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Old 04-02-2011, 11:26 PM   #106
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I got a little late to this one, but here's my 2 cents worth.

It's one of those things that you have to take a bad review on the chin whether the bad review is warranted or not. The reader is entitled to their opinion and it's a subjective one. No one sees a book the same way. If the writer can't handle that, time to get another another job.

As to bad publicity, I like to think not all bad publicity is good publicity. If a book is universally panned or the author misbehaves, I'd like to think time to get a pen name. That said, a couple of months ago, a writer went after someone who placed a review on Amazon UK. She left comment after comment for the reader who'd left the review. A thread was started where everyone discussed the writer's bad behavior. How was the writer punished? With a book that reached the top 100. So maybe bad publicity is good publicity. :-)
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Old 04-02-2011, 11:30 PM   #107
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Originally Posted by elcreative View Post
And that is the real point... any writing needs proofing for public consumption,proofing by a third party who doesn't know the content and therefore doesn't what is expected (no expectations) but what is actually written...
This remark is on the money. All writers need editors and second pair of eyes. I'm dyslexic also and nothing goes out without at least two people checking it. Also I came from an engineering background and nothing got built without a 'checker' and an 'approver' reviewing a design before it went into production.
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Old 04-03-2011, 01:11 AM   #108
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Originally Posted by Simon Wood View Post
That said, a couple of months ago, a writer went after someone who placed a review on Amazon UK. She left comment after comment for the reader who'd left the review. A thread was started where everyone discussed the writer's bad behavior. How was the writer punished? With a book that reached the top 100. So maybe bad publicity is good publicity. :-)
It is -- if your writing is tolerable enough that people enjoy reading it. In this case, after the flurry of initial novelty purchases, she's not going to sell any more ebooks; people won't recommend them to each other, and those who hear about her indirectly will see her blog comments first, and then see the reviews.

A mediocre writer can use a bad publicity event to get more readers, because almost anyone's mediocre writing is someone's favorite style. A bad writer can't pull that off. Outside of her immediate family who has practice with her syntax and context for her stories, I don't think she'll sell more than a tiny handful of ebooks, once she's stopped being the "point and laugh" center of the ebook world online.
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Old 04-03-2011, 06:08 AM   #109
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Originally Posted by bZkindle View Post
Her smashwords bio says that her mother is Greek.
Not that it really matters. She insults writers of any language!
She has a voice that could break glass.

It's a very strong Southern English accent: - from the East End of London I think, although perhaps one of the forum's English members from that side of the river Humber will correct me on this. Jacqueline's reading is not pleasant to listen to and it really should have been obvious to her that she needed a bit more practice before doing so and putting the results up online. As well as an editor, she is badly in need of an agent to handle her publicity (well, as an exercise in damage limitation, really).

I taught ESL classes for several years, so am familiar with most of the mistakes made by someone who is in the process of learning English. Her errors strike me as being merely clumsy usage; they're far more similar to Dan Brown's errors, lazy uses of syntax and gross ambiguities.
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Old 04-03-2011, 06:48 AM   #110
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Originally Posted by elcreative View Post
And that is the real point... any writing needs proofing for public consumption,proofing by a third party who doesn't know the content and therefore doesn't what is expected (no expectations) but what is actually written...
And it's self-demonstrating, too... Looks like there's a "see" or "read" missing there.

I completely agree. I sometimes beta for an online-acquaintance who's prone to dropping words and such, and I know that if I go back and slowly read something I wrote a while ago, even with knowing what to expect I often spot a typo or something, so, yeah, I think a book needs to be run past someone besides the author before publishing.
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Old 04-03-2011, 11:47 AM   #111
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Originally Posted by Simon Wood View Post
How was the writer punished? With a book that reached the top 100. So maybe bad publicity is good publicity. :-)
You don't say? Well that's disheartening...
Seems like she's the Rebecca Black of writers.
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Old 04-03-2011, 12:16 PM   #112
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Originally Posted by Richey79 View Post
I taught ESL classes for several years, so am familiar with most of the mistakes made by someone who is in the process of learning English. Her errors strike me as being merely clumsy usage; they're far more similar to Dan Brown's errors, lazy uses of syntax and gross ambiguities.
I don't think she's learning English; I think she grew up speaking a dialect strongly influenced by Greek. I suspect she's more fluent in Greek than English, and her family, maybe local community, is multilingual with sloppy English. Her phrasing is similar to some of my co-workers' emails--the nouns and verbs are all correct, but the prepositions seem to be chosen almost at random, the modifiers are in strange spots, and the verb tenses get a little odd, especially for anything abstract. And, of course, she hasn't bothered to pay attention to formal grammar or punctuation rules since she left school.
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Old 04-03-2011, 12:39 PM   #113
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Originally Posted by Richey79 View Post
I taught ESL classes for several years, so am familiar with most of the mistakes made by someone who is in the process of learning English. Her errors strike me as being merely clumsy usage; they're far more similar to Dan Brown's errors, lazy uses of syntax and gross ambiguities.
There goes my assumption of English not being her first language. >_> Oh well.
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Old 04-03-2011, 12:48 PM   #114
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All this discussion about whether native/non-native English speaker reminds me of George Bernard Shaw's writings on the subject*, in which he basically asserts that the only speakers of really good English are the foreigners who've deliberately studied the language.

Whereas home-grown Anglophones have the sloppiest and worst grammar and vocabulary usage because they assume the way they grew up with it is "correct" and they never bother finding out otherwise (plus, speaking too well marks you as a despised toff, or something).

*GBS has been dead for 50+ years, yes? I should go see it's up on one of the Projects Gutenberg.
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Old 04-03-2011, 09:06 PM   #115
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in which he basically asserts that the only speakers of really good English are the foreigners who've deliberately studied the language.
Having learned German from scratch this way I can report similar comments on my usage of it. I also usually experience that natives are far more sloppy with the grammar than I am and there is a pretty handful of correct grammar structures commonly dropped or ignored by people as soon as they leave school (esp. proper usage of Genitiv and Konjunktiv)
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Old 04-03-2011, 09:35 PM   #116
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It's true. I can often spot people online for whom English is not their first (and often, only a written) language because they, having learned it correctly and been graded on correctness, speak English correctly. Native speakers got points for "creativity" instead of actually getting the language right, and write like they speak, if even that well, so they write like slobs. While there are some things which are common mistakes for non-English-speakers (for example, noun/adjective order in speakers of Romance languages), by and large, if someone can actually communicate reasonably well in a language, the better they are with it, it seems that the less likely it is that they're a native speaker. Depressing, that.

One of the things I like about MobileRead is the number of exceptions to this rule of thumb, possibly because anyone who writes in teenage text-speak is soundly laughed at.
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Old 04-03-2011, 11:13 PM   #117
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Wow. This just shows the power of the internet and blogging. Honestly, I hope Ms. Howett recovers from this blowup and go on to accomplish great things. Criticism is hard for any artist, especially with all the work we pour into our projects. It's easy for emotions to flare. But no one should have to suffer a ruined career for a little fit. That's just my opinion.
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Old 04-03-2011, 11:36 PM   #118
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I feel bad for her. I've had my share of bad reviews (some really mean). Still, that type of response doesn't help you. You have to let it go and move on at the least. If the criticism is constructive, maybe you can learn something to improve your writing.
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Old 04-04-2011, 12:12 AM   #119
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But no one should have to suffer a ruined career for a little fit.
Perhaps not. But when someone spends 10 days screaming at a reviewer because she didn't like his review, in increasingly insulting and eventually obscene ways, I'd consider that to be more than "a little fit". I think it's a very good demonstration of the basic attitude and behavior of that person.

And when a person who wants to be an author is incapable, not only of using the language she is writing in, but of recognizing or acknowledging that inability, even when examples are pointed out to her, it's highly unlikely that this person will go on to great things.
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Old 04-04-2011, 12:28 PM   #120
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She's lowered the cost of her novel to $.99, so she might be getting curiosity purchases. Even without a sample, plenty of people will pay a dollar to find out what the fuss was about.

I hope she doesn't convince herself those people will be buying her next book, supposedly out later this year.
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