WARNING: This post involves what may be perceived as ranting, complaining and tantrum-throwing and whatever else some people might think. It is not meant to be any of those; simply a comment on the reviewing blog-o-sphere and some of my frustrations with it.
Shadowhawk talks about the relationships between authors and book bloggers. What follows is his own opinion and should you have any issue with it, feel free to discuss it with him directly. (Note: This is a repost from The Founding Fields)
“The relationship between an author and a book blogger (reviewer) is one of cooperation and mutual respect that is stringed together by trust.” ~Shadowhawk
I recently blogged over at The Founding Fields about the relationship between reviewers (book bloggers in the main) and authors. It was a rather spur-of-the-moment post about how that relationship is built and how it should be sustained. While it is not an in-depth affair, I’ve had some great responses to it and the post was been welcomed by a lot of people. Which brings me to the point of this post: that my opinion (and yours of course if you interact a fair bit over the social media with industry people) has value to folks out there in the wild.
Opinions are an interesting phenomenon. We all have them. We all have opinions about everything and anything. That’s just how it is. What separates a smart person from an idiot however is how he or she puts forth that opinion. If you can’t put your opinions forward without coming across as condescending, dismissive, arrogant, twat, angry, needlessly aggressive, and so on and so forth, then it is better to keep your opinion to yourself.
Let’s see why.