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Why do some authors get so worked up at their critics that they feel compelled to rebut them in print?

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Bibliofile
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Tough Bird

In publishing as in everything else, your enemy’s enemy can only be your friend. Faced with callous distributors (the guys who reach a book from a publisher to the bookstore) who refuse to pay dues for months, if ever, smaller publishers are seeking asylum with Penguin. Because only Penguin, with its power list of titles, can arm-twist a distributor into paying on time. Feminist publisher Zubaan tied up with Penguin for marketing and sales; now Hay House is relying on Penguin’s marketing and sales to promote their forthcoming Matters of Discretion, former PM I.K. Gujral’s autobiography. So it’s win-win for all: Penguin, which gets a cut on the sales, the small publisher, who can lean on Penguin to make a distributor pay up, and authors who want Penguin’s awesome marketing network without having to feel they are merely a part of an assembly line of writers that the publisher couldn’t be bothered to promote individually.

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Innocent Rages

Why do some authors get so worked up at their critics that they feel compelled to rebut them in print? A fellow Brit had this explanation for William Dalrymple’s and Patrick French’s recent rebuttals: “Neither of them has ever worked in an office, so they don’t know how to deal with politics at work. They take everything personally.”

A Master’s Wrath

Even Rabindranath Tagore didn’t take kindly to criticism. Word would soon reach the culprit through common friends that the Poet was displeased with his review. Many felt intimidated enough to recant: “Does the Poet not know I can’t live a single day without (reading) him?” pleaded one critic in print.

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