On reviews.

[icarus]

These days I'm not very good about reviewing stories I read. I have a tendency to just stick them on a rec-list and make my contribution that way.

Should One Reply To Reviews?
When I reviewed my first story, the author graciously got back to me about a week later. (I think it was keelywolfe but don't quote me on that.)

I was surprised because I hadn't expected a reply. I figured emailing the author was like sending a letter to the editor: into the Abyss, but at least you expressed your feelings. I wrote detailed reviews in the early days, several paragraphs (sometimes pages) of con-crit - and always sent a direct email as I wasn't about to critique a story publicly.

One author updated her abandoned fic with two or three chapters in response. Reviews really do have an impact.

It was so gratifying to hear from the author that I resolved to reply to every review I received, especially when I learned that not everyone did. It seemed... mannerly. I also found that once someone replied to my review I felt warmly about them and their stories.

Yes, I'm definitely in the camp that feels it's best to reply.

Must One Reply To Reviews?
Here's where I grow a little uncomfortable with the "respond to reviews or else" camp, people who feel not replying is the height of rudeness and deserving of punitive action up to ten years suspension of review privileges with internment in little cages where the author is required to produce fic on bread and water.

The division of labor between writer and reviewer is a tad disproportionate.

Writer:

30 minutes-to-an-hour to plot story
3-5 hours writing rough draft
45 minutes begging for betas
2-3 hours of rewrites on drafts
30 minutes of coding for website
Provide story free of charge, with maybe 10% leaving any sort of feedback

Total: 6.5 - 10 hours of writing time.

Reviewer:

30 minutes to read and enjoy story
5 minutes to reply and review
(Bearing in mind I used to spend upwards of an hour on my con-crit reviews)

Being angry that the writer "didn't do enough" by not replying strikes me as unreasonable.

I'm reminded of myself in high school when my parents drove me an hour and a half to a school event after working full 8-hour days -- and I blew my stack because I couldn't go to my friends' party afterward. Pretty darned selfish, but I took my parents for granted and expected to be catered to.

Now most of us are more mature than I was at 15, and can see the inequity.

Strategies To Get Replies To Reviews
If it is important to you to have people reply to your reviews, then I believe in being pro-active. There are strategies to *poke* the author into replying.

Personal emails.
The truth is, especially with Big Important Authors, the personal touch counts. Take the extra few seconds to look up their email instead of simply clicking reply in an archive. That way they're getting the review from you and not fanfiction.net. There's a reason salespeople introduce themselves. People connect with a name.

Shotgun reviews.
Nothing says "I'm a devoted fan" like five reviews from the same person in a single afternoon. Very few people do this, but repetition works. The downside is that the author will often reply to several reviews in one email, but they will remember your name. (Hi Mathilda!) Yes, there's that name thing again.

Size matters.
Authors eagerly open their reviews and while a one-liner is appreciated, there's nothing like a satisfying paragraph or two. The shortest review I ever received was:

:). (I think I replied with: ;))

Interestingly, if your review is very long and loaded with valuable insights you can expect a delayed response as the author thinks about it. Then you're in danger of being consigned to the Drafts Folder -- (Icarus dodges food and things thrown by writers) -- but it's not that I want to discourage Mega-reviews. Hell no! It's just a hazard.

Depth matters.
A layered response comparing the author's story to Dante's Inferno and Ursula K. LeGuin, puzzling about the socio-political structure implied, will make an author think. It leaves an actual opening for conversation. Compare that to the next review that says, "Hee hee! I liked it. You hit all my kinks." That's a conversation killer. Imagine yourself at a party and someone says that. Wh-what can you say? A pat, "Gosh, I'm glad you liked it." Meanwhile, the person who mentioned LeGuin has left a door open. Whose email gets the faster reply?

Pissing the author off.
If you don't care about quality and just want a reaction, a nasty shot of accurate con-crit (emphasis on the crit) seasoned with just enough positive feedback to not be classified a troll will very often provoke a swift reply. Be sure to spell everything accurately, use punctuation that would make your English teacher smile, and ten-dollar words also help. You might get a response so fast scorch-marks are left on your couch. I don't recommend it, I hate negative reviews, but if you don't care about rewarding and encouraging the author and replies are your only goal, this is your best bet.

And that's the real question, isn't it? Why review?

Is the goal to get a reply, or is it to encourage the author? If it's primarily the latter, why be angry and punitive when you don't get that response?

A Final Word Of Caution
If someone doesn't reply to your review, don't assume you know why. There could have been a death in the family. They could have had a computer crash and had Outlook wiped. Your review might've just gotten buried in their in-box. Or a reply is sitting in their drafts folder and the author is feeling a little silly because it's been there for three months.

You can count on the fact that all reviews are read. And they are appreciated. That's a given.

Comments

[srichard.livejournal.com]

I feel sort of the same way. I always want to reply to my reviews. But the truth is, I get anxious. I'm far likelier to reply to three reviews for a story than I am for a story with twenty, even though I know I could do them in little short bursts. I still have comments from four months ago that I want to reply to--but logically, I know that would be ridiculous. Instead, I'm trying to commit to giving myself a fresh start every now and then.

Great summation - thanks for writing this!

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Or a reply is sitting in their drafts folder and the author is feeling a little silly because it's been there for three months.


*eyedart*


guilty of this. a LOT.


I definitely try to reply to everything. I don't get such a vast amount of feedback that this is onerous, and I think it's only polite to thank someone for taking the time to leave any comment at all. But there ya go: it's "only polite." I don't think it's required, no.

[path-draco.livejournal.com]

As a writer, my feeling is that no matter what, you reply. If you think the fb is inaccurate/wrong/, you can still acknowledge that you received it without getting into a discussion. The best answer "Thank you for reading", and move on.

It's sort of like the thank you letters you send to people who give you birthday gifts.

[swtalmnd]

Strictly for livejournal, because of course in email you can't tell one way or the other, if I see an author with tons of comments who hasn't bothered to reply to a single one (assuming it's been at least a day or two since the fic was posted), or one who (with older fics) stopped replying to comments after the first few, or worst of all replies only to those comments they feel are worthy of reply, then 99.9% of the time I won't be bothered to comment.

I know, as a writer, that fic takes a lot of work. I also know that replying to comments takes about 1-2 minutes per comment at the very most, with the exception of thinky comments that can take longer but also deserve the extra time, so unless someone is such a BNF that they get 12 pages of comments in the first hour, I don't really have much sympathy for the time ratio above. Plus, if someone's that much of a BNF, my own comment-laziness comes in -- I rarely reply to any post with more than 2 pages of comments, fic or discussion.

A final note, to put things in perspective, though I reply to 99% of my comments and emailed reviews, I probably comment or review 1% of the fic I read, and get comments from 0.01% or less of the people who visit my website. So, pretty much, I'm lazy and yet, still have no sympathy for laziness in others ;)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

That's how I feel. But I try to give consideration to RL situations or authors who are very popular. It took Cassandra Claire nearly four months to get back to me on some long feedback I sent (via private email, with a discussion on the merits of cliffhangers, and roughly 1,500 words). I have no problem with that.

When I wrote in the Lord of the Rings fandom and received, oh, four reviews over a six-week period, not replying was inconceivable. Your response is also verbatum to what I said then. Since then I've written over a hundred stories, some of which have had hundreds of reviews while reviews from older stories were still pouring in. I have a better sense of why Cassandra Claire took so long to get back to me.

I've an email dedicated to reviews only, which has solved the "buried review" problem for the most part. But when I was going to school full-time and working part-time, I had to choose between email and writing -- and I chose writing.

Icarus

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I don't expect an answer when i post a review. Especially since I don't really write in depth reviews : I don't always have the words to express how a story has touched me or why I liked it.

I do find it very curtuous from writers when they answer one, and I'm always grateful for that (well not to the point of answering the answer to the review ^^)
It's nice, polite, gracious... but an obligation ? No.

[florahart]

Yes, and when there is a whole page of "nice!" and ":)" and "so hot" or whatever, it feels a bit ...I don't know. I'm not terribly fond of replying "Thanks!" eighteen times in a row without having much more to add. It's absolutely not that I don't appreciate those little short comments; I do. I just feel like a flight attendant saying buh-bye to the passengers when I answer them.

Usually, I do it anyway, but on the whole when I have a bunch of those one/two-word replies, I just go through and reply all at once, later on because if I'm going to go Thanks :) 15 times, I just would rather do it all at once. This may be ungracious of me--I sort of feel it is. On the other hand, I don't often leave those one-word reviews myself, and if I did, I wouldn't feel the author was obligated to go thanks thanks thanks thanks thanks... I try to leave at least *something* about what hooked me or what image made me go o.O or whatever for exactly this reason--so if they do want to answer, they have something to say.

And sometimes, I forget to go back and answer, especially when I get a short review to an older story. Since I don't have a website (for fic; and lord knows if I can't be bothered to organize my memories, I'd just suck at a website), when someone posts a :D review to a fic I posted four months ago, it feels like more trouble than it's worth to go find the story to answer ;), you know? And then I wind up with a situation like, okay last night, someone replied (non-shortly) to a fic from several months ago, and when I went to answer the comment, I observed there were other unanswered replies above that one. And then I felt stupid because I know if I got an *answer* to a comment from months ago I'd have a moment of prolonged head-scratching, so I sort of felt like having already been rude-ish by not answering, it was maybe also rude to answer this late. I don't know if other people have this problem. Alas.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I knew this might provoke some irritated responses. *sigh*

The trouble I have here is that there seems to be an assumption as to the person's motives for not replying. No reply = arrogance. Therefore the angry irritated response.

Maybe that's true. But it's not necessarily true. I suspect that RL plays a large role in how people keep up in replying to comments and reviews.

Even if that's true, is the goal to encourage the author? (It sounds like it is, or else why decide that three pages of comments don't need to become four?) If that's the goal, then what does it matter if you get a reply?

Icarus

[swtalmnd]

I'm sorry, it wasn't meant to be irritated, more just honest.

I don't get angry when people don't reply to my comments -- usually I forget about them about 10 seconds after leaving them, unless it's someone I know, in which case I usually know why they haven't replied, be it a real excuse (RL business, etc) or general lameness ;) I just don't bother to comment to people where I can see from their pattern that they can't be bothered to reply to me.

Also, I will freely admit that the "pages of comments" issue is pure fannish jealousy -- I've never once gone over 2 pages of comments on a story, so I feel childish, petty envy for others who do. Ah, the life of a fan, 32 years old and still annoyed that Peggy Sue got more Valentines in her handmade basket than I did ;)

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I do that restart thing all the time. I've also replied to reviews that are *months* old, despite the fact that the reviewer probably doesn't remember the story any more.

I also get different strategies: "Okay... this time I'm just gonna start with the oldest review and work my way up" or "Okaaay... this time I review *right away* when the come in no matter what."

One thing that I used to do that I haven't done in a while is recommend another story. Sometimes I'm stuck as to what to say "Thanks" 500 times doesn't seem to sum up how grateful I am to receive reviews. They make my day. So suggesting another story they might like gives me something to say.

Icarus

Re: Great summation - thanks for writing this!

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Or a reply is sitting in their drafts folder and the author is feeling a little silly because it's been there for three months.

*eyedart*

guilty of this. a LOT.

Me too. *laughs into hands* I try to personalize everything so I'm slow to respond. Though right now I'm in a low-feedback phase so it's easy to keep up.

*eyedart*

Easier.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I'm "fire and forget" when it comes to most feedback, and comments. Sometimes there's an author that I really fangirl, in which case I'm hoping for a response. But that's almost never the case.

Once I had a review that sat in my folder for... oh, I won't admit how long... I lost all moral high ground for demanding people reply immediately to my reviews.

Also, I will freely admit that the "pages of comments" issue is pure fannish jealousy --

I feel so silly that I get that kind of jealousy, too. I start rationalizing it, "well, they've got X number of stories they've posted in X places, and they're rec'd by X, so if I did all of that..."

Voila. I convince myself that pages of comments are within reach and it's just a matter of jumping the through the right hoops and some hard work. *firm nod*

Icarus

[miladyhawke.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree; I don't think it's required, and god knows that I've received replies to my comments from less than half the authors I've feedbacked over the years, maybe less than half.

I also respond to every comment I get (though I can understand not doing so for people for whom it would be impractical, like BNFs). I have many reasons for doing this.

One is that I like and think much better of authors who take the time for even just a simple 'thank you'. It's weird, but common courtesy goes a long way towards cementing my fannish affections for an author & their work (as you said it does with you). It's good PR to reply graciously, and bad PR not to.

I don't expect a response or feel entitled to one, but I have to admit to feeling the same as the person commenting here who said that they won't review if they see an author has a bunch of comments but doesn't respond to any. It just leaves a very negative impression of that person.

So I don't expect it, but I think highly of an author who does respond, not so highly if they don't respond, and very little if they respond to no one.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Yes.

You know, I didn't put this in the above meta, but if people need a response, I recommend that they ask a question about the story. In most cases that'll guarantee a response.

Icarus

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

My website has a really sucky review function. When I hit reply it goes to the main website instead of the person who wrote to me, and half the time people don't put in their email address. Plus, it forces people to go through this whole process, tries to get them to sign up for spam and...

... actually, it's amazing I'm ever reviewed at all.

Icarus

[millefiori.livejournal.com]

is the goal to encourage the author? .... If that's the goal, then what does it matter if you get a reply?

I know you didn't ask me this, but I want to answer -- for me part of the goal is to encourage the author, but another part is to make a connection with the author, to start a discussion about the story. For me that's what sharing fanfic is all about. Because of this, I tend to feel rebuffed/rejected if an overture is met with silence. I try not to get irritated or angry (because I don't know why they didn't reply), but I can't help feeling that future attempts to connect with that particular writer would be a waste of my time.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

for me part of the goal is to encourage the author, but another part is to make a connection with the author, to start a discussion about the story. For me that's what sharing fanfic is all about. Because of this, I tend to feel rebuffed/rejected if an overture is met with silence.

Ah, in that case a completely reasonable response. And no doubt your review reflects that, opens at least one topic for discussion.

One time someone was replying to comments in their LJ in a way that skipped over the people she didn't know and only answered her friends. That irritated me because it in effect shut people out. I felt quite ignored in that instance.

Icarus

[mad-martha.livejournal.com]

Well, I try to reply to every review because it seems courteous to me. Especially as I too am terrible at reviewing. If someone else can be bothered to hit the reply link, then it shouldn't be too hard for me to drum up at least a line or two in response. Besides, I've found with a couple of my longer fics recently that the reviewers often have something to say which leads me to more insights into a particular story scenario. That makes it a very rewarding process.

That said ... sometimes reviews border on embarrassing and I sit there thinking "how the hell do I reply to this?" You know the ones I mean, I'm sure - "OMG, your fic is so wonderful, please marry me and I'll have your babies!" Really my gut instinct is to ignore these, but I just can't be rude and probably hurtful like that so I end up trying to be friendly, humorous and keep them at arms length all at once, while my brain seems to be stuck on "????!!!!"

[bethbethbeth.livejournal.com]

Personally, I always respond to reviews, but I've pretty much resigned myself to accepting that everybody isn't me. *g*

Do you know what I've discovered almost always guarantees a response? Telling somebody you liked their story so much you're going to include it in your next recs update. Seriously...I don't always mention that, but I've noticed that when I do, I *always* get a reply from the author, even if s/he isn't replying to everybody.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

My feeling is that replying to personal email is a general courtesy, no matter what the content of that email. This is why I feel that failure to reply to email feedback is rude; it's not a fannish obligation, but an ordinary social one.

Replying to lj-comments and reviews on websites is nice, but not required.

[furiosity.livejournal.com]

Here via H_T.

You can count on the fact that all reviews are read. And they are appreciated. That's a given.
Pretty much. Which is why I don't consider it a waste of my time or a difficulty to at least say "thank you" to every reviewer, whether they say ":)" or leave me five paragraphs of concrit. Obviously, the concrit will get more than a mere "thank you" and take longer.

The thing is, fanfic as a two-way street. Despite the fact that the writers provide the fic "free of charge" and spend so much time on it -- well, we do it for fun, right? It's enjoyable time spent, not a chore or a bother, so why should the time spent on a fic be somehow more valuable than time spent on reading it? Sure, I've received one-word reviews to novel-length fics, and it's a little off-putting but at the end of the day, even a "YAY" (from someone who's just spent a lot longer than 30 minutes reading, if we're talking upwards of 50K words of prose) is better than nothing at all.

I don't write for reviews, and I rarely expect people to actually be interested in reading (unless it's labelled PWP and/or NC-17 >.>) so whenever someone responds to a story I wrote, it's pleasant, and nice, and I want to let the reviewer know *personally* that I appreciate that they even took the time to type up some kind of response and let me know what they thought. Then again, I generally dislike the stance that seems to exist in fandom wherein the writer is a Writer and somehow Special because they Create shiny things for the fandom. If it weren't for the people who want to read such shiny things, we'd all be writing in a vacuum, yo.

I don't think being angry and punitive with authors who don't respond to reviews is a good thing, but I also don't think it's difficult to say "thank you", ever. I don't think authors should be expected to respond to every review immediately and without fail -- we're all human, after all, but it is a two-way street. If you (general you, not you personally) ignore your readers, why should they bother with you in turn?

[quasi-hayley.livejournal.com]

It never occurred to me to *expect* a reply to a review but you've certainly made me think. With LJ I think replies are more and more common because, lets face it, its easy. In the Good Old Days (TM) when I emailed reviews I rarely got a reply. Occssionally there was a brief thank you and that was generally only if I raved about the fic. If I gave con-crit I got nothing. Nada.

At the time I put it down to pissing the author off but that would be completely contrary to what you've written above and I suspect that you're the one who's right. Perhaps I gave them too much to think about and so did indeed get consigned to the drafts folder.

As for my own feedback, I always reply now even if it's only to say thank you. I don't get that much so it's hardly a mammoth task but for those who get hundreds of comments about their fic, I can understand why it'd be hard to reply to all of them. I have more respect for those who manage it however, how can you not?

Sometimes, people post notes in their journal that they do not reply or are no longer replying to feedback and that makes me sad. I suppose there's a school of thought that it's better people should know they're not going to get a reply but that the author has made a decision not to reply seems rather...I don't know...blase (which needs an accent but I can't remember how to do them). I wonder if that author would ever make a post saying they do not want feedback? Would that author turn off comments on their fic?

I doubt it. They expect people to read and review anyway because they've made the effort to write but then who wants (and perhaps even needs) reviews more, the author or the reader?

The author, of course. So perhaps it's them who should be striving to reply, thereby encouraging further feedback, and not the reviewer trying to make them reply.

[quasi-hayley.livejournal.com]

Here, here.

[quivo.livejournal.com]

At least you've never recieved something like this:

"Dududududu...who is this (insert main character of your fic here)?"

Seriously. I couldn't stop myself from asking if the person had read the story at all, honestly - and it was in the seventh chapter, well after I'd established who the darn character WAS.

Well, at least I laughed at that one :)

[silverwings458.livejournal.com]

Personally, I try to reply to every review, even if it's just something silly and insignificant like, "Thanks! :D" but I understand why every author might not necessarily respond to every comment, too.