How to get blackballed by a reviewer
Reviewers blackball authors (refuse to review authors) when authors rub reviewers up the wrong way. Like many other reviewers, I have pet peeves around authors pushing their books. One of mine is people who want follow-backs on twitter etc, then all they do is spam ads for their shit. Another of my pet peeves is the personal email request to purchase an author’s book so I can review it. More recently I developed a new pet peeve.
I received a ‘friend’ request through Goodreads. I accept all those requests although I’m not on Goodreads enough to interact with people there. It’s ok if they’re happy <shrug>
BUT.
I’ve had authors friend me on Goodreads then send me ‘invitations’ to ‘events’ to BUY THEIR BOOKS. Can anyone say ‘unfriend’? After the first few times this happened, I changed my profile bio and started unfriending these people on the first offence.
I HAVE A ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY.
Late last year I received a friend request from D. E. M. Emrys on Goodreads. I accepted. Shortly after I accepted this friend request, I received this email on 16 October 2012:
‘Check this out – it’s my debut fantasy novel, available on Amazon! I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.’
I was so pissed off I unfollowed him immediately. That should have been the end of it, but almost immediately HE SENT ME ANOTHER FRIEND REQUEST.
I declined.
HE WAITED FOUR MONTHS AND THEN SENT ME ANOTHER FRIEND REQUEST.
By that stage I’d forgotten WhoTF he was and accepted, only to realise who he was and unfriend him again.
I set about learning how to block people on Goodreads so he will NEVER be able to send me email requests or friend requests again. I was so outraged after the ongoing friend requests I even outed him on Twitter. This was his response:
@darkmatterzine And I don’t remember emailing you to buy my book? Sorry if you think that I did. I actually only asked ‘How’s things?’
— David E. M. Emrys (@DEMEmrys) February 19, 2013
Not impressed. If you fuck up, own it. Offer a REAL apology, not one of these half-arsed pretences of an apology that actually puts the fault with the OTHER person. I don’t THINK that he emailed me asking me to buy his book, THE EVIDENCE IS OUT THERE.
@darkmatterzine Again, apologies, it was my own fault for utilising the goodreads function of ‘find friends using twitter’.
— David E. M. Emrys (@DEMEmrys) February 19, 2013
Again David is pretending to apologise while in reality his message to everyone is that he’s been a good little boy and hasn’t done anything wrong, while the big bad reviewer is being unreasonable. How to win friends and influence people.
Well, David E. M. Emrys, I will not read your book. As my reviewers have a wealth of free books for review, I won’t recommend your book to them either.