Monday, March 28, 2011

My thoughts on this "incident"

So, there's this "incident" that's been circulating the blogosphere for the past few days now.

What happened was, Al over at BigAl's Books and Pals posted a review of The Greek Seaman by self-published author Jacqueline Howett on Wednesday. It was a negative review, and it stated that there were several editing mistakes throughout the book.
As you can see in the image on the left, the author posted a comment saying that the copy Al reviewed was un-formatted and that the criticism against the typos and grammar errors was unfair, and that he should remove the review. She then proceeded to post positive reviews from Amazon.
Al did review the new copy, and said so, but Howett insisted that "My writing is just fine!" and kept on arguing. She even dropped the F-bomb in one comment.
The debate went on, but currently the comments are closed and the review is still up.






Honestly, I think that Howett was behaving unprofessionally and immaturely. Every writer gets criticized at one time or another! And Howett should have just accepted the criticism instead of defending herself. If you can't take criticism, you shouldn't be writing.

Look at Rebecca Black, for example. Her music video "Friday" gets almost nothing but mockery and hate. But does she go around the Internet ranting about how she can sing just fine? No! She turns the other cheek and accepts it all. Not only that, but she's donating all the money she earned from her video to the relief effort in Japan.

One thing I find ironic is that despite Howett's ranting, you can see prominent grammar mistakes in Howett's comments, which makes it believable that her book is just as poorly edited.

So, my overall thoughts are that Howett should learn to control her attitude if she wants to have a successful career. I'm sure plenty of readers have already been turned off by her behavior and will shy away from her books. This may be harsh, but she deserves it.

2 comments:

  1. I just finished reading this. I thought it was hilarious. Definitely not helpful for the author in the long run. My better nature (which doesn't usually rear it's ugly head) feels sorry for the author - otherwise reasonable people say things in anger that they later regret. But saying F off repeatedly is hard to justify.

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  2. Yeah and people are entitled to their own opinion. That's what blogging is all about. Everyone shares their OPINION so for an author to get all indignant and try and defend herself against an opinion is dumb. You can't tell someone not to feel the way he or she feels.

    -Sandra from http://sandrathenookworm.blogspot.com

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