A few sim­ple truths about the Internet:

  • When you post on a pub­lic forum, your thoughts are fair game
  • When you act fool­ishly online, it is for­ever memorialized
  • Attack­ing your read­er­ship is not such a good idea but not prohibited
  • Read­ers spend the money on the books — do I need to say more?

Show me an author who can afford to attack the hand that feeds her? What? Did some­one say Mary Jan­ice David­son? I have zero inter­est in read­ing her books (as she has zero inter­est in get­ting my money) and I’m sure that only makes her laugh even harder as she looks over her bank state­ments. Her fan base can con­tinue to cheer her on but know that you do your­self no favors. (Hear cack­ling in the background)

I didn’t choose to write for a liv­ing but I respect the work. I like to snark as do many other blog­gers and I’m sure that ticks off some authors and indus­try peo­ple. But is it really smart to attack the peo­ple who pay your bills? I mean are you giv­ing away a prod­uct here or are you ask­ing for my money? There’s your dis­ad­van­tage right there. Your work is out there for pub­lic con­sump­tion and if you don’t want to sit back and take it, hey dish it out, let us hear it — at your own risk.

Why worry? The online com­mu­nity only rep­re­sents such a small por­tion of your read­er­ship. It’s not like we have fam­ily or friends we can com­plain to about your behav­ior. I mean after all, you are per­fectly safe in your online world. Or maybe not.

Just recently, I was see­ing on tele­vi­sion how prospec­tive employ­ers are now search­ing the Inter­net, look­ing for blogs from peo­ple who they are inter­view­ing for a job. You just never know who is read­ing these days. Edi­tor? Pub­lisher? Piss­ing off your fans is not such a smart move despite your moti­va­tions. For the money we pay for these books, yeah, you need to deal with it. Work it out. Keep it off the Inter­net. Bitch to your fam­ily and friends — not strangers, poten­tial fans, read­ers, cur­rent read­ers, who­ever. We are not your fam­ily or friends. We are con­sumers.