By now the links have all made the rounds about the crazy Candance Sams who went off on a reviewer for daring to give a 1 star review of her book. For those that are new to the wankfest in Romancelandia, the link is HERE. It’s huge and continues on even 2 weeks later as the author just…won’t…shut…up. Even other authors jump in and tell her to chill but she continues to berate readers and reviewers for daring to disagree. The author even goes to considerable length blaming editors and saying authors have “scant” control over such things as scene placement and dialogue.

Yea, I thought that was called writing a book but whatever. This post isn’t about the craziness of one author. At this time I was talking with someone and wondered if Sams’ publisher knew what this author was doing.

So out of curiosity, I sent an email to the customer service at Love Spell. I basically gave them the link, asked if they were aware of the author’s actions and the ramifications it has on the publisher as a whole.

This is their reply:

Should publishers keep their authors from such behavior or let them hang themselves?

I’m not talking about publishers policing every single comment an author makes or even every wankfest that occurs but something of this magnitude has to be more than a blip on their radar, right?

Thoughts?

Author Interviews

Ever notice that sometimes author interviews can backfire? One of the most interesting things for me as a reader when confronted with an author interview is the responses offered. The questions are invariably all just deviations of the same thing over and over and thus kudos to authors who continue to give the same interview time and again, but I wonder if authors really stop and think about the answers they’re giving.

I’ve been turned off more than one author by their answers to an interview.

With the plethora of authors and books currently available, it’s remarkably easy to pick and choose who to read and not read. With only so many hours in the day, I can easily shrug off one author or another. You always mean to go back and read such and such author but somehow they slide to the end of the stack and suddenly they’re gone. It’s easy to come up with reasons not to read an author, most based on the interest in the book itself. But this translates to online behavior and so on.

I’m curious specifically about interviews. So far I’ve mentioned the negative aspects of interviews but really has anyone read an interview and decided to buy that author’s book? I certainly have as well so it’s clearly a two way street. Authors can lose or gain readers by interviews. I assume the positive outweighs the negative but I’m (as always) curious about others’ perspectives.

I’ve recently been reading several of the RR interviews and on other sites such as Book Wenches and so on. I was surprised and shocked by some of the answers authors gave. Some alluded to be fanfiction authors that get bad reviews but their critique group likes them. One subtly demeaned women readers. Another mocked the popularity of their own book. This type of behavior turns me off an author. I read answers like any of those above and just think there are any number of other authors to spend my money and time.

What about you? Authors or readers..
Are interviews worthwhile?
Do the answers influence your decisions?
Are you careful about what you say?

Kris’s Rules:
"1. Answer all the questions and give the link to Kris so she can mosey on over and see if you answered correctly and have a sticky beak. [Have a sticky beak? That’s what it says …must be some Australian expression, ha, ha!]
2. You have to tag two other people once you’re done and pester them relentlessly until they do the meme too.
3. Instead of a meme image thing you have to post a cookie, preferably a twofer. It is an m/m meme after all. ;)"