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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*

17 Comments »

  • In the immortal words of Justin Timberlake- “cry me a river”

    Does this woman know how lucky she is to have read and review her work when there are so many authors out there that would love their book to be reviewed, even if it is a bad one?

    *sigh*

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  • […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by katiebabs, Karen Scott and Keishon, LVLMLeah. LVLMLeah said: RT @Karenknowsbest: Post Of The Day: And The KKB Award for Author Behaving Like A Twat Goes To… http://tinyurl.com/69pqu53 […]



  • Maddie
    February 9
    6:00 pm

    Wow.

    Really is this how new authors are going to act when “they” think their not being reviewed fairly?

    Because if it is, I fear for the future of reading anything from someone I not familiar with, and instead of writing grocery lists we will be writing NO BUY list (airports have the no-fly list) for authors who think because their books were published that we the US readers or Blog Reviewers have no right to an opinion on their works.

    I think author like her should take up another profession where they are not in contact with the public since they can’t seem to function and sees an difference of opinion as an personal attack.

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  • utter Pussy-Flap?

    I must use this phrase at work.

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  • Teddy!! Long time no see! You ok?

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  • FD
    February 9
    7:57 pm

    Wait, someone got their knickers in a twist about a Book Binge review? Good grief. I mean, they’re definitely not as inoffensive as say the Romantic Times is, but generally they’re pretty lenient, i.e. inclined to take the text as the text, and I’ve never seen them post anything that conflated an author with their book. Sometimes I wonder how authors that pull this shit cope with RL when they react like this on the internet, really I do.

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  • Man, authors NEED support groups. Really. And one of the objectives will be… “When tempted to have a rant like this, you will call your author mentor…”

    The author mentor is also handy in telling her fellow author when the big girl panties are needed.

    Karen, I’m so glad to see you back in action.

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  • What makes me sad (okay, only one of the many things that can make me sad) is thinking of how many people think that if you haven’t written (and by that, I imagine they mean “have published”) something then you are not qualified to write a critique of it.

    Which I guess means that unless you are a filmaker you cannot talk about films, and if you ain’t an engineer, you better not bitch about your malfunctioning car–and of course, only architects can notice awkward floor plans.

    Seriously, bitch? Are we still on that page?

    *

    And of course, all this without taking into account that some authors started out as bloggers and reviewers. Talk about putting both feet in your mouth.

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  • Hey Karen!

    I am fine just doing all those smartass unprofessional reviewing things we pigs do.

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  • Anon76
    February 9
    10:03 pm

    Ah, the never ending cycle of WTF. You’d think that these people so dedicated to the “craft” of writing would use their computers for more than just spellcheck.

    Um, hello? You will research the hell out of how to load a glock, info dump on it, yet fail to research all the “mundane” things about the biz. Such as how to gracefully handle a review. Or that reviewers, be they “professional” in your opinion or not, are book lovers. They READ. A LOT. Your book is held in comparison with the thousands of other books they have read. It matters not a whit whether they get paid for reviewing, hence, I suppose, labeling them then as “professionals.”

    It also matters not a whit if they are “writers”. They are “READERS”. Get the difference? If not, as an author you are hopelessly lost in your own sense of false grandeur.

    Le Sigh.

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  • Janet W
    February 9
    10:36 pm

    What Shiloh Walker said: that’s one of the kindest, most sensible things I’ve seen written: “Man, authors NEED support groups. Really. And one of the objectives will be… “When tempted to have a rant like this, you will call your author mentor…”” … we all need life mentors sometimes.

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  • Hey AL, I see you’ve been cleaning house. The blog looks way neater *g*

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  • Did someone offer popcorn around here? The author replied in her own comments thread, now it turns out that she intended that as a lesson to unprofessional (whatever the hell she means by that) reviewers. I have to check Twitter, we haven’t had a circus like this in a while 😛

    Her head is firmly stuck up her ass.

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  • eggs
    February 10
    1:06 am

    She seems to have couched her unreasonable desires in quite reasonable language, with no profanity or name calling. Is she a real fuckwit or is it just an attempt to get her name to go viral? We can play Author Behaving Badly Bingo, but they can play Free Publicity Bingo too. I’m feeling kinda bored today, so I hope she’s the real deal with the crazies!

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  • There are so many things wrong with what this author says. For example – who better to review the books than the people who read them??? Honestly, when some authors (and thankfully it’s a very small group) start mouthing off about readers of their work the only result it has with me is a determination not to read their work.
    And I’m so glad I’ve sort a, kind of made it a policy NOT to accept books by authors. I have no sense of obligation that way and if I want to trash a book – well, I’ve earned that right by paying the price for it. Mind you, I have Very Rarely trashed a book since I’m one of those Polyanna type readers who enjoys an awful lot of what I read – either that or I’m good at avoiding books I know I wouldn’t.
    And picking on Book Binge?!?!?!? Really!

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  • We can play Author Behaving Badly Bingo, but they can play Free Publicity Bingo too.

    @eggs, there are actually quite a few people I talked to that think this is probably what she was looking for. I guess it should probably be said….bad press is better than no press. BUT, seriously, this isn’t anything *I* would have wanted attached to my name. shudder, wince and cringe.

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  • Sarah Kennedy
    October 2
    12:55 am

    This Massara woman has some serious issues that go beyond her sensitivity to reviews. Writing about her ex she says:

    “I mean, he’s not a Nazi, but he did to me what the Nazis did to the Jews. The Nazis violated the Jews’ trust, their person, their feelings, and their very existence. I would have to say that betrayal is the worst kind of pain–and as the Nazis betrayed the Jews, my ex betrayed me”

    Yeah, lady, it’s the exact same thing.

    I commented on that post pointing out how offensive it is, and what do you know, she deleted it.

    http://www.sylviamassara.com/5/category/nazis/1.html

    ReplyReply

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