Authors aren't the only ones fucking up

My name is Amanda and I am addicted to reality TV. No, not Jersey Shore. I’m talking about renovation type of programs; por ejemplo: Kitchen Nightmares, Restaurant Stakeout, and Hotel Impossible.

Ok, phew. Glad I got that off my chest.

So I was watching an episode of Hotel Impossible (on the Travel channel) earlier this week. The Penguin Hotel was featured: an “art deco” hotel situated right on the beach, offering a fair price, especially in comparison to its surrounding competition. The transformations are the best parts of the show, IMO. I tend to Google them to see if they flourished after the program was finished filming. Despite the drama, I do always root for the underdogs to get ahead and succeed. Until…the staff fuck themselves over, de facto.

A gentleman posted a less than favorable review in regards to his stay. Needless to say, a hotel employee decided to reply. My problem with this response by the GM is: “that was very thoughtful of you after having complained about almost everything else”. What? What?! Way to guarantee that customer will NEVER come back again.

And…

Okay, so now you’re going to call the customer a liar? Carpetwizard wasn’t the only one complaining of their reservation being lost and being sent to the sister hotel The President. A couple of would-be guests who were not given a room they reserved were also simply told to go elsewhere and the employees wouldn’t even help them find a different hotel in the area.

Here are some other funny and absolutely wrong responses to customer reviews:

 

Once again, essentially calling the reviewer, Garcia, a liar.

Now, none of the responses by the employees seem to personally insult the reviewers, but often insist that they’re wrong and/or insinuate that they’re lying…a pretty stupid move on their part.

So why am I bringing this up? As most of you already know, there has been a series of incidents on GR involving authors commenting on readers’ reviews. Obviously, hotels and novels aren’t in the same business, but both industries suffer from bad judgment. That is, responding to reviews.

Personally, I don’t think it’s horrible for an author to simply say “Hey, thanks for taking the time to review my book” regardless of how the reviewer rated the novel. However, there should be an effort in not chiming in on a reader’s thoughts of the book. It is horribly detrimental and will often leave a bad taste. I think it goes for anyone who is involved in a consumer-related career: if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.

Sometimes a bad book is a good thing

There's some really great advice out there on how to better your writing. A few of them are:

- Read. Read a lot and read a lot of different genres, particularly current titles. It's good to have an idea of the current trends and standards of today's publishing industry.

- Write. It's okay if it sucks. Most of what you write won't make the final cut anyways. Even if you write a whole book and end up trunking it, you'll probably come out of it learning a few things along the way and possibly understanding what you really want your story to be about.

- Join a community. There are some really awesome online groups out there. One site that first comes to mind is Absolute Write. There you'll find some really awesome, helpful people. At least since I've been a member in 2007, I've learned SO much.

- Don't be afraid to not write. Sometimes I find that taking a step back from a story, letting it collect dust for a few months (more or less) helps me to have a new perspective of how my manuscript reads.

And here's something that probably not a lot of people would tell you. Read bad books. Now I realize how subjective that is, but obviously if a book is bad to you then it's probably not something you want to emulate or have other people compare you to. I hate to point out a particular book, but this is one that comes to mind:

 

I really wanted to like Evermore. Really, I did. But I couldn't get over the fact that Ever Bloom had a lot of different powers (which I hate because I enjoy characters with significant weaknesses), the author's depiction of what a best friend is (::coughHavensabitchcough::), and the insta-love between Damen and Ever despite the fact that he treats her like his own personal roll of toilet paper to wipe his ass with. I noticed, also, that many of the sentences started off the exact same way. Ever's lip pursing and shrugging was incredibly repetitive. It annoyed me to no end. I found that others felt the same way as I did! So, whenever I re-read parts of my manuscript, I'd always try to be aware of how it was coming across. I realize this might not be the greatest advice, but similar to life, I feel the negatives can help us learn the positives.

YA-Books Blog

The poor girl in me *loves* book giveaways. Not that I usually end up being the winner, but they also provide introductions to new blogs you may never have heard of before. Reve, a fellow AW'er, has a new blog and I can already tell she's going to do so well. She has the first giveaway going on right now that'll be ending in under three weeks. One of these books will be up for grabs:

The Tempest by Julie Cross
Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi
Oppression by Jessica Therrien
Cinder by Marissa Meyer
The Alchemy of Forever by Avery Williams
Fracture by Megan Miranda
The Selection by Kiera Cass
Unraveling by Elizabeth Norris

Personally, I'm really looking forward to buying a copy of Cinder and Under the Never Sky. Good luck for those of you who join the giveaway.