The book blogger community is up in arms this week over a recent Guardian essay, in which YA author Kathleen Hale confesses to stalking and actually going to the house of an online critic who posted a negative review of her novel on Goodreads. The furor has inspired a pair of hashtags—#HaleNo, in which readers and reviewers express their displeasure with Hale, and #AuthorYes, in which readers celebrate authors who have a good online relationship with their viewers and maintain a respectful distance with readers and reviewers who just so happen to not like their work very much.

Others, however, have been supporting Hale, albeit lukewarmly. Defenses of Hale tend to go somewhat along the lines of, Well, having your work critiqued harshly is a difficult thing, and some online reviewers can be a bit trollish, even bullying, so while I don’t exactly support Hale’s behavior here, etc. etc. etc.

I’ve never read any of Hale’s books myself, though I have read and enjoyed several of her online essays, most of which are funny and poignant in a confessional, oh-my-God-can-you-believe-I-did-that sort of way—and the Guardian essay is no exception. To be clear, Hale isn’t exactly holding herself up as an exemplar here; she’s been 100% clear on the fact that what she did with this particular reviewer was next-level bonkers. But neither is Hale particularly reflective about the whole thing. An essay of this kind isn’t exactly the place for moralizing, of course. But the response to Hale’s essay demonstrates that this incident—which involves reviews, online identity, privacy, and stalking—at least a bit of moralizing is called for.

As I see it, the issue is the relationship between authors and reviewers in the age of social media, when the distance between artist and audience has been flattened, every reader has become a critic with a platform, and the constant barrage of criticism and feedback can start to feel, to an insecure author (read: all authors), suspiciously like bullying.

I’ve tackled this issue before in the wake of Veronica Roth’s Allegiant, in which some readers expressed their displeasure with the ending of the Divergent trilogy with threats of violence. That time, the misbehavior was on the reader’s side. This time, it’s on the authors’s side. But in both instances, the issues are actually quite similar. For authors and readers, what are the rules of engagement?

Here, briefly, is what authors owe readers:

• To put out the best book that they possibly can. Obviously.

• To allow readers to have their honest responses to their books—even if those responses are bad. Some people will like your book. Others won’t. That’ll be true whether you write a piece of crap or a masterpiece. Critique is part of the game.

• Don’t pathologize people who happen not to like your book. People who don’t like your book aren’t necessarily bullies. They’re not necessarily trolls. To be sure, bullies and trolls exist, and some of them frequent book review sites. But a bad review, in and of itself, does not a troll make.

• To respect the privacy of their audience. Engage on bad reviews if you must, but don’t stalk. That’s just bad.

And here’s what readers owe authors:

• Read a book before you review it. This doesn’t seem to have been an issue with the reviewer Hale stalked, but it does happen sometimes. On Amazon and on Goodreads, negative reviewers do sometimes rate a book without having read it. Trolls do sometimes conspire to bring down a book. It’s not exactly widespread, but it does happen.

• Give every book a chance. Read with an open mind. Be generous. Try to get on board with what the author’s doing. If you can’t, that’s fine—at least you gave it a chance.

• Be honest. About the book. Didn’t like a book? Fine. Trash it all you want on Goodreads. But try your best to confine your comments in a book review to the actual book. Don’t go after the author. For instance, right now on Goodreads, the top reviews on Kathleen Hale’s book are all about the Guardian article, and not really about the book itself. That’s not good. Criticize Kathleen Hale all you want on Twitter, on your blog—but on a book review site, try to keep your comments to the book.

That’s it! Pretty simple, really.

Follow The Stake on Twitter and Facebook