Memo to self: 

Dear future me,

For a while, I imagined book-blogs as being something like pubs, with the host being something across between the landlady and the barman. Some blogs are more like clubs, with membership requirements where you have to pay your dues or establish your credentials in some way and not anyone can come in and have a voice. Yes, it's a little frustrating sometimes to find myself being talked about in a place like that. I can't think of an occasion when I've wanted to do anything more than correct a release date or say a simple thank-you but still, it's oddly unsettling to be discussed and yet excluded. Still, it's the prerogative of any web-master to run their site as they choose and few of us would let any old stranger walk into our private homes; although I suppose not many of us then post our conversations up on the public noticeboard beside the village green. Fortunately, many review sites have the courage to be entirely free and open, letting anyone wander in and say what they like all over the comments section. Unfortunately, sometimes authors do exactly that.

Steve, when will you learn? Would you walk into a strange pub in an unfamiliar town, listen to the landlady express her opinions to a crowd of local regulars and then tell her how wrong she was? And if you did, would you reasonably expect anything short of a verbal lynching? It's not your community. Be thankful you didn't get beaten up. You shouldn't have gone into the pub in the first place. Didn't you see the sign? You didn't? Why not? Because it wasn't there? Oh, come on! It's always there and you're supposed to know that! What sort of author are you? Your publisher's PR people may have told you in no uncertain terms that you need to get out there, that you need to to have a blog and a Facebook page and a Twitter feed and a social media presence and be active on community forums and, while you're at it, go visit every pub in the country, please, unless you're prepared to do what we really want and go door to door selling yourself; but they didn't mean this pub. You should know that.

(Perhaps Not As It Seems)

What do you mean, you weren't disagreeing with the landlady? You wrote the book and now you're done. It's not yours any more. Every reading of your words by every reader is unique and precious and not to be questioned, and expressing your own view undermines the validity of every other. Go away. No one wants to hear it. Your opinion isn't welcome here. Not expressing an opinion? Just asking for a clarification or a little exposition on some particular criticism? Just correcting an error? A typo? Just saying thanks? Just saying hello? No no no no NO! You simply don't get it. IT'S NOT YOUR PUB!!!

Your mere presence, in any shape or form, might unsettle people. It might frighten them. It might intimidate them into silence, into holding back from giving voice to their opinions; and that's not their problem, it's yours, do you get that? Yours because of whatever modicum of success you've achieved. So shut up, Steve, and stay away, because it's not your place. You don't belong. And if you're that darn ignorant or misinformed or foolish – or perhaps foolhardy – enough to turn up anyway and say something, don't you dare complain about how you get treated. It wasn't your lawn. Who do you think you are, some oppressed minority? You can't be bullied. Quite the opposite; in fact some people are afraid of you and the terrible power they imagine you wield.

Yes, yes, I laugh about that now but, future me, who knows? And if the hostility at your mere existence in a space that's not yours conjures uneasy echoes of the litany of apartness, of us-and-them, of get-off-my-lawn, of oppression and silencing that scars human history, you just need to choke on that because it's Not The Same. Oh, the mob hostility might look like it, might even be uncomfortably familiar, but when you walk into that pub, you do so as one of the elite. No matter who you are or where you come from, old or young, woman or man, black or brown or white or sky-blue pink with yellow spots, no matter whether your fans are legion or whether it's just your nan, you don't enter that space as an ordinary human being, you enter as one of the privileged ones. So shut. the fuck. up!

To hell with pubs, Steve. Authors just shouldn't go into them.

Fortunately, internet sites aren't like that. With an internet site, you don't walk in and have everyone turn and stare at you as soon as you're through the door. Author, reader, whoever you are, you have the luxury of standing invisible at the bar, soaking up the ambience, hearing what everyone has to say before you open your mouth; and until you do, no one even knows you're there. You have time to think and reflect, to consider that you're entering someone else's space with its own invisible rules and to choose your words appropriately, with polite caution and respect, and to remember that you're really no more special than anyone else. So, er, do that, Steve. Please, for the love of everything you hold dear, actually do that. And if you're lucky enough to have a vocal base of fans at some point, bear in mind that you'll be held responsible for what they say. And bear in mind that it's possible that your presence will be resented, no matter what you do. It's possible that no one will tell you that. If it happens, you have to live with it. Just try to remember the basic rule.