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

[raynedanser.livejournal.com]

That's what I wondered as well.

[moons-storm.livejournal.com]

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

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

Pretty sure, she even added some following comments that were not exactly polite

[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!!

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

Ryan, I was like, uhm, maybe I did something wrong? I checked if maybe I didn't send the email to all the contacts, and nope, it was only the 20 concerned authors. Then, more or less, I understood she thinks I'm spamming here since 2 WEEKS ago I sent here the message where I announced the Rainbow Awards. So see, 2 emails according to her is spam.

[ryan field (from livejournal.com)]

That makes no sense at all. I received 700 e-mails last month from one author, no joke. I almost fell over sideways. But I checked it out and the author had made a mistake and didn't do it on purpose. No one else who received the 700 e-mails complained and no one said or did anything negative.

And I get about fifty messages a day from people with announcements and notices. Spam, to me, is when someone is trying to sell me medicine from Canada, or someone is trying to get my bank account number in some third world country. I don't consider author/reviewer announcements as spam.

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

I was not in the best mood today, any other day I would have simply deleted her from my list and forgot everything, but today I wanted to understand and sincerely she really behaved like I was a spammer from hell. Now she replied to me the comment on the real review site was not about me (but if it was not why making it) and that I have an hostile attitude.

[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 :)

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

No, I thank you for your comment. It's true, she could have deleted the message, but in that way she would have probably risked to receive other messages from me in the future. If she was rude in her first reply and stopped there, all right, but she replied a second time telling me she didn't know who I was, when I kindly pointed her to my review of her book (positive) she added venom telling me she only read "real review site her publisher send to"... and so on. that is what I didn't like, you are right, she was speaking to a real person (if not a real reviewer) and she could have been at least polite.

[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.

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

From what I know, she is not one of your authors, so don't worry ;-) and she is not even an author from a major publisher, so I really don't know where this attitude of her could come from.

[m-barnette.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure my authors are all better behaved than that. We've had some lengthy discussions regarding reviews and reviewers so they do know better.

This is why some publishers stay small, their authors wind up making bad impressions on people/readers that they never have strong sales.

Don't worry about what happened. You just go ahead and do what you do best, write great reviews!

And in case no one has thanked you recently, I will.

THANK YOU ELISA FOR YOUR GREAT REVIEWS!!!

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

LOL, Thank you!

the strange thing is that since I'm pretty sure there are many on her circle of friends who I consider online friends, and moreover, more than once the author she co-author with sent me her books to review, so I'm pretty sure she knew who I was, but she decided to ignore that. maybe she didn't like my reviews ;-)

[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.

[m-barnette.livejournal.com]

Okay, now I know who she is for sure. I wouldn't worry about her at all, she's been burning a lot of bridges lately, including the one with her writing partner.

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

No, I'm pretty sure she is not the one you are thinking to, since she has still a good relationship with her co-author (from what I see online). To give you a tip first name J. If she is the one you are thinking that is enough for you to understand, otherwise is not enough to pick her out from the mass ;-)

[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.