As many of you know, I joined this site months ago, and I've been more or less happily plugging my books ever since. It was an odd kind of place, there was a sort of concensus on behaviour, and dispite folks' inability to hold their tongues (and occasionally their liquor) it all bumbled along reasonably pleasantly. Or as pleasantly as you can expect from a collective of people whose favourite thing is essentially a solitary endeavour.
Then along came a young man with a book, and a fanbase for something completely different. All hell broke loose. The young man's fans shelved his book in their thousands. The old guard were (perhaps justifiably) annoyed by this. Then apart from some serial moaning (from both sides of the arguement), things appeared to settle down a bit.
Until now.
I've held to one criterion only ever since I joined. Would I buy the book? If I would I shelve it, and comment on it. If I wouldn't, I either say why, or pass on by. Simple. It works for me.
This morning, I saw I had a new comment. Oooooh goodie... I thought. I was doomed to disappointment. It wasn't a new comment at all, what it was, was a five line bleat about how another reader/writer had used his high talent spotter ranking to artificially manipulate the system to keep the young man's book out of the top five, so this guy was doing the same, and would I shelve his book for ten minutes. Oh and by the way I should split my blurb into two paragraphs.
I did hit all four walls at once. I know exactly what he can do with his high TSR... I'm more than happy to do it for him... with a poker! In theory my parents brought me up to be a lady, so convention prevents me expressing myself in the precise terms (actually neatly provided for me by my blacksmith!) that I would like to about this guy's past, his present and suffice to state, if I did catch up with him, his future would be brief, and exceptionally unhappy.
Out of extreme interest... what exactly did this joker think was going to happen? That I would fall down and grovel and be pathetically grateful that he noticed my book at all? If this is the kind of BS that's going to happen, Authonomy is broke. Irretrievably.
Pardon for the outraged rant... but I felt the need to vent! I'm not the only one that received the message and the backing... It almost tempts me to go and back the young man's book, even though I read it and didn't like it, and have already told him that I wouldn't buy it.
2 comments:
Authonomy has become a very time-consuming competition with no actual prize. Even in terms of trying to get feedback, the effort involved probably isn't worth the rewards.
Precisely... I have actually taken down the last of my books. Left my account open purely for the purposes of reading. But I have moved on to Writers Wrule.
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