Why I Love Nathan Bransford (platonic-ally)

I have no reason to suck up because Nathan doesn't pick up what I'm putting down--I mean, he doesn't dig my middle grade goodness. Thus, there's no conniving reason for me to sing his praises.

I just like him. And this is one big reason why: (re: people trash-talking bestsellers)

Nathan Bransford has left a new comment on the post "You Tell Me: Why is it So Hard to Tell if Our Writ...": 

anon-

Yeah, this is definitely a topic on which I get snappish. 

In response, I'd point again to this post, which explains in detail why I bristle. 

But really, I think there are a couple of factors at work:

1) People compare apples to oranges when it comes to books. If you're reading THE DA VINCI CODE and hoping for DUBLINERS that's your fault, not Dan Brown's. Dan Brown did what he set out to do really, really well.

2) Saying a bestseller is trash is kind of like saying a bench warmer on an NBA team is a terrible basketball player. Um. Yeah. He's no LeBron, but he's in the top 0.000000005% percentile of basketball players in the entire world.

3) A book has to do something really, really well to make it through the publishing process and to attract readers in huge numbers and prompt people to wait in line for the next one. 

4) We're smarter and better than that. We're writers, right? Use your words, say something a little more nuanced than "That book sucked." 

THANK YOU, Nathan!

I appreciate people like you.