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moonlightreader

Abandoned by user

RIP Booklikes.

Radio Silence for BBAs

I just posted this as a comment to Rose's excellent post of this morning, but I am going to post it here, as a post, too:

 

I think that it is time to throw in the towel. There will be BBAs. But, the thing is that the whole BBA thing has blown up to the point where being a jackass is a way to market your book. That crazy bitch Elizabeth Llewelyn is bragging about how her trolling of a reviewers 3 star review has helped sell books. Her ranking has steadily increased as the drama has increased.

And I'm absolutely certain that this is true.

So, now what? 

Well, I would say that perhaps it is time to consider responding to BBA behavior with total radio silence. The person being attacked could delete the author comment and move on. If people want to shelve the BBA, they could wait a few days, and shelve them under something innocuous like "pot pie" and move on. If the nonsense occurs on amazon, the reviewer can't delete the comment, but there isn't any need to pile on. Perhaps a quick reply to say, "hey, great review. Ignore the tantrum." No tweets. No calls for solidarity. It benefits the jerk.

Radio silence.

Radio fucking silence. You are irrelevant.

Because right now, there are actually incentives to behave badly. It is a way to get exposure for a book that the author is unable to accomplish by not behaving like a douchecanoe. Change the incentives. Let them sink into the obscurity that their crappy writing deserves.

Helping them to attention whore is counterproductive.

 

Just a thought.