Joanne Trollope's attack on JK Rowling. Does she have a point?

Not really fair. Kim Kardashian is like some...if there was such a thing as a 'blow-up golem' that moves and has opinions, then that's KimmyK.

This strikes me more as two populist authors who treat their fame differently because they are of difference generations.
JK has embraced a part of the modern media to touch base with her fans and share her thoughts with them. In a way its no different from past authors who maintain correspondence with avid/friendly fans by letter, just a lot faster (and shallower obviously).

And JK sharing her political views on everything- well I guess that's more a matter of taste but she's hardly the only liberal celebrity that does it.
 
She went on to claim that the growing trend of interacting with fans over social media posed a threat to the literary industry. “It’s so depressing to think that aspiring authors will look at famous writers with millions of followers, and think that that is how you have to operate,” she said. “It’s not, and actually, it’s the opposite.”

Some aspiring authors will, some aspiring authors won't. Do all authors have to be and act the same? What a dull profession it'd be then!
Get over yourself Trollope, if you don't like Rowling that's fine, but expecting her to behave according to some standards of your own or traditional making is ridiculous.

Trollope said she deliberately chose to stay away from social media because she expressed everything she wanted to in her books.

And that's fine for her. But again, why expect others to feel and act similarly? Maybe they have more to express, or things beyond their books to express.
Social media is here to stay, if you don't like it, don't follow.
This just makes her sound like a fossil who thinks everything was better 20 years ago, maybe they were, but it's a bit late to change that now.
 
Taake said:
She went on to claim that the growing trend of interacting with fans over social media posed a threat to the literary industry. “It’s so depressing to think that aspiring authors will look at famous writers with millions of followers, and think that that is how you have to operate,” she said. “It’s not, and actually, it’s the opposite.”

Some aspiring authors will, some aspiring authors won't. Do all authors have to be and act the same? What a dull profession it'd be then!
Get over yourself Trollope, if you don't like Rowling that's fine, but expecting her to behave according to some standards of your own or traditional making is ridiculous.

Trollope said she deliberately chose to stay away from social media because she expressed everything she wanted to in her books.

And that's fine for her. But again, why expect others to feel and act similarly? Maybe they have more to express, or things beyond their books to express.
Social media is here to stay, if you don't like it, don't follow.
This just makes her sound like a fossil who thinks everything was better 20 years ago, maybe they were, but it's a bit late to change that now.
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That's fair and I agree with you. I don't buy that this going to have the negative effect on literacy that Trollope does. The only thing is that is how she is framing it that it will have a negative effect on the industry as a whole. Its not just her being anti-social media.
 
Mr Trick said:
That's fair and I agree with you. I don't buy that this going to have the negative effect on literacy that Trollope does. The only thing is that is how she is framing it that it will have a negative effect on the industry as a whole. Its not just her being anti-social media.
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Yeah, I can see about the industry as a whole. The authors who don't want to do the social media thing might have a more difficult time and maybe be expected by agents to be very social media active, I still think she's a bit ridiculous and to me the way she frames it seems more like a personal thing than a critique in general. Personally I think that authors being active on social media can be a good thing in the sense that it gives them some control over marketing in the sense that they can choose how to present themselves and interact with the fans. But sure, it's certainly not all positive, and a direct contact with the fans is probably gruelling to many authors and maybe not in their interest at all... but the industry is changing, that's just the nature of the world.
 
Wow. How dare Rowling fight for human rights on social media. Or encourages her fan to pursue writing. She must be such an awful human being 🙄

Get your head out of you ass Trollope. There's lots to criticize Rowling on, if you wanna criticize her as an author how about you criticize her writing for starters.
 
Sorry Ms. Trollope, the world has passed you by.

There are a number of publishers now who insist that their writers maintain an active presence on social media. This is known in the business as part of their "platform", the total of the means by which prospective readers can find out about them and their books. No publisher wants to be saddled with an author who will not actively promote his book, whether by public appearances, teaching courses, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and any other media site where they can obtain a following because a more active author means more sales for them. It is even more important for writers who choose to bypass traditional publishers and go to Amazon/Kindle or Book Baby or any of the other sites where you can upload your novel and sell it directly over the internet for electronic readers or the PoD (Print on Demand) services that will print a book according to a schedule set by the author and bookstores. In direct opposition to what Ms. Trollope has said, social media is not ruining or even acting against publishing because the publishing industry itself demands it.

The trick for maintaining a platform with a large following that converts to book sales is to not harangue your followers to buy your book. You have to expose your thoughts in such a way that prospective readers will want to read your book just to see what a story written by a person with the thought processes they have seen presented on social media would be like. The author does this by presenting views on various subjects that would be of interest to prospective readers. The old business model (where the writer had an agent who took care of all the commercial and legal issues and shopping the book around to various publishers and the author spent his or her time in an ivory tower as disconnected as possible from reality in general and readers in particular) has gone away. This means the author actually has to take part in the marketing effort, so there are additional expectations on an author now. The old coddled world of the author as infant who only took care of one thing, his writing, has gone away.
 
As far as the idea goes of writers taking to social media being driven by ego, ALL writers are driven by ego, especially Ms. Trollope. Her colossal ego seems to allow her to judge other people for offering opinions. If you are a writer, that is the job description - you offer opinions, either explicitly or by way of a story.

There were people who objected when publishers insisted on typewritten text rather than handwritten notes. Then they objected when they started insisting on WordPerfect or Word documents instead of typewritten documents. They objected again when publishers took a look at the business and decided that printing up 50 titles to get one best-seller was just nuts and they wanted to see whether the author could be of any help in marketing so maybe they got a best seller for every 40 titles. Ms. Trollope seems to be destined to dragged kicking and screaming into a future that has been accepted and even welcomed by most authors.
 
Urgh, I can't bare people like this. "People regularly sharing strong opinions irritate me, so I'm going to take them down a peg by broadcasting my opinion of them!" Yeah great, that'll show 'em. 🙄

"Trollope said she deliberately chose to stay away from social media because she expressed everything she wanted to in her books."
Well of course that's her prerogative, but is she seriously implying that authors shouldn't share opinions beyond what they publish in works of fiction? If so, that seems pretty ridiculous.

At the end of the day, nobody is forced to follow Rowling on Twitter. I don't... nothing against her, I just don't. If you want to tune her out it's really not that difficult.
 
Trollope seems to have an issue with social media in general, so I'm not really sure what made her single out Rowling and Kardashian. Probably to insure attention and that people would read her opinions...which is funny because she's totally playing the social media game a la Kimmy K with that tactic.
 
Sorry, but

Trollope told the Daily Mail
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tells me everything I need to know about this. 🙄

Criticize her work by all means, but not her social media standpoint. I spy the green-eyed monster. I doubt Ms Trollope has sold half as many books as Ms Rowling has....
 
Athena said:
Sorry, but



tells me everything I need to know about this. 🙄

Criticize her work by all means, but not her social media standpoint. I spy the green-eyed monster. I doubt Ms Trollope has sold half as many books as Ms Rowling has....
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Yes, but the Fast and Furious box office wise is the most successful film series in history, so I don't know if you can put much stock into what sells nowadays😉

Besides that your post is fair comment🙂
 
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