the ask@ AAR: Do all artists deserve our support?
Do I have to support/promote the art of someone I dislike or whose thoughts/actions I dislike or disapprove of?
Here’s why I ask. There’s an author who’s been really nasty about AAR who has a book for sale right now. I was entering it into our Steals and Deals and suddenly thought what am I doing? Why am I taking my time and platform to support this person who has treated AAR and its readers like trash?
I stopped, thought about it for a while, and ended up advertising the book despite how horrible its author has been to AAR. I did so because I feel as though supporting romance and being an ethical site means not letting personal feelings rule our coverage. I decided that if I thought it was a good book, then I should share it with our readers, no matter how damaging the writer has been to us.
Since I did that, however, I’m still mentally fussing with it. There are so many lovely authors out there who’ve supported AAR over and over again–am I making a mistake by giving bandwidth to a not lovely person?
I don’t know. Really, I don’t. What do you think?
You are a good person to have this conflicted feeling, but I firmly – strongly – believe that you should NOT promote such an author’s work. We celebrate free speech in this country, but that does not mean freedom from consequences resulting from free speech. An author who openly disparages the “hand that feeds it” does not deserve to be fed. Too, such a person is probably litigious and vindictive. In my mind, that means that AAR should have absolutely nothing to do with them in order to eliminate any form of risk.
I know we are supposed to divorce the art from the artist. And when it comes to separating the art from a person who expresses differing or offensive beliefs and thoughts, then that may be a worthy debate. However, when an author is openly hostile and attacking someone (or in this case, this website) directly? This is a no-brainer as far as I’m concerned.
As an author… I think you (the site owner) has the complete right to review (or not) or advertise (or not) any books you choose, for whatever reason. You don’t OWE authors a review or a plug.
As a reader… AAR still covers the biggest swath of romance, with a large community, and many readers probably don’t know or don’t care what the author says about AAR; they want a review and a place to discuss the books and maybe a heads-up when it’s on sale. And I expect AAR gets commission on those sales, which I presume help keep the site up and running, which is a benefit to your readers.
You should do what you feel is best for AAR. If the author’s comments have affected your reviewers to the point they don’t feel they could be objective about her books, then it’s probably best for all if you don’t cover her.
Commission on sales is so negligible due to Kindle United and the price of ebooks that that really isn’t a consideration.
It’s a tough call for me personally but for the site, I do what’s best for our readers.
I do marvel at the subset of authors who clearly would like to shut AAR down. I just don’t get it.
Oh, well that’s too bad, on the commissions.
As to authors… just like with readers, there are all kinds.
That’s a tough one. It’s a credit to you to ignore the nasty author and just keep the talk around the book or books if they are good. If they weren’t good I guess we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
I think these antagonistic authors should be ignored altogether. No promos and certainly no reviews. There is a risk in reviewing a book by an author who has made their antipathy toward AAR known. If the book is not given a good review, the author may call you out on social media once again for attacking or undermining them as payback, keeping their followers juiced and the “war” going. They have shown who they are and how they will treat you. Believe them and ignore them.
My thoughts exactly.
You can’t promote every book out there. You don’t even have the ability to promote every good book. Curators have to make decisions every day. Booksellers don’t sell every book promoted to them. Everyone has decisions to make and there’s no set of rules saying how those decisions have to be made. It sounds like there are some authors who consciously decide not to recognize good things AAR has done. You can consciously decide to use your bandwidth to promote good authors writing good books who haven’t tried to harm you.
I would say offering them free publicity probably isn’t healthy for you and perhaps unwanted for them. On the other hand they might accuse you of not honoring diversity if they are anything but white authors. If they’re popular authors and you don’t post either reviews or steals and deals for them, it risks your readers going to other websites looking for reviews or asking you questions if certain reviews don’t materialize. But it’s your website, and you’re not required to give material support to anyone who doesn’t support you.
I would have a different angle, putting myself in your place, I would consider:
If those for whom You do all this work = yourself, your collaborators, your readers, your community, draw a profit from it, then you may decide to promote a book / an author..
If not, or a ridiculously small one, or maybe even a loss, then do not.
You have decided whom / what you serve, and that would be my benchmark.
In this case, if the book was excellent, many would want to read it, there was some debate here about it, then maybe yes – promote.
If the book was not of particular value in this way, do not promote. Or if we were supporting a bad person unknowingly, instead of someone good, do not promote. Or if we were actually supporting a person who is bringing damage to AAR, which we want to thrive, unknowingly, would you then indirectly be hurting your community?
I am not at all certain if this is the right approach, but that is how I would analyze it.
“Am I making a mistake by giving bandwidth to a not lovely person?”
Yes.
Stop being conflicted. There’s no moral dilemma here.
When you know that an author would crow with happiness if AAR were shut down for good–if you know that that author would post a celebratory tweet to her acolytes if this site were closed–why on earth would you want to give that author, or her books, the time of day? Especially when, as you said, there are may other lovely authors you could be promoting.
You’re not taking the moral high ground when an author attacks you and you respond by promoting the author’s works in any way on AAR. Actions have consequences. When someone says or does things that threaten the well-being of AAR, don’t give them a pass.
I’ve really struggled with authors in the past three years. There are more than a few who, whenever they feel AAR makes a mistake, are all over us and all over social media trumpeting how terrible we are.
And that’s it. They never say anything nice or acknowledge AAR’s continual efforts to be better. It’s depressing. Through AAR’s links–for which we now many almost nothing–we’ve sold almost a million books over the past five years. You’d think authors would think we were a good thing, but no.
I know I’m whining and I apologize. I just feel like Sisyphus!
An author who consistently or repeatedly disparages AAR clearly isn’t worried about sales from AAR; and/or what members of this community’s impressions are of them or their work, so why bother?
I do it for the readers ultimately. Just like we review books I guess.
A romance author who isn’t worried about a good relationship with AAR has many, many ways to reach their intended audience; and vice versa: email direct from the author, email from GR about an author we follow, email from Amazon about an author we follow, email from “fill in your favorite bookstore” about an author you follow, grocery store shelves, library “new romance” shelves, bookstore romance shelves, other review sites, book discount feeds, etc.). I doubt any hardcore romance reader is going to miss a big name author’s sale books just because a title doesn’t show up on AAR Steals and Deals pages. It might be different if AAR made a little $$ from those Steals and Deals listings but . . .
As far as reviews are concerned, I would guess that depends on the price point of the book being reviewed (whether it makes economic sense to post it), how complete you want AAR’s db of reviews to be, and whether or not you have a reviewer(s) for any given title/author.
OTOH, AAR is my primary source of information about new titles just because there are so many authors to keep track of. There are very few authors I follow personally – usually people who are not well known or didn’t start out being regularly reviewed at AAR. But I doubt they are the folks causing you heartburn.
Maybe include the problem children in the “books we’re looking forward to” listings and reviews when/if you have a reviewer? But let the steals and deals go?
I wouldn’t try to review a book of an author who continually bashes AAR. They have been hostile in the past,and reviewing or promoting their books only opens the site up for more bashing. I say ignore them completely.
You’re not whining and you have nothing to apologise for. You and everyone else who works hard to keep this site up and running do an amazing job and it’s perfectly natural to feel bad when people whose books your efforts help to reach more people, feel (very) free to bash AAR on social media.
IMHO, if an author bashes AAR on social media (rather than drop a comment on the site or to you or any of the other site managers on what the mistake is, why it’s bad etc), then their books shouldn’t be promoted here. Let their books get publicity elsewhere Shikenan! (as we say in one of the languages of my country)
You and Caz are publisher and editor of AAR. Those who come here are not your employers or moral guardians. By virtue of that, you are entitled to publish or not whatever you wish within the boundaries of your own guidelines. No one has to give support to a person or cause if they disagree with such. As a non-user of social media, however, you have certainly provoked my curiosity!!
In a word: No.
One of the reasons I prefer to know as little as possible about artists and writers whose work I admire is that when I learn truly negative things about them, I can’t enjoy the work as much as I used to.
Should you promote the work of someone who has harmed or insulted you? I can’t think of any reason you should. There is nothing about being an artist or writer that exempts you from ordinary standards of behavior. If you discovered that the corner grocer is a pedophile or a wife beater, do you have to keep shopping there?
I wouldn’t promote it. If someone mentions it is on sale in your comments let it stand. I recently became aware of an artist who made racist comments at a RWA event. I am no longer buying the artist’s books and am having a hard time rereading the ones I have. I do not bad mouth the artist to anyone else. I just made a decision not to support her.
I think you can support romance and be ethical without necessarily giving coverage to everyone who’s written a book you think is good. You wouldn’t be excluding based on race, gender, or anything like that. I see no reason for AAR to have to support those who’ve been openly anti-AAR. (But if you want to promote the book, that’s fine, too. Just don’t feel obliged to do so.)
I believe that a good book is a good book regardless of how the author is on a personal level. BUT I think if the author has treated the site and his readers poorly then I don’t see why he would appreciate being promoted by that same site. Let he? She? get her/his propaganda in another way.