I won't lie, this is a concept I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around. I'm also not a reviewer so I admit that I'm not coming from the same place as many who are.
So, I get why it's bad form for an author to respond to a review, good or bad. What I'm having trouble is separating the, what appear to me as, varying degrees of 'bad form'.
Reviewers get wiggy when the author responds to a review about their book. They feel they're being spied on and that their shoulder is being looked over. I get that part. What I don't get is if the author doesn't respond, that doesn't mean the author is not still reading it. If the reviewer is weirded out by the author's presence, just because the author didn't respond doesn't mean their presence isn't still there. Only now, they're a spectre hanging on the fringes watching the conversation take place but not responding at all.
If I don't know about it, it doesn't matter. Even if I do know about it, it doesn't matter if I am not forced into dealing with it (by an author making a comment).
The author may even take to their blog and discuss why they think the review is wrong or in error, which I also understand is bad form but more acceptable of bad form than actually responding in the comments of the review. But if the author responds on their own blog about a good review, is that now suddenly less bad form?
I think it's only bad form if I can go from the blog and find out what's being talked about. So, write it but post it a month or so later. Fudge details. Keep it general. (See previous comment: if I don't know about it, it doesn't matter.)
I'm also still stuck on this only the author of the work in question not being able to respond. So, if I'm an author and you've reviewed my book, then I shouldn't respond to it in any form. Check.
"Shouldn't"? No. You can do what you like. If you do it to me appropos of nothing, I will feel unnerved. If you are okay with that, then obviously, go ahead.
But I'm allowed to participate in your blog on other reviews? That's now not crossing this line of 'wiggy, uncomfortable' behavior? The author of A review you did is still there and they are even interacting with you and other commenters. So, the difference now is only that I'm interacting in a thread not about my book?
I think it depends, which really is true of the whole thing. If the reviewer has a big review blog, they get ARCs from publishers etc etc then it's not the "OMG! THEY'RE WATCHING!" moment it would be of a blog with 4 readers which posts reviews of what the blogger got from the library that week.
I do keep saying I don't want authors to comment on my reviews but this is as an abstract concept. If it happened, I would probably just ignore it. Or, yannow, procrastinate and then realise it was three months ago and no longer mattered.
The only "Do not comment, just don't do it, ever, pretend you don't exist" rule I *think* I'd apply is if you're a middle-aged man who writes YA for girls. And that's because the line between everything-normal and woah-creepy can be a fine one. If you want to talk to the fans, do it in a generalised blog post or something like that.
I'm not sure I really understand why it's different. If it's the presence of an author on their review is problematic, it seems to me that it would the presence of any author would also be problematic. They have written a book, they are no longer not an author. They will always be an author, even if they're also a reader. And according to this philosophy of 'no author in discussion please' seems to shake a bit.
I can make the distinction between me, the person, and me, the OfficialJobTitle.
Like, Janet Reid posts in Ask the Agent as Janet Reid, and she represents herself and her interests. Torgo posts here as Torgo, not WhoeverTorgoIs from ThePublisherTorgoWorksFor.
I'm really just trying to understand for when that one day I'm an author and get reviewed. There seems to be so many fine lines and wiggling 'guidelines' that at the moment I'm getting the impression that authors just need to stay away from social media at all in the event they inadvertently violate another 'sacred space'. Which then hampers their ability to interact in social media and to help promote their own book.