Boors have emerged whenever I’ve blogged something remotely critical about a book, movie, or TV show, targeting me because I’m an author.<\/p>\n I recently blogged that I thought Jon Snow’s resurrection on Game of Thrones<\/em> was dull compared to other more dramatic moments in the first two episodes this season.\u00a0 The inevitable response showed up from one reader: I’m jealous of George R.R. Martin and that person’s never heard of me.<\/p>\n That was truly devastating.<\/p>\n Why’s that?\u00a0 Because the average reader in America reads or listens to only one<\/strong> book a month and there are 80,000<\/strong> published every year.\u00a0 Saying that you’ve never heard of an author is like a little kid whining “Nanny-nanny-poo-poo!”<\/p>\n We all know how the Internet is a breeding ground for incivility and blatant hatred because you don’t have to face the person you’re insulting. But there’s a lesser level of contempt that bloggers deal with when they cross an invisible line that brings out boors. These folks aren’t hateful, just sublimely convinced of their … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[189],"tags":[442,714,723,497,725,184,182,292,721,720,193,724,722],"class_list":["post-2147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging","tag-advice-for-bloggers","tag-advice-for-blogging","tag-audio-books","tag-authors","tag-beyonce","tag-bloggers","tag-blogs","tag-book-tours","tag-criticism","tag-internet","tag-internet-trolls","tag-lemonade","tag-the-game-of-thrones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2147"}],"version-history":[{"count":53,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2198,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2147\/revisions\/2198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"alx_beyonce-lemonade_original\"](\"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/alx_beyonce-lemonade_original.jpeg\")
<\/a>Now, unless you’re a singer, a charge like that really makes no sense whatsoever.\u00a0 But even if you were<\/em> a singer, why would a critique necessarily mean that you’re jealous?\u00a0 Can’t you have valid reasons for disliking one of her albums?\u00a0 Or even her music in general?\u00a0 Does that automatically make you a hater?<\/p>\n<\/a>Here’s the thing.\u00a0 Most authors aren’t on best seller lists and aren’t widely known.\u00a0 Even writers like me who make a good living from their royalties, get sent on book tours at home and abroad, are paid well for speaking engagements, win awards, and have successful careers.<\/p>\n<\/a>So if you’re a blogger worrying that your blogs don’t generate enough comments, there’s a major upside to that.\u00a0 You’re not getting hateful remarks or mockery from people who think they’re smarter than you are–and feel the need to prove it with the weakest weapons they have.<\/p>\n<\/a>Lev Raphael is the author of the novel The German Money<\/a>–which a Washington Post<\/em> rave review compared to Kafka, John le Carr\u00e9 and Philip Roth–as well as 24 other books in many genres.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"