On Responding To Bad Reviews

The Telegraph discusses the merits or otherwise of responding to bad reviews.

From time to time, a dust-up between a writer and the reviewer of his or her latest book attracts the attention of a wider audience and briefly confers on that audience the status of children in a playground urging a pair of muddy, sweaty and often ill-matched combatants to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Generally speaking, the spectacle is not edifying, and shows nobody, onlookers included, in an especially good light. Truth to tell, though, and in order to sidestep the charge of hypocritical hauteur, one must admit that a bit of bloodletting appears to perform some shadowy, relaxing function in the collective unconscious.

In particular, the article references this little incident (and the shitstorm surrounding it) of a review of Alain de Botton’s latest book.

It must be very tempting in this interconnected age, where anyone can hide behind a computer screen and type away a review safely behind the screen of internet autism, to thrash out an angry response. My view? If there’s a shitstorm with your name on it, sit back, rub your hands together and enjoy the free publicity; then watch the sales come in.

I’ve worked behind the scenes in the industry and one thing that matters more than most is word of mouth. The most damaging thing you can do to a book that you dislike is not give it any coverage at all.

Someone once advised me that you weigh your press, you don’t read it…