In the 21st Century, can one bad print review spoil years of hard work? Following yesterday’s Twitter-versy about a Boston Globe book review, another author railed against a book critic online.
According to the LA Times, author Alain de Botton left an angry message in the comments section of Caleb Crain’s blog after a harsh review in the NY Times Book Review last week. The author argued that the review would wreck The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work‘s U.S. sales.
Here’s an excerpt from the scathing comment: “it is a review driven by an almost manic desire to bad-mouth and perversely depreciate anything of value. The accusations you level at me are simply extraordinary. I genuinely hope that you will find yourself on the receiving end of such a daft review some time very soon–so that you can grow up and start to take some responsibility for your work as a reviewer. You have now killed my book in the United States, nothing short of that. So that’s two years of work down the drain in one miserable 900 word review.” (Via Jesse Sunenblick)