There are three rules regarding negative reviews/feedback. Rule number one: do not respond. Rule number two: even when the reviewer completely misunderstood or misrepresents your book—do not respond. And, rule number three: especially when you feel a response is justified, and this case is the exception and calls for a response—do not respond. While there are many reasons you should observe this rule, the most important one has to do with what I think of as the reader’s code. This concerns basic agreement between all authors and readers. I will try to describe it with an example. John Irving wrote The Cider House Rules. He had certain ideas about the story and his message while his readers had their own, very separate, very strong, ideas. This is perfectly allowed. Once the book is published, the story no longer belongs to the author; it then belongs to the reader. It is up to the reader how they will experience that story and what message they will find. This relationship is a beautiful and powerful thing. When it is respected, there is a shared responsibility for the story. The most any writer can ask of a reader is to approach the book thoughtfully and if they make it to the end, have a personal emotional response to the book. However much a one star review might hurt, it is an emotional response. Some fantastic books out there have many one star, as well as five star reviews. Those are powerful responses and…

Social media gives us new ways to connect with others and pursue our interests, which can include following our favorite authors, publishers, and bookstores. While it may seem an unlikely place, Instagram is one of these platforms with a rather large book-loving community. Recently, I became the new admin behind the Swenson Book Development Instagram account, but of course, there are many others in the literary community that have been #Bookstagrammers for much longer. Author and filmmaker Elizabeth Rynecki – who documented in both book and film her “emotional quest to find the art of her Polish-Jewish great-grandfather, lost during World War II” – is an experienced member of the Instagram literary community and models the best practices of #Bookstragrammers. As a guest for Swenson Book Development, Rynecki has written about writing book reviews and using Instagram, and I am excited to share it with you. Elizabeth Rynecki: Last year I posted 50 mini book reviews on Instagram. That might seem like a large number of books to read in a year, but it’s notably smaller than the number of books I started and then decided, for various reasons, not to finish. Not all books are for all readers. It seems like an obvious statement, but as an author myself I have come to understand this in a much deeper way, to the point that I’ve almost made it a mantra. My recent background as an author [Chasing Portraits was published by Penguin Random House in 2016] leads some people to…

When your writing is published, expect to go public. Positive engagement with your audience is critical to the success of your book. Readers want to connect with authors. And writers like to hear feedback from their readers. During the last decade publishers have come to expect authors to create and manage their online personas on various social media platforms to promote and market their books. Few authors relish the time they spend on social media and most are uncomfortable with the loss of privacy. Shortly after novelist Elena Ferrante’s identity was revealed in October by an Italian journalist, author and journalist Marie Myung-Ok Lee wrote an essay for The Millions about the end of privacy for writers. She wrote about feeling the need to buffer or filter her public image when selecting a new author headshot. Instead of a photograph, her official avatar is a sketch by artist Kate Gavino. Women are judged because of their looks. Not too old. Not too young. Not too serious, but serious enough. Author headshots matter for men, too, however, the quality of their writing is not assumed to be reflected in their physical appearance. When you go public, you make yourself vulnerable to cyberbullying. When your book is published, you have no control over what others will say in customer reviews on Amazon. If you share a link to your blog or your book on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn, you are expected to reply to comments. When you put your book out…