Dear sir: You are a philistine. Stop writing reviews of books you cant possibly understand. Also, you have bad breath. Sincerely, William Shakesbear
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  • "Dear sir: You are a philistine. Stop writing reviews of books you can't possibly understand. Also, you have bad breath. Sincerely, William Shakesbear"

Being reviewed can't be fun. You work on a book for a couple years, go through a relentless series of edits and interviews, and otherwise face a million tiny judgments all through the glacial publishing process. And then some douchebag publishes a 500-word blog post about how the thing you've worked so hard on for a sizable chunk of your life isn't worth the paper it's printed on? That has to hurt. And positive reviews never buy as much self-esteem as negative reviews manage to destroy; even the most glowing review can't make up for an offhand comment about "lazy prose" in an otherwise positive comment from a reader.

But here's what you don't do when that happens. Don't imitate Kathleen Hale, who tracked down a negative pseudonymous reviewer on GoodReads, went to her home address, and repeatedly called a woman she believed to be the reviewer. And certainly don't brag about it in print, as Hale did. She has since been batted around on Twitter, and rightfully so.

And you also shouldn't imitate Margo Howard, the advice columnist and daughter of Ann Landers, who recently published a screed against Amazon Vine reviewers. Howard accused Amazon's reviewers of "misreading or misunderstanding" her newest book. When one reviewer wondered how Howard even made a living as a professional writer, Howard sniffed in response, "please no one tell her that I was a syndicated columnist for decades, wrote cover stories for national magazines, and got a book advance in seven figures."

"These people were not reviewing my book," Howard writes. Instead, she says, "they were reviewing me. Or rich people. Or something." She continues, "I can see the value—maybe—for man-on-the-street reviews of cold cream and pots and pans, but books?!" After all, Howard argues, "The Vine people, who deal mostly with products for the home and the body, seem inappropriate bellwethers regarding products for the mind, if you will." (This gambit of authors and publishers pretending that what they're doing is a religious cause above criticism is a common one, and it's something I've written about before.) Howard, who is clearly obsessed with these negative reviewers, ultimately decides that these anonymous reviewers aren't worth the trouble, since "a Pulitzer winner for biography found [Howard's] book 'an excellent companion,' a MacArthur genius grant award winner compared me to Oscar Wilde in our 'shared ability to be wise and outrageous at the same time,' and a longtime Vanity Fair writer said I was today’s Nancy Mitford." Say what you will about Nancy Mitford and Oscar Wilde, but I'm fairly certain neither of those authors would publish a piece of autofellatio as egregious and unaware of its own pretentiousness as Howard's.

So, listen. Don't follow Hale and Howard's examples. Or if you've decided you're going to go ballistic over a negative review, at least follow the example of Stephan J. Harper, the author of a self-published Venice-set murder mystery starring teddy bears. Harper wrote a review of his own book from the perspective of one of the characters from the book and then taunted the writer of a tepid review for months by quoting his own book in the comment section of the review and demanding that he be acknowledged as a modern-day Fitzgerald and/or Keats. What does Harper have over Hale and Howard? Commitment. Hale and Howard transformed their internal traumas into delusional think-pieces. Harper, at least, dared to display his naked ambition for everyone to see, while the other two tried to couch their unhinged actions in the guise of reasonable actions. If you're going to ruin your career by whining about the mean kids on the playground, you might as well become the Tommy Wiseau of Literary Self-Defensiveness.