Ignoring The Haters

Be out in public long enough, and you’ll attract haters.  It doesn’t matter who you are – they’ll find you.  The only way to not attract haters is to be so milquetoast that you stand for nothing.

My most recent hater is someone I sparred with online who then took the time and trouble to find my author’s page and books.  They then proceeded to hate on my work without even reading it.  How do I know this?  Because it took them 15 minutes from the time of our interaction to their engagement with my stuff(ie, not enough time to read anything).

I take the same approach to haters I do to bad reviews – mostly ignore them.  I only bring up this one, which I’m not identifying by name or any recognizable characteristics, to talk about how authors should deal with them(notice I didn’t say famous people, because not everyone who puts their stuff out in public is “famous”).  Oxygen is what your haters want, and if you deprive them of that, then they can’t spread their hate.

Maybe these are folks who enjoy chaos.  Maybe they’re upset that some hold views not in line with their own(ie, insecurity).  Whatever the reason, they’re looking for validation, and they feel that any interaction from a pseudo-public figure gives them that validation.

You cannot win in such a situation by engaging.  Unless their behavior is so egregious that backlash to them would be swift and near-universal, there is no benefit to engaging because you usually come across as thin-skinned.  Some folks can use engagement as a marketing ploy to attract readers because they know their readers will back them, but that usually only works for an established author; the rest of us are rolling the dice, and you have to ask if the temporary satisfaction of engaging is worth the potential for further chaos.