As a followup to yesterday’s call for public shaming, I want to make a point that I’ve made on Twitter, G+, and of course in the comments on LiveJournal: When bloggers or Goodreads reviewers receive crazy hate mail from authors unhappy with their unhappy writeups, there’s a huge groundswell of support. Comment sections fill up with commiserations and well-wishers, and folks turn to their own blogs and Twitter accounts to talk about how awful it is.

That’s how it should be.

But when agents receive hate mail for a form rejection, they get crickets. As I mentioned yesterday, the flow of vicious emails agents get camouflages the threats from truly dangerous people, and it should not be accepted with a sigh and a what are you going to do?. There’s no reason to accept it; those writers should be exposed and shamed just like the self-publishers who get nasty with reviewers.