WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM A BAD REVIEW
MORGAN ST. JAMES
As a writer / author living in Las Vegas, a city with a very active writers’ community, I hear feedback from many authors. One big fear? A bad review. Many of us have had that experience, justly or unjustly, and it can be traumatic. Reacting to the bad news
Your worst nightmare has come true. The book you thought would be a blockbuster has gotten a bad review. Does that mean the world will come crashing down around you? Maybe yes, and maybe no.
Sure, you do have to acknowledge that there is always the possibility that the reviewer’ s comments were well deserved, in which case it may be something to heed for your next book. But, before you go bonkers, ask yourself this question as the author: How many good reviews have you gotten vs. bad ones?
Then put on your reviewer’ s hat. Was your book edited well? Did the plot hold together? Was the writing tight? Is there a market for your genre? There are so many factors that might come to light when a reviewer or reader attacks your baby. Keep an open mind
The first thing to remember is to keep an open mind, and sometimes that’ s hard. I recall seeing the rash of posts on Facebook about a self-published book on Smashwords that got a bad review and set off a firestorm of comments from Facebook Friends and retaliation by the author because she simply got very angry. I checked it out, and in my opinion, I felt the reviewer’ s critique was valid. The angry author could have learned a lot from what was said, had she kept an open mind. What the reviewer said
Among other reasons for giving the book two stars, the reviewer pointed out:
“ One reason is the spelling and grammar errors, which come so quickly that, especially in the first several chapters, it’ s difficult to get into the book without being jarred back to reality as you attempt unraveling what the author meant.”
We have all seen books like that, and it’ s a real turn-off. I really wanted to be fair, so I previewed the first twenty percent of this book, a benefit which is standard for most Smashwords books. I didn’ t find lots of spelling errors— perhaps they were corrected in a subsequent edit— but there were many grammatical errors. As for editing, it really needed tightening and a good going over to eliminate sentences like this one: She carried her stocky build carefully back down the stairs. Um, did she pick it up and carry it? Then there was the fish dinner. Were I reviewing this book, I would have asked,“ How many pages can an author dedicate to discussing a fish dinner?” In this case she filled several opening pages with boring conversation about the fish dinner. She would have lost me right in the beginning. My suggestion would have been to boil the opening down to a few paragraphs or even a few lines.
WRITERS’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE
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MAY- JUNE 2016