Sometime I wonder if kindness still exists...

[reviews_and_ramblings]

I own an independent bookstore. It's little, it's beautiful and it's mine. Really from the bookstore I gain very little, my profit is from the connected restaurant-caffetteria, still I struggle to mantain my bookstore. I'm specialized in minor publishers and new authors. When I host an author I post the event on my site, I send for two weeks the newsletter (1000 email address!), I print posters to hang on my bookstore and I send the news to the local newspapers. And I ask nothing to the author or to the publisher: other bookstore ask money to host authors, specially new authors, but I want to give the opportunity to people and writers to meet by person. Most of the time the event has a medium average success, sometime a big success and sometime is a total flop. One week ago I hosted a new author, not very famous, but he has the lucky that his novel was published by a medium important italian publisher. But the event was a disaster: three people, and the author was very pissed. But what could I do? drag the people inside the bookstore? Other times when it happened authors were sorry but they didn't accuse me. Today I discover on the author's website that he has written that I'm an amateur bookseller, that other authors must not trust me, he says "fuck me" (I don't know is this is the exact translation, in italian is a very bad bad expression). I'm angry but I'm also sad: I don't understand why people are so brute and so negative.

Comments

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

Um... okay, you gave this sorry SOB time, space, and advance publicity, but he only had three people show up? He doesn't have more than three friends or family members who were willing to show up and support him? What did he expect from you, a ready-made fan club?

It sounds like he probably treats everybody the way he treated you... otherwise he'd have friends who were willing to come to your shop and celebrate his success.

I have a suggestion: write a letter to his publisher. Explain what you just told us: that you give promotional opportunities free of charge, that Mr Ego is vilifying you in public... and send them the url of his obnoxious post (you might want to make a cache-copy of the page, in case he changes it.)

Ask the promotions manager of his publisher if they can "encourage" him to take down this offensive post. Not only does it make him look bad, it makes the publisher look bad.

If you want to get a bit tough with them, or if they don't respond to a polite request, you might hint that since their writer is so downright ungracious, in the future you will have to charge them for promotional opportunities.

This jerk isn't worth wasting time on. Go over his head. The publisher needs to know they're subsidizing an offensive idiot.

Good luck, hon!

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

Yes a made a copy of the page but only to remember what he wrote and to see if, after I write to him in pirvate, he will change it. My friends say I have to ask my lawyer to send him a letter: the words he has written are really offensive.