With book clubs being touted as part of the future of book marketing, the idea of author visits to book club meetings is getting more and more popular with publishers and writers. Meetings are seen as a win-win situation: books get sold and writers get their egos stroked. But what happens when a book club hates your book? In a recent edition of The New York Times, novelist Curtis Sittenfield explores just that.

“It’s pretty obvious that some readers say they hate your protagonist as a more polite way of saying they hate your entire book,” writes Sittenfield, “but when I want to hear from people who hate my book, I prefer doing it in the comfort of my own home by looking at customer reviews on Amazon. I also think some readers say they hate your protagonist as a polite way of saying they hate you. This might sound paranoid, but what else am I to assume when somebody says in one breath, ‘Lee is insufferable!’ and in the next asks, ‘The book’s completely autobiographical, isn’t it?'”

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Click here for Sittenfield’s piece on the NYT website