Authors vs. Bloggers IV: The Bloggening!

For a pair of symbiotic species, YA authors and book bloggers don't seem to get along very well.

I'm not going to recap all the recent controversies, but if you are curious, Google "Kathleen Hale" and then "Stacey Jay Kickstarter" and maybe "Amy Spalding Bingo."

All these things make me sad. Though I am an author, I also write occasionally very critical reviews on Goodreads. I review everything I read and am not always kind when I don't like a book. And I'm friendly with a lot of people in both camps. So it pains me to see people I've had pleasant conversations with firing subtweets at each other for days at a time.

I couldn't figure out why authors and bloggers seem to resent each other so much when they need each other so much, until I saw a blogger's reaction, I think to the Amy Spalding Bingo card, where they said she was "punching down," which is to say attacking those less powerful than she is.

This made me realize something: both authors and book bloggers see themselves as the less-powerful, stomped-on, justifiably-aggrieved party. Both are right, and both are full of shit. 

Authors:

You're right. pretty much everybody shits on authors online. Agents write snarky tweets about your queries and send you robo-rejections, editors snark about your mistakes, and readers shit on your books, some with fair criticisms, sometimes with idiotic ones. And you're just supposed to take it on all fronts because you need all of these people, and God forbid any of them think you're not a doormat. Sometimes an unfair review (by which I mean one that says, "yeah, this isn't the book I would have written. Now here are 25 reaction gifs" ) will dominate the Goodreads or Amazon page for your book. And if you ever dare to say anything about this in public, if you ever do anything other than lie down and silently take the abuse, you'll find a mob of caps-lock wielding angry tweeters telling you how WRONG you are and congratulating you for KILLING YOUR CAREER. Which is a funny word choice because your hourly wage as an author is most likely less than you could pull in by making lattes.

You're also full of shit: Your name is on a book. Lots of people dream of that shit, and you get to live it. When you meet people at parties and you tell them what you do, they are impressed by you.  You may get to go to events at libraries and bookstores and have people tell you how awesome you are. You probably have gotten at least one email from a reader telling you how much your work affected them. That shit is priceless.  And speaking of prices, you actually get paid to make up stories, which is pretty much the sweetest gig in the world.  So shut the fuck up.

Bloggers: You're right. You work really hard reviewing an ass-ton of books, and when you love a book, nobody is a fiercer advocate than you. Your enthusiasm is critical to getting books to bigger audiences and makes money for both authors and publishers.And what kind of thanks do you get? Very little. The approval of a few fellow bloggers, maybe, but not really any significant money, and certainly not any prestige. When you tell people at parties that you maintain a blog, they are not impressed. Nobody invites you to speak at libraries and bookstores; in fact, you're usually the audience at those things! The entire YA industry depends on your free labor, and nobody is appropriately grateful. Indeed, you'll often find someone whose book you actually liked taking cheap shots at bloggers, which feels a lot like a kick in the teeth.

You're also full of shit: I know you buy books (a lot of books! Don't yell at me!), but you also get an ass-ton of books for free. Do you think you get 500 bucks worth of free books per year? Congratulations! Monetarily, you're doing better than 30% of authors do. Also, at the same time you claim to be powerless, you're pretty quick to threaten people's careers when you don't like something they've said, and you're very good at summoning an angry mob to flood people's Twitter and Facebook with disapproval.  That's power, folks. Also: authors depend on you to help publicize their books. John Green and Veronica Roth don't need you, but most of the rest of the sorry bunch of brokeass authors do, and I think you probably know this.

So here we are with two groups of awesome, flawed, passionate, petulant people who need each other and are frequently at odds, lashing out at each other resentfully.  What can we do to get past this?

Well, I have a suggestion: maybe both groups can realize the advantages that come from the path they've chosen.  And if it's sometimes very annoying to depend on other people with different interests than you, well, welcome to life as a social animal. This is pretty much how we do everything.  

And please remember: we're all in this because we love stories.  We are all passionate about stuff we like and about stuff we don't like. And we all need to chill the fuck out--none of this shit is life-or-death. If you're spending hours at a time sending angry tweets or composing the perfect takedown, go take a fucking walk or something and remind yourself that there are more important things than somebody online hurting your delicate feelings. 

Or here's an idea: every time you want to take to the internet to complain about a rogue blogger or author, go read a book instead. Or go write one. Or both.