Wednesday, November 10, 2010

No Such Thing...

“There is no such thing as bad publicity.”  How many times have we all heard this? I used to think it was… well not true. Recent events have made me rethink my stance.

When I think of that phrase many stars (and former stars) come to mind. Like Lindsay Lohan, Mel Gibson, Charlie Sheen. It seems to be that authors are now taking this outlook. 
Several authors (I will not give names as I do not want to promote their conduct) are behaving badly. They are arguing with readers, posting to their blogs attacking individuals who review their books, some are even making false claims about being attacked on the very forums that embraced them. 
You would think that behaving this way would cause people to not buy their books.  Unfortunately, it appears to show the first sentence true. I am sure that it turns some readers off and they refuse to read or buy that book. However the numbers don’t lie. Many see their numbers lower on Amazon as their number of sales rise.

All I can hope for is that their marketing ploys, bad attitudes, and false publicity end up being their down fall. That those who maintain our composure and heed our mothers warning, “If you don’t have anything nice to say…” when out in the end.

2 comments:

  1. Hmm I think I might know who you talking about but then again maybe not lol. There has been a lot of talk about blogers giving harsh reviews or attacking authors. I haven't seen any blogs where anyone is attacking anyone personally, though I may only read the nice ones lol.

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  2. I witnessed an episode of an author behaving badly on Amazon. It wasn't pretty and quite bizarre. Even some other authors tried to talk sense into her, but she wouldn't listen and continued to be nasty and vile to the reviewer and anyone else who didn't agree with her. I had some of her books on my wishlist. They aren't there anymore and never will be again. Her book sales did go up and I found it very frustrating that people would reward her behavior like that, but I think it was probably a temporary spike. There were probably just as many people like me who just quietly removed her books from any consideration. So she may have gotten some increased sales initially, but how many readers did she lose?

    I'm curious who these authors are, though I understand why you don't want to list their names. Is this a recent event?

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