Bad Drunk Joke Junk
Joelle said in the early morning on November 23, 2007
It was bound to happen sooner or later — we received our first poor review of our book. I’m totally fine with it. Relieved, in fact. We can’t please everyone all the time and we anticipated there could be a demographic that might not dig it. Some people just aren’t into our “thing”. That’s cool, I’ll accept it graciously.
Come on, if anyone bought our book thinking it was going to be some kind of “serious” manual full of “serious” mumbo jumbo, I’d have to wonder if that person wasn’t blindfolded and forced to purchase under duress. First, it’s pink with a chick on the cover. Second, it clearly outlines, in big girlie font no less, the party within the pages on the back cover. And did we mention it’s screaming pink? I’m not saying it’s not full of valid, helpful information. Quite the opposite, but some people would rather refuse the spoonful of sugar. They’d prefer to swig back their tech jargon like a shot of whiskey with a tequila chaser. Different strokes.
Plus, they tagged our book “bad, drunk, joke, junk”. So really, who are we? They’re clearly the poet here. 
Moxie Design Studios™
from Chicago
Is it the one where the bozo couldn’t even spell recipes? Dope.
from down on the farm
I think that’s one of the things I like about you guys… your gracious way of accepting criticism. Being able to see it for what it is and not take it too personally. You are very good at what you do, and you also have fun doing it. I look forward to reading your book. I know I won’t be disappointed.
from San Diego, CA • Cocktail: slightly dirty Grey Goose martini
@lani: Thank you very much! I look forward to your thoughts on it.
@Manic Witch: hehe. Yes, it’s our only negative one so far.
from Pennsylvania
Hey Joelle~
Just wanted to stop by and say that I read your book and absolutely loved it!
It was fun, clever, creative...and VERY informative.
(and I’m a guy)
I’m in the process of creating another blog and I found your book extremely helpful, in all areas. So many of the blogger books out there are just too technical and boring.
The book has a “magical energy” to it...and that’s what caught my attention.
You’re right...you can’t please everyone, but you’ll please the people who are meant to be pleased.
And I was one of them!
Looking forward to many more.
Best wishes,
Ron
P.S. You’ve got a GREAT blog here!
I just read the book and followed the links here from amazon. It was cute enough and had a little bit of info, but I was confused as to why you felt you had to “pink it up” and “dumb it down” to appeal to women. For example:
“ As the first-ever woman-focused technical reference, IT Girl’s Guides incorporate the latest thinking about how women learn.”
As a woman who works in the technical field, I will admit I was offended that you and your publishers felt the need to appeal to women this way. Women don’t need cocktails and recipes to understand how to design and run a website. It just seems a bit stereotypical and sexist to me. I hope that wasn’t your intention but that is how it comes across. I’m not trying to be ugly, I was just trying to explain the opinion of the other reviewer. I could see where they were coming from, and hopefully it’s taken as constructive criticism.
from Finland
Joyce, if you don’t mind me answering some of this.. I don’t think they’ve meant to come off as sexist - I think they meant for the book to be about blogging, Moxie style, which most definitely is girlie, but not just for girls.
Did that sound right?
Joelle, that review on Amazon (and subsequent comment) suggests to me that Book Lover is one or all of a) too young to be reviewing books, b) too dumb to handle topics like this, or c) not a native English speaker. The grammar was atrocious, and it felt like there was an agenda behind it other than simply an honest review of the book. Nobody researching your book at all before purchasing would have mistaken it for a Reilly’s tome.
@Joyce: Your critique, at least, is properly formed and intelligent. You do have a valid point (the book is interspersed with lots of non-tech dialog), but really, that’s the style the book series is going for. Calling it sexist is a bit much. Dan Gookin’s landmark work, DOS For Dummies (the book that started the whole ...Dummies franchise) was also chock full of non-tech commentary. That’s what made it fun, and a huge success. But kudos for having an honest and intelligent critique!
from Chicago
@Joyce-I can understand your point of view, believe me, I HATE sexism. However, I know spit about webdesign and this book was perfect for me. I’ve seen some “how to” books that patronize people to the point of looking like the “See Spot Run” series and these ladies avoided that beautifully. And they kept true to themselves by keeping it all “Moxie”. But I think your thoughts on all this were wonderfully stated-your point of view without trying to start a flame-war.
(Joelle-sorry for turning this into a forum. But look how nicely the children are playing in your sandbox).
from San Diego, CA • Cocktail: slightly dirty Grey Goose martini
@Manic Witch: No, it’s ok! Discussion is good!
@Gry: You’re absolutely right. Thanks for sharing our view!
@Joyce: Thanks so much for your feedback.
I appreciate you reading our book very much.
I can understand your perspective and figured there could be plenty of women in a tech field who might not jive with our style. But, I do not feel we “pinked it up and dumbed it down”. Just because something is pink and fun doesn’t mean it’s sexist or stupid — it just means it’s pink.
It’s an option for those who are into that sort of thing. It’s only sexist if you decide it is. Why is it that women liking pink and enjoying make-up and martinis is sexist? We’re not saying, “Hey, every woman in the world, anyone with an XX chromosome, this book is solely for you because you’re too dumb to understand those big bad boy books.” No, of course that’s not what we’re saying.
We just don’t feel things have to be boring to be informative and c’mon, you have to admit that most women *not* in the technical field, who this book is written for ultimately, are not going to pop open a bottle of Pinot and curl up with the PHP Cookbook (which is a wonderful book, but not exactly leisure reading).
Our publishers created this new series of technical books for women which are meant to be fun and entertaining, as well as informative, not the only thing women can understand. Our perspective is that it caters to a demographic that WILL be interested in it. Not everyone will and that’s ok.
But, more to the point, if someone feels so strongly that our style is sexist, I would imagine that person would find any how-to book that caters to women sexist, no? Just the very act of it being “for women” is sexist in some people’s eyes.
So I guess, while I appreciate your feedback quite sincerely and am very happy you took the time to read and share your perspective, I have to disagree about it being ‘sexist’ and ‘dumbed down’ because the women this book is speaking to are the ones for whom it was written. Not ALL women in the planet Earth. We can’t possibly anticipate the preference of every woman.
We appreciate your critique and will definitely pass on your thoughts to our publisher. Thanks, Joyce!
@Ron: Thank you so much! That’s really nice to hear… from a guy, no less. hehe! We’d love it if you shared that review with Amazon. Would you mind? *bats lashes*
from San Diego, CA • Cocktail: slightly dirty Grey Goose martini
@Deltus: Actually, you’re correct. The person who left that review does have an agenda and we know exactly who it is. They went back and changed their review after reading the comments here to correct their spelling and adjust her critique based on what was said here. Unfortunately, Book Lover is bitter that we keep catching her stealing our work.
from Canada
Just being a tiny bit nit-picky, but constructive critism is mostly constructive while the book is under construction.
This one is already published, innit?
word verification: find
I knew my comments would draw this sort of response,which is the point of my criticism. Additionally, the “Dummies” books are focused towards a non-technical group, not a specific gender. When you focus your writing towards a specific gender and THEN say it’s written so that women can understand in a non-technical way, you are being sexist. You are implying or actually stating that women are unable to understand technical issues. Your content, which includes cocktails and parties and recipes, implies that you’re only “cool” if you don’t get technical issues and isn’t it cute that girls read a pink book to try this blogging thing? It just seems condescending to women. Sorry if that offends you, but I doubt I am the only one who thinks so. How many positive reviews have you received from people who reviewed the book who (1) are not featured in it; and (2) did not receive a free copy?
from San Diego, CA • Cocktail: slightly dirty Grey Goose martini
@Joyce: Joyce, I’m not looking to argue with you, but it’s starting to seem that you are hoping to ruffle feathers here. I hope that’s not the case, as I am not upset or offended at your comment and appreciated you taking the time to share it. I thought your initial comment was well-phrased and reasonable and I thought my response was equally kind and gracious. I was under the impression we agreed to disagree.
There’s no need to become snide. Thanks again for reading.
from Chicago
I’m one of the positive reviewers (although I haven’t posted anything to the Amazon site yet) and I am not featured in the book, nor did I get a free copy. I do resent tool manufacturers who feel the need to make pink hammers and pliers, but some women like pink. Does that mean that they are being patronized for having the option of buying girlie looking tools? Nope. Not at all. I know pink is one of Joelle’s favorite colors and since she co-authored the book, why not make it a color she likes? If she liked violet, then I would almost expect the book to be violet.
We all have options when it comes to books. The IT section of Borders is very saturated with all kinds of webdesign how-to books. If this one isn’t to your liking, there are plenty of others to choose from. This one happens to be the perfect one for me. It reminds me a lot of “Glamour” and I love that magazine. The “Dummies” books tend to be too dry for me. But that is me. I know people who really want to get down and really rock the webdesign without all the frills and bows. Different strokes and all that.
I would also add that I think Kathy and Joelle’s book, although it has a tech requirement, is geared for the non-techie to be able to get a blog up and going with minimal fuss and with an interesting, conversational dialog style, sort of pedagogical without pretention. It is particularly applicable to blogging, as the entire idea behind a blog is the ability to have an online presence without requiring a knowledge of how to code (ie. no heavy duty technical skills required). Having a book like, say, “How To Code in Object Oriented C++ With Moxie!” wouldn’t be as appropriate for that conversational style, as the topic by it’s nature is much more deeply technical.
Still wouldn’t hurt having an occasional martini recipe in such a book, though.
Joelle, who is Book Lover anyway? Out them, for our amusement, won’t you?
from San Diego, CA • Cocktail: slightly dirty Grey Goose martini
@Deltus: God, this is getting juvenile, though I’ll accept my part in it. I make an effort to respond to every review of our book, good or bad, in a kind and tactful manner on Amazon. I try to be gracious and respectful. In this entry, I was attempting to be funny and lighthearted, but of course, bitter people have no sense of humor.
“Book Lover” is Faith Jean, a woman from Norway we’ve busted time and again for stealing our work. She was a client of mine once (I still have the design in my portfolio), but over the last few years, she’s been caught repeatedly ripping off our work, most recently, a week or so ago, posted on Kathy’s blog. She makes some kind of Afghan dog blog templates or something (though she doesn’t design them, someone else does from what I can gather) and she’s into criminology. In recent weeks, we discovered she stole not only our MySpace layouts, but our logo, our color palette and practically our name. She was trying to do business under M Design Studios with an M logo that was very similar to ours, in our color and all of her fonts and styles were similar to ours. She also solicited people on Deviant Art to create a character like Kathy’s. When Kathy caught her stealing our work, she took down our layouts, changed the name from M Design Studios to “Miss J Designs” (which I find amusing, since my name most places is Miss Moxie and my name starts with a “J"). In and of itself, not that huge of a deal – we don’t own pink or the letter M –, but given the fact that she was once a client, stiffed me and we’ve caught her stealing from us before… well, that *is* a huge deal.
I wasn’t aware of who left the review on Amazon until I’d already left a kind, but tongue-in-cheek comment in response, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to click a few links and figure out who it is. She seems to have some kind of warped perception of what we do and what this blog is for and now is just working herself into a frenzy because we aren’t throwing ourselves off a bridge over her bad review.
No matter how courteous I am in my response, she insists on twisting it, trying to make it seems as though we are defensive or angry, which is not the case. It’s clear she’s never even read the book — if she had, she’d know it only has 2 cocktail recipes in it, out of 288 pages. Those grapes sure are sour.
@FaithJean, who spends time here: This is a personal blog where I speak personally from my own personal perspective. I’ll say personal again because I want to make that abundantly clear. This blog is editorial, it’s mine, it’s the furthest thing from a gossip blog and it’s not about you. Your IP has been logged, including the 6 hours you spent on this site on November 23rd. Good day, madame.
from Pennsylvania
Hey Joelle~
I would be MORE than happy to share my review at Amazon, however, I once wrote a review on my topic blog for a book, and the author had asked me to do the same thing for him. When I went to Amazon, the requirement to leave a review, was to have already purchased a book from them. Unfortunately, I have not made a purchase.
So, if you would like to use my review yourself on Amazon, please feel free to do so. Or if you can think of another way for me to do this...please don’t hesitate to contact me via my email address, to let me know.
Also, feel free to use my comment in any way that will help you in the promotion of your book - I would be honored!
@ Joyce: What’s all this “fuss” over a PINK book? You’re one of the FABULOUS females on this planet. And this world would be a boring, dull enviroment if it weren’t for energy of females. I’m a male...and I can see that. Open your eyes...and see it too.
P.S. and I happen to love PINK!
Sorry Joelle, but I had to put my two cents in.
You GO girl!
Best Wishes,
Ron
from San Diego, CA • Cocktail: slightly dirty Grey Goose martini
@Ron: Thanks for your support, Ron!
I just checked by trying to post a review for a book I don’t even own (I didn’t post it, of course, just checking) and it looks like you can post a review even if you didn’t buy the book through Amazon.
You just need to register with Amazon first, that’s all.
Free n’ easy.
Thanks again, Ron!
*And back to the loving place*
I was setting up a link to your book tonight and saw the review ... my first thought?
“It was only a matter of time.”
Your initial instinct ("It was bound to happen sooner or later") was spot on, hon. The source? NOT A SHOCKER.
Also? I am a feminist. I am not offended by pink or martinis or your book, I am inspired by them. For the record.
from San Diego, CA • Cocktail: slightly dirty Grey Goose martini
@chepooka: Thank you.
*loving place*
from outside Louisville, KY
I saw your book at the local Borders and was so thrilled! I felt like I knew an author on their shelves!
from San Diego, CA • Cocktail: slightly dirty Grey Goose martini
@mary: aw, thanks!
from Pennsylvania
Hey Joelle!
Sorry it took me a while to get back to you. I’m in RETAIL...so you can imagine what it’s like right now....HO HO HO!
Listen, I tried what you suggested and it still said that I needed to have already made a book purchase (ANY book) to leave a review.
Which I’ve never done.
But I have another plan. Give me a few days, and I’ll be glad to do a review on my personal blog, where I talk about a variety of things, and I’ll post the book cover and a link to Amazon - if that’s ok with you?
I would be more than happy and honored to do this.
You’ve got a Best Seller here!
Ciao,
Ron
from San Diego, CA • Cocktail: slightly dirty Grey Goose martini
@Ron: aw, that’s so nice!
Thanks, Ron. I appreciate that very much!
from Pennsylvania
Hey Joelle~
Well, I did it. It’s ready and awaiting you.
I also put a photo and a link to Amazon on the sidebar, so my readers know where to go to get your fabulous book!
It was pure pleasure doing this for you guys, I LOVE the book, and want everyone to know about it!
Please use the blog url I left you on this comment to get to it.
Hope you enjoy!
As always...the BEST to you!
Ron
P.S. And I’ll be back often to read your blog.
from San Diego, CA • Cocktail: slightly dirty Grey Goose martini
Thanks, Ron! I left a comment on your blog.