Or maybe it is. I don't know! But we've got some negative reviews to help us out.

Far more self-interestedly, I hate that book reviewers are made to feel any pressure not to leave a negative review when that negative review could be precisely the thing to convince someone else to buy the book—and probably just as accurately as a positive review could, if not more!

I don’t know if it’s always been easy for some authors to forget that readers are real people. But I do know that now, it is a built-in feature: things are designed in a way that discourages authors from seeing readers as real people. In our world of algorithm-ordained website placement and A.I.-policed reviews, authors aren’t presented with readers—real, key-losing people—so much as clicks.

The perils of distinguishing between science and fantasy in the speculative.