Stop the bashing!

I have heard of a secret Goodreads group for authors where the current hot topic is reviewers. I didn't join because the premise sounded ludicrous: How to deal with broken promises of reviews/interviews with no explanation after sending free reads for that purpose. Should we post these reviewers/blogs/bloggers or not to alert our fellow authors?

Excuse me? OK, it's only a discussion, but if everybody votes for "yes", that's bashing. That's a group for whining authors who complain about something that didn't work over which they have no control. It's like bashing a reviewer who gave a bad review.

Here's my experience with BoI – Air on Smashwords (which is the easiest place where I can give away freebies to chosen people) where I published it on March 31: Downloads (free sample&paid) 66 – Sold 9  – Paid (half-price) 1. Which means the other 8 were given with coupons 100% off to reviewers. Reviews? 4 (and 1 is from the "paid" copy). What happened to the 5 other people who got a free read and never posted a review? Who knows. Maybe they haven't read it yet (we all know how many ebooks we download to our preferred ereaders, I don't think anyone can read that fast). Maybe they hated it and would rather not say. I don't care. I'm not going to say who they are, I'm not even going to ask them "What happened to that review you owe?".

This is a marathon, not a sprint. Eventually those reviewers will post something or spread the word otherwise. It's like whining about piracy. I don't think we need a sort of Writers Beware for Goodreads Authors. Or, if you really want to be an Indie Author Beware place, make it a public group. Stand up and take responsibility, like the ladies at WB do. Or the Self-published Author's Lounge. Don't hide behind a secret clique of wannabes.

A last reminder: writers write. They write a book, publish it and start writing the next one. They shouldn't waste their time whining and bashing online or pretend to be Indie Author Police. Everybody makes mistakes. Get over it and move on. You won't give free copies to that person again, and that's it – maybe s/he was mean to you and perfect for someone else… maybe life got in his/her way when s/he was about to read your book. No need to blacklist someone. Move on. We're all grown-ups here, aren't we?