffin :) and like the others have said before me; unbiased reviews are hard to come by. I am an avid reviewer of all life experiences. I haven't yet had a chance to read WWB yet but I plan to, because I've read and love all of Emily's other books. Sometimes reviews have to be taken with a grain of salt and it's a shame that people take the time out of their lives to be so negative and hurtful. Karma is a b****.
Did you read the same book? Negative spin on adoption? Unlikable characters? It was believable to me! I loved it, I just wish there was more for us to read! Part 2 please?! :-)
"UES" why all the hostility? I also read Emily's response to finding her name associated with the "erotica" writings of the other Emily Giffin, and I thought her response was intelligent, appropriate, and free from the harsh spin that you have put on your review - hardly a "diatribe", as it is not insluting, harsh, or even negative at all. Perhaps its time to start reading the dictionary.
Classy, huh?
To "Mr. Giffin" kudos to you. I am also one of Emily's facebook friends who is here to support her. I loved the alternating points of view - only hoping to see one from Conrad along the way. I found the story believable, as one of my sisters gave a baby up for adoption at 16, and another one of my sisters has two beautiful adopted daughters. My third sister is EXACTLY the type of person to take someone shopping as a way of calming herself, and feeling like she is in her own elementas she tries to will an awkward or uncomfortable situation away.
There is no excuse for coming on and attacking a reviewer like this, calling them a "psycho" because they only have one review to their name. All that could mean is that this reader felt so strongly about this book that they decided to leave a review. It's fairly common and guess what? It means that at one point that reader was such a big fan of Giffin's work that the letdown to them was that much more of an impact. It doesn't make her "psycho" at all.
Now you'll notice that there's a huge lag time between responses. Why is that? It's because about three hours ago (8/21/12) Giffin posted about the review on her facebook account, bragging about her husband's actions on facebook.
She pretty much acknowledges that her husband went onto Amazon and then attacked a negative review. She then posts a link to the Amazon entry with a comment about where the review is located on her facebook page, which pretty much sends out the message of "go downvote this review and comment yourself". This is why most of the comments are so recent.
Now if this had been a particularly venomous review, I could almost understand the temptation to post. It's hard to see someone talk smack about something someone you know or love wrote. But this wasn't a bad review. The reviewer said nothing about the author, just that they were disappointed with the book and had been disappointed with the books for a while. And they got attacked because of it and labeled a "psycho" because they dared voice their opinions and was a new reviewer to Amazon.
His statement of "not wanting to discourage opinions" is pretty invalid considering that he took to Amazon to insult someone who was simply voicing their own opinion in a free forum of their choosing. His only justification is that the reviewer didn't have a five paragraph review and a twenty page history of product plugs. Where's his indignation for the positive reviewers who posted a 1-3 sentence brief five star review and not much (if any) of a purchase history on Amazon? Why isn't he angry that people are taking to Amazon to post reviews that are more skimpy than the negative one? (And yes, there are reviewers who left positive reviews prior to the negative one's posting that have just a few sentences and have only reviewed this one book.)
What's even worse are the people on facebook and on the Amazon review defending Giffin's husband's actions. Why is it that posting a negative review is "psycho" but someone searching out reviews, insulting reviewers, and then sending out a cattle call for everyone to go gawk at the negative review (thus ensuring they'll downvote and bully the reviewer) isn't? I do acknowledge that Giffin only tells people to read the review, but come on... what does she expect them to do? They want to support their author and keep her happy, so they do what they think she'd like them to do: attack and downvote the review. I'm sure that Giffin would probably deny this, but she didn't get to where she is in the world by being an idiot. She knows full well what happens when authors send their readers to negative reviews. There's been enough stories about the aftermath of this, after all. Besides, a follow up post shows her husband grinning over the review's bombardment on Amazon, so again- she is probably fairly aware of what the end result of such actions are, even if she didn't personally read any of the comments.
So seriously authors, don't do this. I wasn't a fan of Giffin to begin with, but this pretty much cements that I'll never pick up one of her books again and I won't be buying any as gifts for anyone else. I'm not going to tell you not to read her books, but I will warn you that if you post a negative review you'll run the risk of being insulted by her husband or Giffin for your troubles.
Now they'll probably consider me psycho for posting screencaps of all of this, but stuff like this has a tendency to disappear from the internet when the authors and family members realize that not everyone is so approving of the whole "sling a reviewer, hold them up to your fans for target practice" thing. I know that this is Giffin's husband that attacked the reviewer, but Giffin's actions show that she's fairly aware of what's going on. And again, with all of the author fiascoes going on with both well known and indie authors, there's no way that she could be so clueless as to not be aware of how badly this would be received in the general literary world.
UPDATE:
I did a quick Twitter check and sure enough, she posted it to Twitter as well. Seriously Giffin, bad move. That is a tasteless, classless thing to do to someone who took the time out of their daily life to read your books. It might hurt that they didn't like it, but you and your husband should have taken the high road and simply not responded at all. That you decided to brag about your husband's bad behavior, ensuring that more people would know about it and hound the reviewer (and thus drawing attention to said bad behavior by your husband) is pretty much encouraging bullying. I honestly thought you better than that.
So authors, if you see someone you know (husband, friend, etc) posting on Amazon or any other review forum in response to a negative review, your reaction should be to snatch the keyboard out of their hands and try to do damage control as quickly as possible. If possible, delete the comments and stay away from the kerfuffle. And above all else, do NOT post about it on your facebook page with glowing comments about your husband attacking a reviewer. (And make no bones about it, what your husband did was an attack. The reader purchased your book via Amazon, didn't like it, then posted a review. It's valid and he had no business calling them names and accusing their review of being a slight against you as an author.) You know full well that it's just endorsing an attack on the review. Negative reviews happen. Sometimes they can get incredibly personal and insulting. This was not one of them.
UPDATE 2:
I've seen where a reviewer (Corey A Doyle) on Amazon has changed their review rating because of how the whole Giffin scenario affected them. I'm a little leery of this this since you've always got to be incredibly careful of changing ratings after the fact as well as talking about the whole author thing in the review, as talking about authors in review spaces sort of paints a tempting target on your back. In any case, I see where Giffin's assistant has commented on Corey's review. (
Click here to go to the review.) I'm posting this verbatim from Amazon:
I'm Emily's assistant, Kate. Shame on you for changing your review from FIVE STARS to ONE STAR b/c of something personal. As a vine reviewer, you know that isn't even allowed by Amazon. If your review was FIVE stars when you read the book, why should it be ONE now b/c you don't like something she or her husband did??? Her husband was defending her against an unfair, personal attack, like the ones above. Her husband is human and gets upset when people upset her...
As for the rest of your accusations, you are just plain wrong. Emily is a wonderful person--she shared with you how she felt about not reaching her goal to be #1 in on facebook. It was a sweet, heartfelt, honest post... Here it is:
"On my way to Naperville for my hometown signing. I have to admit to you guys--I'm really, really disappointed and sad not to have broken the Buffalo Bills spell... especially because I believed that based on the numbers/sales figures all week, that this book would be #1.... That said, i also want to say that I would rather have your support and love and kind words than a dozen number ones...."
So clearly, she never blamed anyone or criticized another author. Why can't she be honest about her feelings ON HER OWN FACEBOOK PAGE? In addition, she has been told by hundreds of girls and every manager at every bookstore she has ever visited how kind she is. She came back from an exhausting tour and did everything she could to be nice to so many. She has sent literally hundreds of free things to people on her own dime.... How dare you all say these personal things about her?? This is her passion and her career and she doesn't deserve to have your unfair thoughts about her reflect on her work.
I can see where one could argue that the #1 post wasn't that bad. I can understand complaining about that to a degree, as I'm sure that it is fairly disappointing to get so close to the first spot and not achieve it. That I'm not really going to criticize any as that's not really behaving bad as much as it's an overachiever thing.
What bothers me is that the assistant saw the original review, the one that started all of this, as a personal attack and that the husband was justified.
It was not a personal attack against the author. I can't stress this enough. The review was just an ordinary, average reviewer stating his or her reasons as to why they disliked the book and that they'd been disappointed with the books for a while. That is not a personal attack. A personal attack would be if the reviewer had said something along the lines of "Giffin is just stuck up and thinks she's too good to eat her vegetables, she's the anti-christ" or something like that. That's a personal attack and if the original reviewer (AvidReader) had said something like that in their review, I'd agree whole heartedly that it would be an attack. But they didn't state anything like this.
I also don't think that charity work excuses awful behavior or condoning her husband going on line and picking at reviewers. She could have given a kidney to a sick child, but that doesn't mean that she or her husband have the right to attack reviews. That's just not appropriate and being an otherwise good person does not mean that after you give out 100 books your husband gets to call a reviewer names while you extol his virtues online and brag about it. That's like saying that after I finish feeding the homeless I get to swipe a dollar from the offering plate at church.
The assistant also claims that Giffin never slammed another author. That's nice and I encourage Giffin to not slam another author. But this is different. This is Giffin's husband slamming a reviewer and Giffin indirectly encouraging her fans to go titter at the remarks and downvote the review. I say indirectly, but any time you link to a negative review you're pretty much full on endorsing an attack on a negative review. There's no getting around this fact and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that you're painting a target on a person who is not a professional, bought your book with their own money, and then decided to take their time to write a review. This is actually a little worse than slamming another author because this was a comment to one of your fans. You know, the people who buy your books, pay your salary, and put you where you were? That's biting the hand that feeds you and regardless of how many hands you have coming your way, it's incredibly nasty to accuse someone of being a psycho just because they wrote a negative review.
UPDATE 3:
I was just informed in the comments that Corey has received harassing phone calls, getting one where someone told her to go kill herself.
Seriously, what is wrong with some people? I don't know if anyone who called her has or is reading this, but seriously, that's not cool. Now if we want to bandy about the term "psycho" then this is a situation where it would apply. Corey changed her vote rating based upon her personal feelings. I might not necessarily be 100% comfortable with it, but it's her personal freedom and right to do as she pleases with her review. It's her review and she can do whatever she wants with it. If she wants to recite the National Anthem backwards then that's her prerogative to do so. It might not be what I'd write, but guess what? It's not my review and I have no right to tell her what she can or can't say. Neither, might I add, does anyone else, regardless of what your personal feelings might be.
Where the line gets drawn is when you have someone taking the time to track down someone's personal information, call them, and tell them to go kill themselves. Let me repeat that: someone feels that Corey should die because she *gasp* changed her mind on a review and gave it one star. Not because she's done a Casey Anthony or because she stole from a million orphans, but because she wrote a review that someone didn't agree with.
So guys, that's not cool. Actually, I'm fairly sure that there's probably harassment laws created specifically against this sort of thing. You are
not being a good fan by calling Casey and telling her to "go kill herself". If you really want to support Giffin despite the actions of her and her husband, then do so with your wallet. Buy her books. If you enjoyed them, leave her positive reviews. That's how you support an author. Not by calling people and harassing them. Not by bombarding reviews and saying nasty things to them like "you only read Harlequins, this book must be too advanced for you" or insinuating that they're in any way defective for having an opposing opinion to yours. The only thing you're doing is further dragging your author's name through the mud. That's not being a good fan.
Negative reviews will always exist. Some of them you might agree with even if you loved the book. Some of them might seem personal. Some of them might be so short you wonder if it can count as a review at all. They will always exist and regardless of how you personally feel about them, attacking them is not the answer. Ignore them. If you're the author or just a particularly devoted fan, rant privately to yourself and move on. Nothing good has ever come from commenting on a negative review. If Giffin's husband had ignored the original review to begin with, nobody would have blinked at this review. If anything, the average shopper probably would've just slid their eyes over it and moved on to the next review without really giving it a thought. It's not that in-depth of a review. It states why the reviewer didn't like it, but it's not like it goes into such detail that it'd stick out in your mind. Unless the reviewer dramatically edited their review down, which I very much doubt, there was nothing in the review that would constitute a personal attack on the author. Being a new reviewer and stating that the recent books have disappointed you does not mean that they're doing this to slight the author in the least.
UPDATE 4: THE UPDATENING
I just found an apology written by the author's husband. (
Click here to go straight to it) Like the last time I posted his words, I'm posting them straight from the source "as is":
Hello all. This is Emily's husband. i just want to officially go on record as apologizing to "avid reader", Corey Doyle and anyone else I offended by commenting on a review. This is not an excuse for my actions, but only an explanation: For weeks Emily has been harassed by one person on the internet. When I looked up "avid reader" and saw that he had only ever reviewed ONE book in his life--and it was a one star of WHERE WE BELONG--i jumped to a conclusion that this was the same person and acted in hasty emotion. Although I regret the post and the language I used, I'm sure any of you who love someone and feel protective of them might understand my actions. She put two years and her heart in this book, and I hate to think that anyone would review her work based on anything other the merits. I also hate to think that my ill-conceived defense of Emily would hurt her further. Also, for the record, Emily had no idea the actual content of the exchange when she posted on Facebook. She doesn't read Amazon reviews, and she thought this was harmless banter because that is how i presented it to her. And because I'm not on Facebook, I didn't know what she had posted. Please accept my apology. You can continue to discuss if you wish, but I am bowing out, along with Kate, Emily's assistant who was also just trying to defend a good person. We encourage everyone to post honest reviews of the book, whether good, bad or the ever-insightful mixed.
I do understand to a degree. I also want to say that if someone has been badgering the author and extremely harassing the author beyond the usual internet chatter, that's not cool. I'm not sure if Mr. Giffin's idea of harassment is the same as mine, but if they were going around from place to place with the intent of hurting the author emotionally or physically then I can understand being a little jumpy. (On a side note, I do believe that people can discuss an author's merits or the lack thereof in their work on multiple forums without that actually constituting harassment. I also don't think that posting reviews in multiple places is harassment either. I don't know what was being done, but I wanted to be a little clear on what I don't consider harassment. If you want to see what I do consider harassment, just google "Christian Weston Chandler" and you'll see true harassment of an individual.)
In any case, we can keep talking about how the husband should have known better, how his public persona can damage his wife's rep as much as her actions could, how nobody would've known about the review if he'd never posted on the review in the first place or if Giffin herself had decided not to comment on it three days later, or any number of things. It's done at this point and we can't really change it. I can only hope that the Giffins have learned a lesson from this, that it's never a good idea to go off on a reviewer. It doesn't matter what slights you think they might have done or if you think that the reviewer is someone who has been harassing you. There are very, very few situations where an author will come out of a situation like this looking good. I know it might not seem fair that authors don't have as much freedom to respond to negative reviews of any type, but they also have more to lose from responding because it's so easy for responses to be taken so many different ways and end up costing you reputation or fans. If the person writing the review truly is being inappropriate, report the review. (And be aware that just as your response can be interpreted differently by others, you might be interpreting the review in a different light than the reviewer intended.) If a person truly is trying to sling barbs or harass you, the worst and I repeat worst thing you can do is give them the attention they're seeking. None of the reviews I've seen so far were written to harass or slander, so I don't want people thinking that I view any of these reviews as bad. I'm just giving general advice for anyone that might read this. Sometimes the best thing to do is just walk away and take the high road.
UPDATE 5: THE FINAL UPDATE (hopefully)
I noticed I made STGRB. I was wondering when that'd happen. In any case, the one thing I want to specify from that site is that I never specifically said that Giffin told her fans to downvote anyone. I just said that she's intelligent enough to know what would inevitably happen if she pointed out any negative review or her husband's actions online. Let's put it this way: if you put a piece of candy next to a hungry, candy-loving toddler, the toddler will eat the candy. We'd all like to think that the toddler would leave the candy alone and would simply look at it, but the kid just wouldn't be able to help themselves and they'd assume that your whole reason for leaving the candy next to them was because you wanted them to eat it, regardless of whether or not you said anything. The same premise applies here. If your husband comments on a negative review and you make a post on facebook that even remotely looks like you're putting his comment in a positive light, people are going to assume that not only did you feel like his actions are OK, but that the best way to get your approval is to downvote and post comments themselves. Even if Giffin did only intend for people to look, past events with other authors and similar scenarios have shown that fans will go after anything they feel is an attack against an author or anything that the author or their people feel is an attack. At some point you can't cry ignorance over this because so many of these scenarios have been so incredibly public and very, very painful for pretty much all of the people involved.
It was bad manners for Giffin's husband to post what he did. But it was incredibly foolish for Giffin to post about that review on various social media sites. She's not a silly woman. Giffin has graduated with a law degree and has traveled the world. As such, I'd imagine that she's fairly aware of what her actions could lead to in any given situation and I don't think this situation is much different. If she truly and completely never intended for any of her fans to go out and harass someone, then I do apologize for saying anything different. But I just don't entirely believe that. That's my personal opinion on the matter and not fact, but you've got to figure that with all of the various fusses over authors replying to public reviews and news sites of varying degrees of importance reporting on this over the years, she'd know better and know what could happen in a situation like this. I'd just really like to believe that someone who went through law school, represented various people in court, and writes about "real life" situations would have more common sense than this. But since I can't prove this, again I'll state that this is just my personal opinion. There was just no point to her posting about the negative review and given that her husband had posted on the review about two to three days before she ever put a post on facebook about it, there was plenty of time for the comment to have been removed and for Giffin to look into what he was writing. (Hint: if anyone tells you that they're doing battle in your defense and you're a very public figure, ALWAYS look to see what they're writing because in the end it's your reputation that gets ruined.)
All I know is that she will likely never do this again. We can all only hope that maybe we won't have another author/reviewer drama from anyone on our hands for quite some time. I'd much rather post nice little blogs about various author successes than dramas.
Update #(dunno):
I was just given this screencap by Corey. Previously I'd said that Giffin had never actually posted anything that told people to comment or down vote reviews. Then I was showed this image. Most of the post was written by the assistant, but in the end she's still posting a comment that's telling people to go to the reviews and "defend her". That is a fairly loaded statement, to be honest. The only reason I'd heard about this in the first place was because a few other people had heard about this via her facebook page and saw that people were going over to attack Avid Reader. Maybe they just meant to go over and have a civil conversation, but considering that at this point the reading community was starting to implode on itself over the comments that were previously left, posting this is really not helping anything. Neither is consistently refusing to go and read what's going on. At this point with all of the things that have been said for her and about her, it'd probably be a good idea to know what's being said about her rather than hearing it all secondhand. You can't properly defend yourself if you don't know what's going on, after all.
I'll just say that after reading this, I'm actually starting to believe that Giffin is probably clueless enough to where she didn't think anyone would do anything other than read the review. Either she's being insanely passive aggressive or she's just insanely naive. I'm honestly not sure which would be worse. In either case, I really really recommend that she go through her agent or publicist as far as comments go because in one scenario she's passive aggressively sending people over to fight her battles. In the other she's being so clueless that she's almost a danger to herself. Either way, going through her agent or publicist for advice would probably have kept things from getting so pear shaped.
In any case, the above post is deleted off of the facebook account so hopefully things will eventually die down. Again, if anyone that wants to support Giffin is reading this and disagrees with any of what I've posted here or with any of the reviews, getting angry and nasty with the reviewers is not the answer. Support her by purchasing her books and leaving positive reviews for the books of hers that you've read. Post them in any venue you can find, whether it's Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever. That's how you support an author or at least how you should support an author. Not by calling and harassing people or leaving snippy comments in reviews, but by purchasing their stuff.
Update: The Final Frontier
Hi all! I just wanted to let you know that Corey has written up a blog post about her experiences with this, so I wanted to post this here and direct you all over there to read her experiences. She's pretty comprehensive about it all, so if you want another take on the matter and all of what's happened to her in such a short period of time, I definitely recommend reading it.
