The Reviews are in, and it’s Not Looking Good.

posted in: Blog, Writing/Authorship | 0

**I’ve got Bad Company stuck in my head, so I thought I would share. :D**

**No authors were harmed in the making of this post. Names shall not be named, just a discussion of what happened.**

Evil Lemon courtesy of Roman Volkov at freeimages.com
Evil Lemon courtesy of Roman Volkov at freeimages.com

Reviews are the lifeblood of authors. Reviews sell books. We’ve all heard it. Reviews are important. So when a bad review comes in, it’s bad – or is it? Reviews tell us if a book is good or bad, but that review is an opinion. Some people may love a book, while others hate it. That’s life. I recently read that a mixture of reviews can create controversy, which may help drive book sales. People love polarizing topics, and many are all too eager to jump on the bandwagon and add their voice to the controversy.

There are other benefits to negative reviews. Maybe you find out that you’re marketing to the wrong crowd, or you learn that there are things that could improve with the characters or story. Maybe you learn nothing at all, and there is simply a troll lurking to hate on everything. It happens.

But how should an author react to a negative review? It’s easy to be sensitive. You grab the nearest comfort food, burn or delete everything you’ve ever written while listening to break up songs. Or perhaps you ignore it. Maybe you examine the review and see if there’s anything constructive you can take from it. Or maybe you go after the reviewer.

This last, most sinister option is the worst thing you can do. You come across as a whiny, immature individual who can’t take criticism. In the case of one individual, it turned into full-blown obsession. The author stalked the reviewer, and this doesn’t seem to be an isolated occurrence.

I recently received a review copy, and I was excited about the book. The story sounded interesting, and there were 35 reviews, only one being a 3 star. It must be good, right? Wrong. The writing was choppy, the characters frustrating and/or unbelievable, the pacing slowed incredibly in the middle, and there was one plot device that I found truly upsetting. I hovered over the review button. One side of me said don’t publish it – just let the author know. Another said the book wasn’t getting fair reviews, and readers had a right to know the truth. I wanted to give the book 3 stars, but I couldn’t. It was too upsetting, too poorly done. I considered giving it a 1 star, just to level the playing field, but I finally settled on 2 stars. The author wanted an honest review, right? Wrong again.

Within a half hour of posting my review, the author contacted me demanding that I take it down. Fine by me. I hated giving the 2 star review anyway. I promptly deleted it, but the author didn’t stop there. She took down her review of my book, stating later that she had given it more stars than it deserved. Again, fine by me. I want REAL reviews on my book, not reviews given simply to receive a good review. Then she contacted the leader of the group I was in where we connected in order to have him ban me from the group. In fact, I already had dropped out of the group, because I DON’T WANT FAKE REVIEWS! (Not that everyone in the group is doing that, but I just didn’t want to risk it.)

I had no intention of talking to the woman again. She seemed angry and spiteful, and that’s not the kind of energy I want in my life. I blocked her on Facebook so she couldn’t contact me, and left it. End of story, right?

Ugh. No. She emailed me one more time to tell me how hateful I was, and to warn me not to steal her book. Honestly, I don’t want it, and if I did take it, I would have to edit it so heavily it wouldn’t even be the same book. It’s gone. Deleted from my hard drive. I’m a professional, and if I wanted to steal a book, I certainly wouldn’t settle for such poor writing. She then told me she had blocked me on email, so don’t bother replying. I have no problem with that. I wasn’t planning on replying either. You can’t reason with crazy.

The thing is, I didn’t try to say anything inflammatory. I articulated how I felt about the book, but I didn’t just leave a negative review. I gave constructive criticism, and even encouraged the author to keep writing. Maybe I was insensitive. Maybe I was wrong. For that, I’m sorry. I never meant to offend, but the truth needed to be told, and those 34 reviewers did not all tell the truth. Some may have loved the book, but 34? Only one bothered to say the writing wasn’t that great, and they still gave the author a 3 star review.

Sooner or later, this girl is going to get lambasted by someone who doesn’t care about her feelings and who won’t willingly take their review down. They are going to tell her to stop writing, most likely in very unkind language. Her book will probably get taken down by Amazon when the quality check stuff catches up with it. Things are bound to go wrong, and she could have taken the opportunity to improve upon her writing. Instead, she went the hateful route. She says she’s forgiven me. I hope that’s the case, because she’ll only hurt herself to hold onto her anger.

What’s most upsetting, though, is the fact that it’s books like these that make readers wary of indie authors. Glowing reviews should be reserved for deserving books, not handed out in order to drive better reviews for your own book. If you hate my book, I want to know.

My latest book, Skye’s Lure, isn’t perfect. Vince is perhaps more unlikable than he should be. The book may feel rushed. I understand that, and I intend on improving in the future. That’s what writing is all about. It’s learning and growing and writing some more. I won’t ever be able to please everyone, but I hope to at least delight a few. But if you hate my books, that’s okay. I’ll keep writing anyways, because it’s what I love to do, and because I have stories stuck inside that I am dying to explore.

So feel free to leave your reviews of my book – good or bad. I only ask that you be honest, and if you have something specific that you found unsatisfactory, let me know. I’ll learn. I’ll grow. And I promise not to stalk you. That would just be crazy.

Leave a Reply