About a year ago, an author friend posted up the potential cover for her upcoming novel and asked for feedback. I said that although I loved the individual graphic elements of the design, they didn’t work together. To me this was a fair comment to the question that had been posed. The same question that had been posed by many authors on social media about their upcoming work for years.
Someone took it the wrong way.
And it wasn’t the author. One of her Facebook friends came to her defence saying that the cover was perfect, and in the same comment, had a go at my response.
Last week, the same thing happened.
This time on Twitter. An author posted two potential covers and one of them was sublime in a 60’s pulp fiction way. The other was hard to decipher, looking like a lion’s head was coming out of a young boy’s neck. I mentioned that the latter was designed badly, while the other was perfect. The author replied saying I was ‘grumpy’ for a Sunday morning.
So when did we stop conversing?
It seems feedback is now seen as harsh criticism, when once upon a time Facebook had some robust debates. We now narrow our field to people (most of whom we’ve never met) to those who will ‘like’ our posts, and comment politely. We can block the nasty ones. It’s a feel good medium. It’s a safe haven.
But many of these people don’t know us like our real life friends do, and we now see our real friends on social media more than we see them in real life.
kevin klehr - author 