Ooh! A hissy-fit!

If you'd like to see a classic example of how not to react to online reports or comments about you or your work, click over to this morning's Mad Genius Club article, in which fellow author Amanda Green mentioned another author's views on whether authors should be paid royalties for the sales of used copies of their books.  That author promptly raised Cain in the comments below the article, leading to a lot of fairly succinct interaction with other authors, readers and fans.

It's a wonderful example of what happens when you go ballistic about something that wasn't worth it in the first place.  The second author has now probably done permanent damage to her reputation;  and since the Internet is forever, her comments are going to be left up there for all the world to find whenever they do a search on her name.  I think she may come to regret them.

I've been the victim of some pretty scurrilous comments on the Internet, particularly over the boycott of Tor Books for which I called last year.  I had a choice.  I could reply to the slanders, which would merely fan the flames and encourage their nonsense;  or I could make fun of some, and ignore the rest, and do something more productive.  I chose the latter course.  The idiots kept on yammering, of course, but only to each other, because no-one else was paying any attention to them.  Without new fuel to stoke up their indignation, things died down soon enough, as they usually do.

Oh, well . . . that's entertainment!

Peter