A new definition of Spam

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Sending an email to 20 authors (ONLY 20) to alert them they are in my Top 10 Book List for the month of April is spam... good to know, and good to know who I have to remove from my contact list.

And no, don't try to go and see all the authors in that post to imagine who she was, since I have not only promptly removed her from the list, I have also removed her from my flist, and if in the future she will try to contact me, I will be sure to remember that name.

Now I don't pretend to be thanked for every post I do, but to reply to a kindness with a slap in the face, it was not really the best of replies. And btw her books are not even that good (maybe that is the reason why I read only 1?)

ETA: the kind author of above replied to me "I don't pay attention to that stuff. The only ones I read are the real review sites my publishers send to. If I read every "review" from anyone who has a blog with an opinion I'd spend days just doing that...".

Ok, maybe I'm not a real review site, but kind author YOUR TWO PUBLISHERS send me your books to review, not the viceversa, even if now I will know for whom I have not to waste my time. And yes, my ego is pretty big, never denied that, so maybe kind author, you should remember than not so far long ago, on a symposium on marketing ebooks (and not M/M ebooks, ebooks in general) someone said "Elisa is the world’s foremost eBook reviewer. Get a good eBook review from her and you are golden." But problably she doesn't need that kind of advertisement.

Comments

[shadownyc.livejournal.com]

That's ridiculous!

[naltariel.livejournal.com]

Aww... *hugs*.

[reginaclarejane.livejournal.com]

ungrateful, for sure!
x

[elena-62.livejournal.com]

Are you sure it wasn't an automatic reply?

Ciao

Antonella

[moons-storm.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty crappy thing for an author to do. :(

[aileenfan.livejournal.com]

What an ungrateful person, to you, who does all those things to promote the books!!! Grrr...

[eryslash.livejournal.com]

Your ego SHOULD be big, dear, that someone at the symposium wasn't wrong.
Haters to the left!

[rowenasudbury.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's just incredible. I still remember when my first novel came out...yours was my first review and I was walking on air! It's just insanity for someone to respond to you that way. I still hope to make it on to that list of yours again someday, to me...that's a testament to being "arrived" as an author, when you make it to Elisa's referral list.

[ryan field (from livejournal.com)]

I can't believe someone would do this. Sounds like this author needs a good old fashioned kick in the asterisk :)

Don't let it get you down, though. Everyone I know respects what you do, and even more, the way in which you do it!!

[vashtan.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Another one for the File of Horror - how not to treat reviewers.

[mistry89.livejournal.com]

Golly, it has been a busy week with breakouts of Author-Madness on review fronts ... what's next, I wonder?
Yours was the first place I found reviews of the books I want to read (and related stuff *g*) and although I now have others bookmarked, yours is still the first one I see. Not only that, with the tags you have, it is easy to navigate when I want to go and check out previous titles by a new-to-me author - you always list the series order and related stories.
Reviews are tricky things to write, I think - readers (and writers!) all have different ideas of what they want to see in reviews. I like to be able to see the blurb, the cover and to get a sense of the feeling of the story and characters - not a synopsis (including spoilers) .. and you deliver that every time. We always know the things you liked and didn't like, without regurgitating the entire tale. Most m/m review sites do this (actually, I'm really impressed with most places I find reviews of m/m - far more than I was when I read het romance) and I wish I found the same thing in SF/SFF and Murder-Mystery sites (funnily enough, many rec's and reviews I read these days in those genres are from m/m reader/reviewers, so all is not lost!).

Someone commented that spam is usually selling products or offering great scams, but I suspect that as in the garden - where a weed is a plant in the wrong place - spam has become any message the recipient doesn't want. Fortunately for Inboxes everywhere, the delete button deals with anything one doesn't want to read. I belong to far too many groups and struggle to winnow it down to the stuff I want to read now, the stuff I will want to read later and the stuff I can safely delete.

I think the author made a big mistake - not because you are a reviewer, but because you are a real person, so her response was impolite at best - and if she had deleted your messages, you would have been none the wiser.

Sorry, I've gone on too long!
Cheers :)

[m-barnette.livejournal.com]

Elisa, you are indeed a real reviewer with a real review site. Don't listen to anyone who says otherwise. I've always been very happy to receive reviews from you, are are the authors of my publishing house, Shadowfire Press.

Whoever this dolt was just burned a very important bridge, and if I find out who she was, I guarantee I'll never buy a book from her. Ever.

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

Oh sheesh! I'd have been delighted. And I think it's cool that you tell people. I don't see how someone telling you about good news for your book can possibly be spam.

[semioticwarrior.livejournal.com]

Some of the best books I've ever read I heard about from your REAL review site.

Authors like this are their own worst enemy.

You did the right thing and you did it, as always, with grace and aplomb.

[loritoland.livejournal.com]

I truly LOVE getting that e-mail :) Please keep sending me that e-mail. It's a fave part of my month :)

[elizaben.livejournal.com]

Besides being unprofessional and rude, telling someone bringing you good news that they're spamming you is just weird. Nobody in their right mind would do that.

As for the "real" review site comment, you personally review more books than any other reviewer I've encountered, online and offline, and you do it with taste, sincerity and respect. And the visitors' numbers show that you have a lot of readers, so you must be doing something right.

Oh, perhaps she used the word in an ontological sense. Nothing is real, it's all a matter of perception etc. XD

[kirby-crow.livejournal.com]

Wow. All I can say is... what a dumbass she is. Pbbt. You're not only one of the BEST homoerotica reviewers out there, you're one of the sweetest. :)

PS: *cries* because I didn't make the April list this time, but then, April hates me. :)

[darthanne.livejournal.com]

I can't believe how rude she was. *Hugs* Not just rude but with a hugely inflated ego to boot. *shakes head*

[lab-jazz.livejournal.com]

She e-mailed you and told you to stop spamming her !!!!

I think you should tell us who she was so we can avoid her like the plague and NEVER buy any of her books.

[devonrhodes.livejournal.com]

Always love to receive emails from you, dear. Hugs. Sorry you were treated so poorly, and by someone you had done something nice for. Boggles the mind, what she could have been thinking. Oh wait. She obviously wasn't. We love you!! Thank you for everything you do.

[clarelondon.livejournal.com]

There's never any excuse for rudeness, whether she follows blog reviews or not. All I can say is, it's her loss :(.

*hugs*