Does anybody know who Sylvia Massara is? Anybody?

All I know is, she sure is an awfully stupid brave author.

She’s set up a blog, called Authors Helping Authors. Yep, it does indeed sound like one of those support groups where people stand up and tell a roomful of strangers about their woes, doesn’t it?

Anyway, this is the aim of the blog, according to our lovely Sylvie Poohs:

As an author, I know how difficult it is to promote one’s work. These days, unless one is a “celeb author”, much of the promotional work is left up to the author themselves. With this in view, I created this blog “Authors helping authors”

Imagine the power of authors helping other authors promote their work, and in turn, these authors help you, and so on and so forth. By standing together we can make this happen. In this blog, I will be featuring articles, snippets about other authors and tips from authors and/or publicists who help promote authors.

Oh how admirable, I hear you say, what a lovely selfless gesture I hear you all cry, why didn’t I think of doing such a thing, the envious ones amongst you secretly think to yourselves. Well….. here’s the thing, there are plenty of blogs out there that help authors. Indeed, many of these blogs are written by authors for other authors. Weird huh?

As you guys know, I’m not one to harshly judge people who are merely trying to help out their fellow human beings, (Don’t look at me like that Bitches, I’m not!) however, this blog entry by our very own Sylvie Poohs was definitely worth mocking to the nth degree.

The blog post is entitled Authors Beware of Unprofessional Reviewers, and it starts like this:

As authors, we must all take the good with the bad. We cannot expect to get excellent reviews every time we write something. We must expect that from time to time we will receive a bad review. (K: Wow, an author who gets it!! Hallelujah!)

Recently, this happened to me. I received a couple of what I would call “trashy” reviews, and for a while I felt bad. But then I went and read some of the reviews written on a large number of best selling authors’ books and found that they, too, received plenty of bad reviews. These authors, who are now making millions, received heaps of bad reviews (K: Which authors is she talking about? Stephen King? James Frey? *g*) –but of course the good reviews far outweighed the bad ones. Luckily, this was also the case with me. So why did I allow these couple of reviews get to me?

Poor darling diddums, somebody didn’t like her baby book, and it hurt her lickle feelings. She sounds like she needs a hug, anybody out there want to volunteer for the job? Don’t all raise your hands now people….

Sylvie Poohs continues:

Well, for starters, the reviewers were not professional. They were not objective in what they had to say. I found their comments to be subjective and sometimes downright malicious. Two such blogs that have set themselves up as reviewers of books are “The Book Binge” and “Chick Lit Plus”. Now, I don’t expect everybody to like my books, but what really gets me is when amateur reviewers use words like “predictable” and “one dimensional”, but they don’t quantify this. They don’t back up their comments with facts.

Frig me Sweet Baby Jesus. She felt that their “comments were subjective”? What the hell is she talking about? I’m not sure this author understands what subjective actually means. If she did, she wouldn’t have made that ridiculous statement.

Also, I always thought that ‘predictable’ and ‘one-dimensional’ were the type of words that are pretty self-explanatory?
What am I saying, this is from a woman who seems to not know what the word subjective means. Carry on.

So what do they mean? Your guess is as good as mine. For instance, how can a romance novel not be predictable? Boy meets girl, there are obstacles that keep them apart, then boy and girl overcome obstacles and they get together and live happily ever after. Of course, it’s predictable! That’s what romance stories are all about. Would these reviewers rather that we killed off someone in order to make the romance “unpredictable”? If so, go and review a thriller or suspense romance.

Oh Sylvia, Sylvia, Sylvia, pass the fucking drugs over, that’s some good shit you’re smoking there.

Just what the world needs, another author with no fucking imagination. She obviously doesn’t write for Ravenous Romance, those people are great at making shit up.

Sylvie is on one now, I can tell:

This is why I am warning authors to beware of this kind of reviewer. When you offer your book to be reviewed, first take the time to check out the reviewer. Have a read of some of the reviews they wrote in the past. See if they trashed someone else. Make sure they back up their reviews with facts and objective criticism. I learned my lesson the hard way and didn’t do my research first, as I should have done.

In other words, if the reviewer aint Harriet Klausner, don’t give ’em your books to review. Sounds to me like this chick only wants review sites who will love her book no matter what. What an utter Pussy-Flap (Pussy-flap sounds so much more lady-like and PC than fucktard dontcha think, dear readers?)

Oftentimes, the people who set up these kinds of blogs have never written a thing in their lives, except maybe a grocery list. Most are avid readers who think they are qualified to review someone else’s work. So it’s very sad when they go about damaging the image of upcoming small press and indie authors with the rubbish they write.

Is she hating on avid readers? The same people who are more likely to go out and actually pay for her book??? Wow, talk about how not to go about winning friends and influencing people.

My message to them is this: if you cannot write an objective review and back up what you say, then don’t write anything at all. And next time you use the words “predictable” or “one dimensional” try to quantify what you mean–that is, if you are able to write about it. Please bear in mind that writers work very hard at their craft and the last thing they need is a smartass who makes subjective comments because they don’t know how to do anything else.

There she goes again, with her crappy use of the word subjective.

Since when was it up to the reader to have a care about the author of a book that they more than likely just shelled out their hard-earned dollars for? What’s that about? See, I was right wasn’t I? She actually is a Pussy Flap.

*Sigh*

My first advice to Lady Sylvie Poohs of the oh-so delicate constitution? Grow a fucking pair.
My second advice to Lady Sylvie Poohs? Build a bridge and fucking get over it.
My third piece of advice to Lady Sylvie Poohs? You may want to go and look up the meaning of the word subjective, and examine how it applies to reviews.

Also Sweetie, you will not improve your “craft” by only submitting to those review sites who will love your book before they’ve even read it. If you want universal adoration of your work, don’t let it leave your house. In fact, how about just not writing in the first place until you learn how to use the word subjective correctly?

*Smooches*