The Greek Seaman Review and Fallout (2011)

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Authors Jacqueline Howett (eBook), Al (Review), The Internet (Everything Else)

Things You Might Like

• A well reasoned, fair review.
• Unexpected and laughable lunacy in the comments section.
• A high percentage of insightful comments.

Things You Might Not Like

• Jacqueline’s self-degrading outbursts
• If you consider yourself a writer, you won’t want to feel associated with Howett’s brand of writing.

Conclusion
In this day and age of high technology and internet publishing, there are authors flooding the market.  This means almost everybody in the world can access the market.  Unfortunately, there are some who should not undertake such endeavours, as the exposure to the criticism it shall bring results in an amazing amount of turmoil.

4 out of 5 Shredded First Drafts

Errol Stephen Philip Flynn, our correspondent from the Dangerous IPs

It should be noted, for decency’s sake, that this is a review of the review and the aftermath that is swiftly finding its way around the internet.  This is neither a review of the greek seaman itself, nor a vitriolic attack against the author of the same, and should not be treated as such.  The views of this particular reviewer do not represent the views of either Bullet Reviews or BooksAndPals.blogspot.com.

***

That disclaimer nonsense out of the way, let us be objective.  The story is simply told: a chap called Al, who reviews eBooks on his website, reviews an eBook.  This particular book is called The Greek Seaman, by Jacqueline Howett.  Two stars later, and Jacqueline’s posted a reply to the review, followed by three more replies in quick succession.

In self-publishing and eBook circles, it’s only natural for an author to check the status of their work, and how it’s being received.  What is unusual is to have a response of the type Ms Howett posted.  Reacting badly to a negative review is not hard to imagine, but posting it is another matter.  The aftermath of this off the cuff reaction set events in motion that spiralled out of control to a ridiculous degree.

But I’m running ahead of myself: why is this review worthy of a review?  Okay, let’s go to the source material first — Al’s review.

From an objective point of view, the review of The Greek Seaman begins quite positively.  Al provides all the valuable information you need, in line with the other posts on the blog.  There’s a picture of the cover, a note on the genre, a word count, and a quick list as to whether the book is available on Kindle, Nook and/or hard copy.  Further to this, there’s information about the author and a quick description of the plot.  Standard stuff so far.

The review begins by saying, directly and quoted, that the story is compelling and interesting, praising the unique situation and the suspenseful conflict between crew and the captain’s new bride, Katy.

Where Al creates his undoing, however, is through the use of slight criticism.  He dares to go as far as to suggest that the book has more than one confusing sentence in it.  Al has the audacity to suggest that this might serve to jerk the reader out of the peace of reading and imagining the story.  To be honest, I completely agree: Jeremy Poolman’s The Road of Bones has similar issues — a good book with grammatical structures that distract from the emphasis of the narrative.

These comments lead to a two star rating, out of a possible five.  What happened next is still incomprehensible to me: Jacqueline’s first reply kicks off with the claim Al’s review is very unfair, citing that Amazon customers have given it five or four stars, and she rudely casts aside an objective opinion, stating that she will stick to the Amazon reviews.  Gosh!  Not exactly the most tactful response, but one can understand that the heat of the moment and annoyance with a negative review could lead to a less guarded response.

The next three posts, however, can’t be attributed to a careless click of the mouse before proofing.  They are specifically sourced, copied and pasted reviews from Amazon, two five stars, and one four star.  They are presumably brought in as backup evidence; further proof of Al’s stupidity.  After all, if three people thought it was good, one person who didn’t like it as much is bound to be wrong — that’s how democracy works, right?  (It’s interesting to note that, as of the time of this review, there are five reviews in total on Amazon.co.uk, one (Al’s) two star, one five star and three one star reviews.  Amazon.com has 7 five star reviews, and fifty one star reviews.  Maybe somebody is cherry picking the evidence here?  Also, one of the five star reviews is from somebody with the surname ‘Howlett’, which isn’t suspicious at all.)

Not surprisingly, two comments sprang up from anonymous sources, and neither of them had a positive reaction to the Author’s response to the review.  One merely said that they would pass on the book, and the other politely pointed out that it was unprofessional behaviour.

Al’s response to the charges was quietly cool and respectful, read if for yourself.  He cites examples of poor grammar and confusing sentence structure to back up his review.

Without the need for a continued blow-by-suck account, it’s obvious what happens next.  Howett’s responses get more childish by the second, with accusations of lies and claims that bad reviews need permission from the authors before they are published.  Throughout, she refers to Al as AL, presumably as a tactic to show sarcastic strength, but as our own Jonathan Lim noted, it just looks as if she is unable to correctly use the ‘shift’ key.

From this point on, the debate really kicks off and Howett becomes more and more unprofessional in her arguments.  Considering she is arguing against the view that there are grammatical errors in her manuscript, she undermines her own argument with spelling errors and non sequiturs, amongst the best being Your the target not me!  and You never ever returned to me an email.

Her crowning glory comes in a moment of impassioned eloquence, where she uses powerful imagery and vitriol to demonstrate the depth of feeling and to illustrate her entire point in one adroit phrase.  To whit: Fuck off. Oh, please.

This is why the whole topic needs to be broadcast.  Booksandpals.blogspot.com is a good site with many eBook reviews that are all well reasoned, properly argued and with a good community of commentators who all seem deeply committed.  Jacqueline dives into this order as if it were the comments section for a YouTube video – an innate childishness and stupidity prevails in her jealous barbs, which leave you wondering when Godwin’s Law will prove itself.

I would like to congratulate almost everybody else who replied in the comments section; their points were nearly all entirely polite and reasoned, and all had a genuine shock at Jacqueline’s ranting, calling it anything from an ‘attack’ to a ‘meltdown’.  All showed shock at the sheer unprofessionalism of such a paddy, and some endeavoured to pick up the toys and put them back in her pram for her.  I have no doubt that this will serve as a lesson to many: the eBook market is hard to break into with any great deal of success, and you need to have a great deal of tact to get there.  I hope, without hate, that Jacqueline is now regretting every clumsily bashed out letter posted on that site, although I wouldn’t be surprised if she never tries to make amends; the damage has been done.  Self publishing is a delicate industry, and destroying your reputation and fanbase isn’t a good plan.  As one canny poster put it: The good thing about self-publishing is that anyone can do it.  The bad thing about self-publishing is that anyone can do it.

This review’s URL has been sent to both Jacqueline Howett and BooksAndPals.blogspot.com.

Buy The Greek Seaman [ebook] from Amazon now