Your baby has been delivered, the bookstores have it on their shelves (real or virtual), and the moment of truth arrives: after sweating and banging your head against keyboards, publishers, editors and agents, you’ve gotten A REVIEW!
Perhaps it’s a little bracketed number on Amazon or Goodreads, perhaps it’s been sent to you via your editor or publisher’s head of promotions. You open the file with trembling hands, or claw through the pages of the local paper and…
They hate it.
It could be sent softly, with a two star review praising your imaginative story while panning your execution. Perhaps it’s the verbal equivalent of a tac-nuke, leveling your hopes, dreams and wishes for the future, smashing to bits all your ambitions as a novelist in three deft, viciously crafted paragraphs.
Whatever the reason, you’ve gotten a bad review and you’re crushed. What’s the plan?
First: Be sad.
No really. Here’s your virtual permission slip, saying it’s okay to be sad, upset and unhappy that someone didn’t like the opus you put years of your life into.
Be sad for a day.
Then, Second, read that one-or-two star review again. And, if they are a real critic, they’ll give you things to fix in your next work.
Some folks who review your work truly would like to see you get better. I call them real critics. Look at what they said: if a real critic said your characters are wooden, give them some more detail or inner conflict in your next project. If a real critic said you could use more action and less inner monologues, apply that in your next project. Of course, maybe they aren’t even your target audience. Still, maybe you can throw them a bone and do something they’d like, in your next project.
Then you have the trolls. These folks have more spare time on their hands than you or I, because they don’t have the ability to stick to something like a novel the way you do. Rather than make you better, they want to make themselves feel better about their lack of accomplishment by making themselves sound witty as they tear your baby to shreds with unfair comments and jerky little verbal pirouettes.
There are many ways to react. I read these gems to my friends over adult beverages. We laugh and I feel better. Piers Anthony wryly noted in one of his Xanth novels that “96 percent of the people who read my work love it, and the other four percent review it.” He also created a creature in his pun-filled magical land called the cri-tic, defined as a “loathsome, blood sucking insect.” And then there’s Snoopy, who fantasized about the headlines that would ensue when he bit his first reviewer on the leg.
Whatever you do, you are forbidden to answer these trolls directly. If they decide to pester your blog, that’s something different. And there’s nothing wrong with having your friends write anti-trollish reviews. But google Jaqueline Howett if you want to see where personal tit-for-tatting gets you; you don’t look cool, and you won’t win. The best you can hope for is to get the last word in an internet fight –and good luck on that. Trolls always have more spare time than you, and seem to win every pointless internet conflict they enter.
You can’t make everyone like your work. But you can let someone’s criticism help you make a better product. Or, at the very least, be an occasion for a few laughs at a party.
Reviews for an author are like reviews for an actor: either don’t read them, or learn to live with them. Also, learn from the bad ones, and don’t believe the good ones too thoroughly.
To be honest, though, I have to wonder how a book gets published without already having passed through a period of criticism. Didn’t the editor say, “Got a problem here”? Didn’t the author pass it around among friends and mentors who are honest enough to tell him something other than “I loved it” (probably the most useless comment cone can receive)?
If the review is the first time the writer receives REAL feedback, I would suggest that he needs a new editor…and new friends.
Good point DC.
I think that often, a stereotypical ‘bad’ review says more about the reviewer. Yes, sometimes it may mean a new editor is in order, just as an athlete may need a new trainer to rise to a new level of competition.
But other times, I truly do think that some reviewers may want to make themselves look smart, or just don’t ‘get’ the genre you are writing in.
I wouldn’t, for example, want to read a review of Lord of the Rings by someone who likes ‘hard’ sf, and hates fantasy. They might be distracted by the scientific impossibility and deus ex machina use of the eagles to the point that the beauty of the story is (for them) lost.
As for how ‘bad’ books get published: the same way ‘bad’ movies get made. Even when there are millions of dollars on the line, somehow movies like Heaven’s Gate and The Last Action Hero hit the theaters.
On the plus side: If you are underconfident about your own developing abilities, you can remind yourself that a lot of awful, unreadable books hit the shelves every year. At the very least, there’s always room for one more…. 😉
———————–
“The critics are all failed writers.”
-Sidney Sheldon, author, ‘Master of the Game.’
I found a comment in this blog http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/5-ways-writers-can-get-the-most-out-of-goodreads?et_mid=577948&rid=233360044
that addresses reviews, good OR bad, under point #2. Goodreads has analyzed their data and found that getting reviews impacts sales positively, and it doesn’t matter if the reviews were good or bad. Interesting phenomenon!
For what it’s worth, Ellen, I never read ‘reviews’ that are really nothing more than book reports. For that matter, I rarely read reviews anyway, because what’s important to me as a reader often is not related in any way to what is important to the reviewer. Professional reviewers never give away the plot twists, though, so that might induce me to read one of theirs!
Very cool to hear, Leslie! Now, could you go to one of my books on Amazon and/or Goodreads, and give me a review? Of course, I must admit: I would still prefer a 5-star over a 1-star…
🙂
You got it, John! (And this is part of how we network and market our work and support each other, folks, the subject of another blog another time!)
This is very sage advice. I’m going to show it to a friend who struggles with criticism about her art. She’s young so she has to grow an outer shell towards these things. Thanks for your wisdom on this point…and I’m going to now have to go to Borders to get Xanth…if only for the cri-tic.
Excellent advice, John. Bad reviews (especially those that do not attempt to offer constructive criticism, but are only trying to be mean spirited) are not worth responding to. My biggest pet peeve with bad reviews is when the reviewer gives away all the major plot points and spoilers.
LOVE the comment from Piers Anthony about the 96% who love his work and the 4% who review it! And adding in a character who embodies the negativity spawned by spiteful reviews!
John, your advice is spot on, and has further application: Those who are not yet published, take each of these points and apply to judges’ comments on your contest entries.
Unfortunately, some people have cultivated attitudes of meanness in their lives. More to the point, authors have no control over reviews. So look for the nugget of wisdom hidden among the road apples, and move on. As Catholic writers, we then have an opportunity to pray for those who posted unkind words about our work – which may be the most important aspect of dealing with such painful responses to our labor.
Great post!