Today's Rant is Brought to You by the Letters WTF

It's Thursday, which means it's Confessions day on IABB. And that means I've got stuff to rant about! Yay! For those of you not in the know, confessions are submitted anonymously and they do not necessarily reflect the thoughts and feelings of the lovely folks at IABB or the graphics artists that create the images for us. IABB just provides the platform for the airing of the grievances that people don't want to own up to themselves for whatever reason (and I've submitted some confessions I don't want to put my name on either, so I'm not judging, much).

Alright, so first of all, I'm kind of confused by this confession, so if my post seems like it's all over the place, it's because I'm trying to cover all the bases that I think this confession touches (and we're playing some weird baseball/golf hybrid game with a billion bases). So let's just begin at the beginning and discuss this line by line, shall we?

So authors who are worth a damn edit and blah, blah, blah. Now, I've ranted before about the importance of editing in books. So I'm not going to do that again. I can agree with this confessor that most authors who care, take the time to make sure their books are as perfect as they can be before they hit publish. And then there are some who don't. But it's important to at least try to put out the best product you can when you expect people to pay money for it. But so far, I get what this confessor is laying down and damn am I in agreement. 

But then we get to "So I laugh when bloggers blah, blah authors don't answer their emails (blah) or hit them up for reviews." Wait, what? First of all, I honestly don't recall any confessions from bloggers about authors not answering their emails, providing interviews or seeking out our services for reviews (and I have a pretty good memory where the written word is concerned. You could ask me about any of the 29 books on my currently reading shelf, and I could tell you about what's going on in the story at the point that I'm up to, and I haven't even touched some of them in two years. I can even tell you what device I'm reading it on, and I have like ten different devices that I can read on now). We bloggers get TONS of review requests, so the thought that there is a blogger who isn't brand new on the scene complaining about not getting review requests is a bit ludicrous. Beyond that, I don't understand what that has to do with authors editing their books before hitting publish. I'm pretty sure these two things are about as unrelated as two things could possibly be. 

That brings us to "9 out of 10 of you don't even proofread or put forth any effort to perfect your work--but *we're* the jerks, right?" So I guess this is how the first two points are connected, maybe. I mean, the confessor is right, I do not hire an editor to go over my blog posts that make me NO money (my blog is not monetized, and y'all rarely click my Amazon links and buy things, so I don't really make money there either). But I'm not selling you anything. I'm offering you my thoughts and opinions free of charge (and even if you do click my Amazon links and buy stuff, you pay for a separate product and I just get a small kickback for sending you Amazon's way.) But what does my lack of post editing have to do with author's not responding to emails and granting interviews? Is this confessor trying to say that they don't answer emails because bloggers don't proofread their freely published posts? Is this confessor not going to grant me an interview because I don't hire and editor to clean up my thoughts that I make no money from expressing? If that's the case, this is like petty level a billion. 

Then the confessor drops the "Bloggers and authors grow on trees" bomb, which I took particular offense to because I am a root vegetable of the couch variety thank you very much. Yeah, there are a lot of bloggers and a lot of authors out there, and apparently none of us are unique in any way, shape, or form. Honestly, in general, bloggers are a dime a dozen, until you find a few that you really click with. If you really pay attention, you'll find some bloggers that consistently have recommendations that you want to see. And I'm probably not one of them, because I have such eclectic tastes in books that there's no way you're going to think "You know, I want to read almost every book she's reviewed positively." I'm okay with that. I understand I'm weird. The same is true of authors though (particularly in romance it seems, and I'm not knocking romance authors but there are a lot of you guys). You're not going to like all of them. But if you give some of them a shot, you're going to find a few that you want to completely fangirl over. So sure, there are a lot of bloggers out there, and there are a lot of authors out there, and there's not a whole lot that really sets any of them drastically apart (except for Joood - Hooligan and her taste in horribly disgusting "cookies"). But how is this relevant to anything else in the confession? 

Oh, I get it, we bring it all together with the last line: "If you want to stand out, a smattering of professionalism is a good place to start." Okay? True, I guess. But what does that mean? I guess for bloggers that means that I'm supposed to start paying someone to edit/proofread my posts for me, maybe. If that's the case, I guess I'm straight up going to continue being fucking unprofessional because while my family is not hurting for money right now, that is not an expense I can justify. You're not paying me for these words, so you're going to get them however I choose to give them to you. If that means that I've got a couple typos that are definitely going to make me cringe when I re-read my post in a week, so be it. Then what does "a smattering of professionalism" mean for authors? Based on the wording of this confession, it seems to just be putting in the time to make sure their books are edited and the best possible product they can be. Unfortunately, like I've mentioned in a past rant, authors need to go at least a step or two further than that, because y'all are actually trying to sell us shit for money. Yeah, I expect your books to be well-edited, but if you want me to actually want to pay for it and read it, you're going to have to give me a reason to want to do so. And some of that means granting author interviews to blogs, and responding to the emails that bloggers send you, and yes, asking bloggers to review your books (maybe, I've seen mixed reviews on the effectiveness of that lately). I don't think I know any authors that are opposed to doing these things though, so I'm still confused as to why they are part of this confession in the first place. 

So ultimately, I'm still confused about what the real point of this confession is, and why such different topics were included. But maybe you guys can help me make more sense of it. In the meantime, I need a bottle of wine. - Katie