She Loves me Not! Dealing with a Negative Review

Alma T. C. Boykin

I almost said “bad review” but that leaves a lot of wiggle room: unfavorable, badly written, for the wrong book/recording, totally ignored the entire plot of the book (“I didn’t read it but the author is a terrible person so this is a horrible book.”) What I mean is a negative review that deals with the book you wrote. Non-fiction seems to have a number of “This isn’t the book I would have written, so I’m going to slag it” reviews, including one boggling, “I already wrote the book on this topic so this is unneeded. Read my book instead.” I did, and it had a completely different audience in mind, took a very different approach to the topic, and covered a slightly different geographic area. I’m focusing on fiction, and on reviews on sites like B&N, Kobo, and Amazon.

The first time I got a less-than-three-star review, in 2015, I bounced up and down with glee because “Now I’m a real writer!” This was back when review padding was going on, and having too many excellent reviews had become a warning sign of sorts. This was an honest review, unfavorable, but honest. The book didn’t point out a time period clearly enough, so it seemed as if the protagonist became an experienced fighter in only a few days or weeks, not months (and even then she had some serious weak areas.) Things have changed, and the ‘Zon and other sites have taken steps to cut down on review padding.

The most recent less-than-happy review criticized the structure of a novel. The reviewer is correct: this particular book has a different approach to time and events than do others in the series. If you tend to write long, detailed tomes, and attract readers who love long tomes with intricate details, and you publish a novella that only brushes lightly over certain things, you too will probably get an unhappy review from someone. Readers come to expect a certain flavor and style in a series, and changing that can upset some people. It’s a risk, and one that might need due consideration if you are working in a well-known world with fans who really like that world as it has been presented.

So, what do you do when you get a bad review? If it is personally abusive, contact the distributor and see if you can have it removed or edited. If it is “I didn’t like the book because everyone knows that unicorns are purple, not golden brown,” well, shrug and go on. If you get four or five that say, “The topic intrigued me, but the writing style put me off because … and I had trouble staying with the story,” then you might make a note and see if you can find an actual problem. Ditto multiple complaints about formatting if you did the work yourself, or hired it out. That’s one reason to buy a copy for yourself and look at it on a device (phone, e-reader, tablet) to see if everything looks as good as it used to. Some things leap out on the e-reader that I completely missed even changing the font and working out of sequence with the original file. Those are the sort of negative reviews that are worth looking into.

Is there a pattern to the negative reviews? Do they all focus on one thing, say, expressing disappointment that what seemed like a steampunk story turned into space opera? Or a sweet romance suddenly had an out-of the-blue graphic sex scene? Or a dire lack of foreshadowing? Did the cover signal a different book? Does your sales copy promise one thing but the book deliver something very different? Those are complaints to be taken seriously, especially when you start getting a handful of them. Sort of like the alpha and beta reader rule of thumb. If one person has a problem (non-typo/grammar), consider changing but don’t worry about it. If two suggest changing or adding something, give it some thought. If all the outside readers flag it, you should either spend time in the story making it clearer, drop it if it is not needed, or change what needs to be changed.

Try not to take negative reviews personally. Especially in the beginning it’s very easy to bristle and wail, “But my baby! How dare you not love my baby!” Reviews that specifically don’t like something you spent days researching or polishing will cause you to react, perhaps vehemently. Stop. Take a deep breath. Log out and take a walk, or clean something. Breathe. It’s OK. Don’t take it as a personal attack, unless it is a personal attack, in which case you need to consider asking the review host to edit or remove the review if it does not meet their Terms of Service. If it is bad enough, or stupidly political enough, heck, it might serve as ad copy for you. Larry Correia does that, Robert Spencer* did that with his first book about Islamic history, and it sold the book in both cases. You might not be in a position to do that, but it works sometimes.

Some people just won’t like your work, or your latest work, or the new direction that you’ve been warning readers you will take, or the new series that you are starting. Welcome to the club.

Image: Author photo. Roses don’t get all that big when water is scarce.

*The historian and religious scholar NOT the Koran-burning preacher guy.