Author’s Dilemma

In the romance world, there’s many an unspoken rule as pertains to authors and reviewers and whatall. Used to be you weren’t supposed to give incisive reviews of romance novels that said (*gasp*) critical or even mean things about a book.

Yeah, oops, we blew right by that rule, didn’t we?

Another unspoken rule: if thou art an author, thou shalt not speak unkindly to or about a review thou hast received.

So what happens when the reviewer, a reviewer in a Hugely Powerful Publication Of Much Circulation (HPPOMC), gives a review that is totally, completely, utterly, asshattedly wrong?

Note: Details obliquely masked for fun guess-who-ing.

A rather fruitful author has co-written a novel with a few other fruitful and popular authors. It’s not an anthology (a word that would strike fear in the hearts of those who order books, since anthologies do not sell well of late) or a series of interconnected novellas in one cover. It’s a novel with more than one protagonist pair.

Seems the HPPOMC reviewer labels it in the review as three novellas AND as a novel, then recommends the collaborating group write a novel next time.

“Huh?” says SB Sarah.

“Gross mislabeling and the kiss of death,” says the fruitful author. Said author questions with ire whether the HPPOMC reviewer read the book in the first place.

Now, we’ve talked about reviewers who give away the ending a la Harriet Klausner, and the negative backlash against those authors who snark back at reviews they don’t like. But what do you do when a reviewer in a Hugely Powerful Publication Of Much Circulation gets the type of book and details wrong, so wrong that you, the author, question whether the reviewer read it in the first place?

The authors are tempted to take pen to paper and dish out a helping of cannon fire at the HPPOMC, stating that the review as written makes it clear that the reviewer was phoning it in, never read the book, and needs a right smackdown. But of course, they don’t wish to look like whiny dweebs who grouse at the sign of a negative review, even though it’s not the negative review they’d be focusing on, but the part where the reviewer got it so wrong it’s questionable as to whether said reviewer ever cracked the spine.

What would you do?

Do you speak up? Do you write the publication and say, “WTFBBQ?” Do you let it be? Do you take to the internet? How far can an author push against the “Act like you don’t care and say nothing unkind about reviews” rule when that review gets the subgenre and format of the book itself oh, so very very wrong?