An Open Letter To an Unnamed Author: Stop the Harassment.

About a month ago I wrote a post titled An Open Letter To The Uninformed Masses and The Haters where I touched on the subject of authors harassing bloggers, but mainly I focused on the crazy and insane people who deemed and labelled book bloggers ‘not real readers’ shocking I know, sadly there are some real crazies out there!

A link to the post can be found below, it’s a worthwhile read for any who haven’t yet had the privilege of reading it.

• An Open Letter To The Uninformed Masses and The Haters.

Anyway, this post is to focus on author harassment as after recent events I feel that it needs to be addressed – (it’s a different author and also a different blogger from last time).

Now, I need to make this perfectly clear for the bloggers out there and also to any authors that may read this. I personally haven’t had any issues with authors, the ones I’ve dealt with have always been decent, helpful and polite, all around good people. I’ve had them on my blog and it’s been a pleasure to help them in some small way promote both themselves as an author and their work so this is not attacking authors in general, I respect you and the work you do, without you there would be no books and that would be a sad world to live in.

Unfortunately there’s always one to ruin things and give people a bad name and it just so happens that there is an author who is tarnishing the good name ‘author’ by harassing bloggers.

I mentioned that I haven’t had any issues with authors and that includes the one who has been harassing a fellow blogger. I had them on my blog last year not long after I started blogging for an interview and book spotlight as while not a book that interested me to read and review, the book helps with a good cause that is close to the authors heart.

My experience with them was completely fine, I got the interview questions back in plenty of time to draft the post and all the necessary other information that was also required. I posted the posts and helped the author out, job done. Now I admit they’ve occasionally commented with updates in the blog posts since then but while I found it slightly weird, it was no big deal as it’s their book and they wanted to keep the post updated.

Until this weekend just gone, I’d have gladly recommended the author as someone to work with due to their work helping a good cause, them being polite and sending all the required information with no hassle. However, the blogger, who I get on well with finally had enough of the harassment that they’d been suffering and named the author to me and some others.

It’s the author that I’ve just mentioned, it seemed strange as they’d been nothing but decent with me but the way they’ve treated this blogger is anything but, it’s caused them stress and pain and left them wondering what to do. Suffice to say I won’t be recommending them anymore and would urge anyone to stay away from them, as behaviour like there’s cannot and should not be tolerated not just against a blogger but against a fellow human being.

The authors book and the author themselves purport to be an advocate of a good cause and I admit that it is, abuse is a subject that deserves attention and is important in today’s society, but for someone who’s work focuses on abuse the author themselves needs to realise that abusing a blogger isn’t the way to go.

You want to bring attention to the abuse people suffer in a good way, I applaud you for that but don’t abuse bloggers as all the good work that you and your book have previously done, has now been damaged and you yourself now have a bad reputation.

It might only be a small thing to you, but I’ve seen your book featured on lots of blogs, it’s a way to get both your name and your work out there but now your name has been tarnished. I can’t speak for any of the other bloggers, lots will be oblivious to who you are but for me personally, I have removed the two posts I did for you as I won’t stand for your treatment of a fellow blogger.

I perhaps should email you and tell you that due to recent events I’ve removed you spotlight and interview posts, it would be the polite and professional thing to do but…..I’m not a professional, I’m just a blogger who stands up for what they believe in and I’m not really polite when people piss me off either. I’m more like a sarcastic SOB and as Slipknot sang ‘I’m just a bastard, but at least I admit it’ – got to get at least one popular culture reference in a post!

You may ask why I’m not telling the author in question that I’ve removed the posts and I’ll tell you, it’s me respecting the fact that I personally didn’t have an issue when I dealt with them. That may sound strange but let me explain, I’m not like the blogger who has suffered the harassment, they are one of the nicest bloggers you’ll find who always comments and shares and has built themselves a reputation as being friendly within the blogging community.

Finally having to name the author was a big step for the blogger and I commend them on it, it wasn’t something they wanted to do but the hassle, stress and harassment got to much. I’m not like them, from the beginning I wouldn’t have stood for it, if I emailed the author and told them that I’d removed the mentioned posts and if they then chose to harass me, I wouldn’t stand for it, hell no! With the recent developments I can’t see them replying ‘OK, that’s fair enough, it’s your choice’ or similar and could easily see them hassling me, it’s only hearsay and might not have happened but I’m not taking that chance as if it did, I’d burn my blog and the reputation I’ve garnered to the ground to stand up for myself and voice my opinion, I’d name and shame the author and share all the correspondence along with my usual sarcastic vitriol, freedom of speech bay-bay – (Adam Cole ROH reference) and no-one takes that away from me. Even if it ruined my blog, it’s a price I’d pay and I’d make sure everyone knew your name and what you’ve been doing. It’s just wrong!

However, as it’s my blog I can remove whatever content I want, whenever I want and I have chosen this small action to show solidarity amongst bloggers (if I find out that you have apologised to the aforementioned blogger then I will gladly add your posts back to my blog) as I don’t agree with your behaviour, for shame, for shame! We are here to help authors and you have now ruined that for yourself.

The author in question follows my blog and me on Twitter anyway so there’s a chance there’ll see this post, whatever happens after that, happens, Drew nonchalantly shrugs his shoulders. I’ll accept the consequences and deal with it, as I truly believe that this needed to be written.

I’m not going to name the author in this post, it’s not my place to do so, though I’m certain lots of you will either have worked with them before or recently been contacted by the author and yes, the book is in aid of a good cause but the way the author has treated one of us is disgraceful and disgusting, it should now be detrimental to their name and cannot be abided.

To the author, why did you feel the need to harass a blogger? What did it get you? Surely you must have realised that nothing good would come from it and all it has now got you is a bad name. We aren’t paid, we do this for our love of books. We review, sadly we can’t like every book but good or bad we review honestly, we offer you posts and allow interviews, extracts, spotlights, etc to aid in promoting you and your work and we also share posts, it’s what bloggers do. We share reviews of books that are good as we want others to know that it’s a good book and deserves attention, and we also share bad reviews, if we want to spread the word on good books then of course we also want to share the word on books we didn’t particularly enjoy. It’s our right to share what posts we want.

We help authors and authors help us, it’s a two-way relationship that most of the time works well but please don’t think that you are doing us a favour by offering your book to review and to appear on our blogs, we are in fact doing you the favour by accepting to have you on our blogs, you give up your time to write guest posts, interviews, etc but don’t forget that we also give up our own unpaid free time too!

We do not have to accept every review and post request, your book might not interest us, we might be closed to requests and we may just not want to accept the post request as we want a break from drafting posts and blogging, it’s our prerogative to say either yes or no, respect that.

You cannot treat us like shit, like we are less than nothing! Yes, there are countless book blogs out there and if one doesn’t agree to have you on their blog then chances are another will but for future reference, remember this pearl of wisdom, we are a community and you have now been labelled.

If someone asks you to stop contacting them, then quite simply put, YOU SHOULD STOP, there is no valid reason to continue and go against that person’s wishes. It is harassment and bullying, it isn’t allowed in real-life and shouldn’t occur in the virtual world either just because you have a computer screen to hide behind.

Not stopping is harassment and cannot be justified for any reason.

The fact that you are an author does not give you the right to harass bloggers, we are all human, we are all the same, you are no better than us and your actions are not acceptable, they are reprehensible and you deserve to account for them.

Authors, no matter our favoured genre you give us the stories and books that we love, we respect you for that and the thousands of hours of enjoyment that you have given us. I ask you, please don’t let certain individuals give you all a bad name, this individual deserves to be pulled up for their behaviour not just by us bloggers but by all of you too.

Bloggers, please don’t stand for being harassed, we are a community and as such we will stand up for and help each other, look at me the loner talking about community! Especially those individuals who have and/or are currently suffering, don’t be afraid to seek advice or help from other bloggers, if you are scared to speak out there will be someone else who will do it for you. You might think an author harassing you is your own problem, but that author could then go on and harass others if they are not called out on it, it is unacceptable behaviour.

For those wondering why I have written this post and not the blogger who has been affected by the harassment. I’ll make this clear, until they read it they will know nothing of this post, it is completely my own work and my own feelings on the subject. They went about things in the right way but sometimes you need an anti-hero to voice what you will not. At times, it’s good to be bad!

Firstly, I am disgusted by the behaviour of the author and feel that it needed bringing to everyone’s attention and secondly, as I said many words ago back near the start of this post, the blogger who it happened to is nice and friendly and simply put, I’m not, I am the sarcastic asshole that stands there making comments.

To end, to the author, I ask you this, are you a man? Do you have any grapefruits? Do you have the cojones? If so then you will rectify your behaviour, you will stand and be held accountable for your actions, the harassing you have done is tantamount to psychological bullying and you should apologise.

Now, there might be those of you who have read this and taken offence, I sincerely apologise if you have as none was meant, I am merely writing the truth and at times unfortunately, the truth hurts. Hopefully the issue has now been resolved, but in all honesty it should never have gone this far in the first place. Some people just have no decency regardless of the consequences their actions cause. 

If this post loses me followers then so be it, I believe it needed writing.

While this post is about a certain author it is very relevant to everyone out there as regardless of who this author is, harassment can come from any, bloggers you don’t need to stand for harassment by anyone, we are a community regardless of country or favoured book genre, we stand together for each other!

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