Thursday, August 29, 2013

Bad Amazon Reviews: How To Move Past Them And Keep Writing

Your face is literally burning at the screen as you read those horrible words. You can't believe that they didn't see your vision. The reader just didn't comprehend what you were trying to say. They couldn't have read it because if they did, they would have seen the pure genius of your work and rated it accordingly.

Your first thought? It may be to flag the review. Scour Amazon's guidelines to see if any were broken and try to get them to remove it. You may even ask your friends and family members to flag the review and get it removed. Some authors may even be tempted enough to respond with fury in the comments section.

Don't take the bait. It looks unprofessional and it should never be done in any circumstance. How to get over a bad book review? First, decide if the review has any merit. Some reviews are just personal. The reader may not like you for whatever reason. One of my non-fiction reviews focused on one incident that happened in the book that she didn't agree with and decided to write a three paragraph rant on why I should not have called an ambulance when I injured myself. Even though the paramedics told me I did the right thing, she felt otherwise and slammed my book for that reason. Remember, a reader doesn't really need a good reason to give you a poor review. One reviewer gave a writer one star because the writer's name was larger than the title on the cover.

If you are getting bad reviews based on poor grammar, poor sentence structure, typos, poor picture/illustrations, or formatting, you may want to take notice and make some edits. If the reviews are telling you that there are holes in the plot or there are too many characters, then you may want to remember that on your next novel. I can practically hear you screaming, "But I fixed one plot hole in chapter seven when the bad guy jumps out of the ground and....". If your readers didn't get what you were trying to do the first time, then it may be too complicated or you need to restructure your work. You don't want your readers flipping through the pages trying to figure out your technique. They should be getting caught up in your story, not getting caught up searching through their Kindle.

You are not going to make everyone happy so there is no reason to try. Take the good criticism and make your next novel better. Take the bad criticism and throw it out the window. It only takes three or four minutes to tear down something you spent the better part of a year or more trying to create. My personal saying is, "Those that can, do. Those who can't become critics." Write that statement on a piece of paper above your workspace, then keep writing.  

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