Every author has a love-hate
relationship with reviews, both from professional sources and from
regular readers. Whenever an author sees that a new review has been
left there is this sort of mixed feeling until we look to see whether
it is positive or negative. I know writers who refuse to even look at
their reviews. They have a friend monitor reviews for them and let
them know if a good one has been left. I participate in several
online authors forums and writers are forever agonizing over bad
reviews or longing for good ones.
I have been in the position of
receiving four or five reviews in one day of which 4 were positive
and 1 was negative and I've spent the rest of the day sulking about
that one negative one. We writers are strange folks.
When most writers are new to the game
they really take reviews personally. Most of us, as time goes by, get
over that. When I am stressing about negative reviews I go to the
book sale page for a book I absolutely love and read the negative
reviews. It reassures me that, even works that I consider to be of
utter brilliance, get torn apart by some readers. I have also learned
to make a distinction between substantive reviews and non-substantive
ones. If a 1-star review does a good job of saying what they disliked
about that book, well, I hope I learn from that. But if it just says,
“This book was lame, not even worth getting it free” I'm less
inclined to be upset by it. Some reviews tell more about the reviewer
than about the work being reviewed.
All that being said, let me say once
again how very much most writers appreciate the readers who take the
time to write a review – even if it isn't a long one. What a lot of
readers don't know is that there are book promotion sites which will
not feature a book until it has x-number of reviews. If you read a
book, especially an indie or small pub house book, and like it,
taking the time to write a quick review is a real gift to the author.
It is always appreciated.
There is a lot of controversy in the
indy writer community about responding to reviews. Some writers do,
some do not. There was a famous incident about a year ago when an
indy writer responded to a negative review of her book on a blog with
a blistering attack and the whole thing escalated until she looked
like a genuine lunatic. This is not something any writer should get
involved in. But what about thanking reviewers for a good review?
Some writers think it is only polite, others say don't do it.
In the past few weeks I've received
some awfully nice reviews and also emails, especially for The Whiskey
Bottle in the Wall series. I love the reviews and often repost them
to my Facebook and to Twitter. I always respond to emails and here on
my blog and on Facebook but do not on book sites like Amazon, B&N
or Goodreads. It's too easy to start an unintended flame war that
makes everyone look bad.
But I'm grateful for those who take the
time to post a review. Even negative reviews that have substance can
be educational. Because I am not only a writer but an avid reader, I
try to leave reviews for books that I finish. I rarely leave anything
less than 3 stars for the simple reason that I don't write reviews
for books I do not finish and if a book is that bad, I don't finish
it.
One of the things I've always been
amazed at when reading reviews both for my books an for books I've
read is what an individual experience reading is. People read and get
things out of the experience that are totally unique to them. I've
especially noticed this with a few of my psychological horror
novelettes. One person will say “that was so boring, there was
nothing scary about it” and the next one will say “I was
absolutely horrified – I couldn't get to sleep.” People
definitely have different capacities for horror!
So, as a writer, I have to say, thank
you for leaving a review, and as a reader I have to say, thank you
for writing something worth reviewing.
Thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment