I’m of two minds. The latest brouhaha online is poor Jacqueline Howett, indie author who is apparently quite a good plotter but also horribly weak at the whole spelling and grammar thing. This caused her to get a bad review by BigAl’s Books and Pals.
What’s funny is I’ve gotten bad reviews before, and BigAl’s was a completely well done and professional review. Al listed what was good about it (he genuinely liked the plot) but also mentioned what was poor (the spelling and grammar). He listed how many stars he gave it and why. If it had been my review, I’d have shrugged, admitted he had a point (hard to argue that spelling and grammar is wrong; that stuff is like math. It’s either right or isn’t…) and moved on with my day. But not poor Jacqueline.
I call her poor because I feel bad for her, like I feel bad for a toddler whose meltdown has caused her to miss special ice cream day.
Good Cop says: Calm down, Jacqueline, you’re harming your career by doing this. Your constant replies, attacks, and subsequent “F*** you!” makes you look unprofessional, petty, whiny, and like someone whom no one would ever want to work with. You are textbook “the world is out to get me, it’s a conspiracy” idiot author who makes the rest of us look bad. And as someone who recently decided to go the indie route, I highly resent you making me look bad as a result. I can only pray that bloggers and readers will see you as the exception instead of the rule. Please step away from the internet, take a deep breath, and re-evaluate your online presence before you do your career any more harm. (and you’ve done it harm.)
But I gotta admit, my Bad Cop side is … loud and opinionated: Go for it, girl. You TELL them. You bare that sensitive author soul because they are MEAN to you and someday they will PAY when you are RICH AND FAMOUS. You won’t even throw them a nickle to clean up the golden feces piles you will leave behind you (because a TRUE ARTIST’S poop don’t smell). But you want to know the real reason why I desperately want you to keep imploding? Because you are doing a fantastic job of showing my listeners/readers what I mean by “be professional, and don’t be an ass.” If someone ever asks, “what do you mean by that, Mur?” I can show them this link.
This is unprofessional. This is being an ass. This, children, is what you don’t want to do.
This is not only discusting and unprofessional on your part, but you really don’t fool me AL.
Who are you any way? Really who are you?
What do we know about you?You never downloaded another copy you liar!
You never ever returned to me an e-mailBesides if you want to throw crap at authors you should first ask their permission if they want it stuck up on the internet via e-mail. That debate is high among authors.
Your the target not me!
Now get this review off here!
So thanks for being Exhibit A. Thanks for going to That Special Place so my listeners/readers don’t have to. I hope your next meltdown goes viral so I can continue to say, “hey guys, remember her? Just in case you forgot how not to be professional, here it is again.”
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30 Responses to In which I play Good Cop and Bad Cop with Jacqueline Howett
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Mur, I think maybe you have the Good Cop and Bad Cop mixed up a bit.
Well, the Good Cop was harsh, but ultimately the advice is “do what you can to fix your career.” Bad Cop says “go down in flames like you deserve to, you idiot.”
She’s obviously not a ISBW listener. I would love to hear the Bad Cop himself on this. I’d expect lots of naughty words.
I saw a tweet about this earlier in the day. I honestly kinda feel embarrassed for her. I mean, on one hand the meltdown was spectacular. A near textbook object lesson. On the other… she’s gonna have a hard time getting anyone to review or work with her. Like your link, she’s going to need a pseudonym.
Then, there’s another part of me… a large, petty part that wants to sit her down and say “stop making it harder for everyone else!” :/
I can feel for her because it is hard to get criticized but, if someone just said that you have poor grammar and spelling skills CLEARLY the best way to throw it in his/her face that he/she is obviously wrong is to write a grammatically and poorly spelled rant and place it on the internet, for everyone to see. This will surely prove that the reviewer had absolutely no point to make!
NEXT time? You really think, after that performance, there is going to be a next time for her?
Do I think she will find a next time to completely melt down online? Totally.
The problem with getting angry with the internet is that there’s no one to slap you when the hysteria sets in.
The woman wrote a book that, from the reviewers comments, is not irretrievably awful. She should have thanked Al for the review and ever so gently pointed him to a more recent, less error-ridden version. Al might even have added a note to the bottom of the review saying that the editing problems had largely been resolved in the newest edition.
Instead, she’s probably destroyed her career by ensuring that no agent or editor is going to want to go near her and those precious Amazon reviews she refers to have been drowned out by the flood of 1* reviews that have appeared since her tantrum went viral.
Fortunately (for the rest of us), her meltdown was so over the top, I don’t think it will hurt other Indies in the future.
But I could be wrong; Rebecca Black might need a ghostwriter for her autobiography.
I just finished skimming through the comments in the review… I’m stunned. I often laugh at the oft-given “be professional” advice, thinking it’s mostly common sense, right? This woman has neither common sense nor any inkling re how to act professionally. I have to wonder… did Charlie Sheen hack her login???
I… just… wow. Did someone tell her that if you’re going to try to be a professional author, you can’t act like a spoiled 13 year old? Now, I know nothing about her; she may, in fact, BE a spoiled 13 year old for all I know. But if you’re play in the grown-up world, you have to wear the grown-up pants.
At least she didn’t try to use the “you’re violating my copyright by writing a review!” line. (Wait, you don’t think she’ll read this, do you? I don’t want to give her ideas…)
The woman is close to sixty years old, she didn’t graduate high school (…educated in London???), she has no formal literary training or experience – and it shows. I skimmed through a few chapters and found it hard to accept that English is her first language. I would not have reviewed it as gently as the did the reviewer who pushed all of her buttons. I don’t regard her grammar as bad, I regard it as appalling -unbelievably so. Maybe not for a labourer in a fish market, but certainly for anyone who has so much as the most modest form of literary aspiration.
(Scott’s comment about Charlie Sheen gave me a chuckle – it is apt.)
Yikes. Why, in all that is good in the world, do authors persist in painting themselves in a bad light like this. I’ve been fortunate thus far to avoid such meltdowns, nor have I offered any petulant behavior when catching the occasional review of my own work. I guess crazy is just everywhere and the writing world is no exception. Pity.
She’s not an “indie author”. She’s a “self published author”. Hint: If there’s no quality filter between writer and paper (or, in this case, e-paper), then it’s by definition not “published”, it’s merely vomited up. She can’t get basic grammar and punctuation right; do you really want to dignify it by calling it a “book”?
It’s like comparing Beck to the obsessive guy down the street who cranks out amateurish 4-tracks and desperately tries to get the local college radio station to play them, and is appalled when they don’t.
As a first-time published author (November 2010) – I won’t provide the title of my book in an unsolicited manner – but can say I am completely gobsmacked at Ms Howett’s reactions to the review in question.
When you write a book, you are not only writing for an audience of readers, but reviewers as well, and you have to accept that the odd negative comment will slip in.
I worked the media and got mostly great reviews (including a particularly fantastic one from world-renowned Sports Scientist Professor Tim Noakes who worked with polar explorer Lewis Pugh), but also got one or two negative comments.
These centred around the incorrect spelling of one person’s name which is justifiable and something I took on the chin, although not without some disappointment that the reviewer felt inclined to point out one spelling mistake in 75 000 words. But I certainly didn’t suffer any kind of emotional meltdown.
The upshot of it all is that when you write – for money ultimately – you are doing so professionally, and you will be judged accordingly.
If you can’t act professionally or take constructive criticism well, you’re in the wrong business.
And if you deem it appropriate and wise to tell your reviewer to “F### off”, you’ve failed miserably in a professional environment and done your own reputation a massive disservice.
Veritas, I agree. I thought the review was very tactful, given that the sections quoted were so atrociously written as to be basically word salad.
I have a friend who considers herself a published author because she has self-published. Thankfully her writing is not as bad as Ms Howett’s, in that it doesn’t read like someone playing darts with a copy of the OED, but it’s still pretty hard going.
I daren’t say anything of course; don’t want to provoke a meltdown.
I found it funny that she says her spelling is fine, and no one pointed out to her the word is not discusting… it is disgusting.. whether it be her spelling or just anger that does not allow her to check herself she needs to act responsibly.
After all this, she will appear on an American daytime talk show and get a book deal. That is the real tragedy.
She says she was educated in London but her accent (she provided a link to a video of her reading from the book) sounds more Essex to me.
I love this, from the sidebar of her blog:
To read some chapter excerpt’s
from The Greek Seaman click on my very first earliest blog month, or simply download a smaple from Amazon or Smashwords.
I don’t think I want to read a smaple, so I’m not going to click on her earliest first blog month to read the chapter excerpt’s.
Michael Marnewick:
I’d choose to look at that negative review you received in a different light. If the only bad thing (or one of the only bad things) the reviewer can find to say about your book is that you spelled a name wrong, then I’d say you’ve done a remarkably good job!
Check out her books and reviews on amazon.com, some kid keeps uploading pictures of his bowel movements as customer reviews.
That was indeed quite a meltdown, but what I’ve noticed is that a number of people have used it as an opportunity to draw a bright line between “indie published” (published by a small independent press) and “self-published”. Although they’re entitled to their opinions, I must take issue with the implication that every self-published author is the equivalent of (to use the example given here) a talentless basement-dwelling Beck wannabe.
I currently have three self-published books available. One was originally edited and then published by a now-defunct indie publisher; most of their edits were good ones but, over my objection, they cut the epilogue. Various reviewers then commented that the book needed an epilogue. When the publisher went under and the rights reverted to me, I put the epilogue back (but kept their other edits) and put it out myself. Another book was accepted by a different indie publisher who had published a previous book of mine (without editing it, I might add), after which I waited something like eight months for the contract before finally canceling the agreement and, again, editing and publishing the book myself. That second book has sat at #1 on the UK Kindle Epic Fantasy chart for a number of weeks and has been in the top 5 there more or less continuously since January, and the other two have been in and out of the top 50 or top 10 of their respective categories, so evidently I did something right with them.
I guess this is a long and rather rambling way of arguing that not all editing/filtering of books is beneficial, and that not all books with a publisher’s stamp on them have been other than “vomited up”. I suppose that’s the way to bet, as Damon Runyon might say, but every bettor loses now and then.
Could it be as simple as Ms Howett hiring a good copy editor?
Most editors can spot this kind of crazy a mile away, and they won’t accept work from people like Ms. Howett–being a bad writer is one thing, but being a bad writer who doesn’t realize it is another. Facing one’s own edited manuscript can be a challenge under even the best circumstances. For Ms. Howett, who can’t accept a bad review, it wouldn’t be a pleasant experience at all; for her editor, it would be nine kinds of hell and not worth the money. And it would be a lot of money. Experienced copy editors make about $30/hour for the kind of developmental editing that her work clearly needs.
Just based on the book’s description on Amazon, her grammar is quite possibly the worst I’ve ever seen in print. A good copyeditor could whip it into shape (though I don’t envy that position).
The fact that it apparently didn’t occur to her to hire an editor is another matter entirely…
Ok. I think it was very mean of people to leave all those after-the-fact one-star reviews though Big Al is a gentleman and I can understand being a bit annoyed. But sheesh, it’s hard not to laugh when you read her responses, especially as they are chock full of grammatical and other errors, and not ones that could be explained by being English. “Your” for “You’re” — I’d just die!
Thanks Jason
The problem is that I thought the name was spelt one way, checked with Google and there were plenty of hits for that name, and I assumed all was OK. So I am not the only one to make the mistake.
But instead of my version “Ramala”, it is “Ramaala”…. (and it was used in reference to the person, it wasn’t quoting that person talking to me which then would have been unforgivable!).
But yes, I thought that to pick out one error which is minor in the grand scheme – and 99% of people wouldn’t have even thought differently – was probably unnecessary.
But then again, as Girish points out, all this media has created a legend.
Jacqueline Howett obviously subscribes to: “The only thing worse than people talking about you is NOT talking about you.”
I know the book in question. I received a copy of it in its manuscript form which I refused to review for several different reasons including the terrible spelling and grammar. Trust me, Al was kind, very kind.
I don’t agree on your point about grammar. There aren’t set in stone rules (like maths) but agreed conventions that you can break, if you do so skilfully and still communicate your meaning. This is why the word ‘solecism’ is needed – it’s more about perception of mistakes that actual mistakes, which is why it’s so hard for anyone to pin this down with Ms Howett and point out an actual ‘error’. That said, it’s clear to me that she doesn’t communicate very well. I downloaded a sample and, as Al said, reading shouldn’t be that hard.
Nicola, grammar has very rigidly set rules, they slowly change, but they are exact. You can break these rules and many writers do it to good effect, but this woman is not doing that. The only effect that she achieves is incomprehension. Her writing is not about “perception of mistakes” it is full of mistakes, it has a great many errors in spelling, grammar, and phrasing. (Solecism has nothing to do with perception, it has to do breaking the rules, grammatically or socially.)
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