Holly Lisle On Making Friends And Influencing Readers…
Apparently Holly Lisle is getting political on her blog, which annoyed one of her readers so much, that said reader, wrote her an e-mail telling her so.
I received this e-mail yesterday evening from a concerned reader. I have no time to paraphrase, so I’ll just post the pertinent bits:
Holly Lisle posted about some of the internet rumors going on about Obama, with links. Despite that it has been stated elsewhere that these are rumors and will be addressed by members of his staff, she said she was withdrawing her support for him and would be voting for McCain instead — and urged her readers to do so as well.
Now, a reader took exception to this and sent Holly a private e-mail, saying that she did not find it appropriate that Holly was using her influence in attempt to sway her readers’ voting choices with misinformation. She told her that she would be resigning from her mailing list and removing her books from her home, because she could not, in good faith, support someone who found nothing wrong with doing such. She sent the e-mail because she hoped that Holly would see that the way she was acting on her blog was actually losing her readers and damaging her career.
Holly re-posted this e-mail publicly, first in the comments on her original post, and then in a separate post on its own, calling the reader a “book destroyer”, continuing to defend the misinformation, and then demanding that she apologize. This resulted in Holly’s fans jumping to her defense, and calling the reader no amount of names.
(Ironically, Holly has threatened lawsuit against people who post her e-mails publicly.)
Here are the referenced posts:
Original Post 1
The second post
The third post by the reader’s friend
Here’s Holly, reposting the e-mail:
hollylisle Says:
June 11th, 2008 at 7:42 am
Waiting in my e-mail last night when the power came back on.Holly, I know this won’t matter at all to you, but I’ll tell you anyway. I have been a fan of your work for a very long time. I’ve shared your books, helped build your fandom, respected and supported you. I’m not much of a joiner, so you don’t know me at all, but I’ve been there for you since 2000. I can’t respect you or support you any longer. You have a right to your opinions, but you don’t have a right to use your influence to spread misinformation.
Today your books went out of my house directly to the trash. After sharing your recent political blog post with others I know, I can tell you that my copies of your books aren’t going to be alone in the landfill. Because I once respected you, I ask you to please consider how much damage you’re doing to your career with your current direction. Ask yourself if it is really worth it. All the good you might do with your work is undone for me and a number of other readers. Is that really what you want?
So someone who has decided destroying the books written by someone whose opinion she disagrees with—and who is proud enough of her actions to announce them—has spoken. And it sounds like she’s putting some effort into encouraging others to destroy the books I wrote as well.
How, exactly, is that different than book-burning?
I see she totally got the point then. *g*
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