Dealing With Bad Reviews

I expect to start getting some reviews, in general, soon. I Googled my name and title yesterday (I have ARCs floating around to various review sites and bloggers) and found two guys had talked about my book on a podcast (and I indeed submitted to them). I thought, cool! Let's hear what they have to say. So I did, and, well, was let down. One of the guys said he was currently "slogging" through my book. Uh-oh, slogging through anything (unless you're in Scrooge McDuck's money bin) is never good. So he hadn't completed reading it, and said, to the effect, "it's not a terrible book" and then made a gagging sound for what he, I presume, considers to be a terrible book, and made it seem like, but for his podcast, he'd never have bothered with my book in the first place. Because he hadn't finished reading it, there was no constructive criticism (or any, really; just that he seemed unimpressed).

If anything, hearing that opened my eyes for what's ahead: I will be getting bad reviews at some point. So how should I handle reading any reviews, in general? I drowned my sorrows by reading Amazon one-star reviews of the mega-popular books: Gone Girl, Mr. Mercedes, anything by James Patterson.

Everyone, no matter the success level, will get a bad review at some point. I think we assume (and hope) everybody who reads our work will automatically like it. We know deep down this can't be true, and when confronted with it, it can be jarring. That's what happened to me yesterday.

So, now I steel myself. I get a thicker skin. And if the criticism is constructive (because one- and two-star reviews can be) I'll take it to heart and see if I can understand the reader's point. I figure, just so long as you're getting more positive reviews than negative ones, you must be doing something right. Onward.

Keep that outlook, Matt, and you should be fine.

Read one star reviews on books you worship. Because they will have them, and this proves that the greatest excellence won't reach everyone.

My first bad review was something along the lines of deleting the whole book and never rewrite it lol.

Honestly, aside from ego gratification, there's no real point to reading post-publishing reviews from readers. Everything you need to know about the high and low points of the work should've already been brought to your attention by editors, alpha/beta readers, and professional reviews, and the kind of thing that prompts people to start engaging, like an especially stinging negative review, has that ever ended well?

I wouldn't worry. Hell, if I had two people talking about my book on a podcast, that's two more people talking about my book on a podcast than I ever would've expected to ever have.

The worst review I've received so far was a two-starrer. It's also the most in-depth review I've ever received. It's also, sadly, extremely accurate. I love an honest review.

Try not to take reviews too personally. Try to embrace honesty and keep on keeping on

Christracy19 said:

My first bad review was something along the lines of deleting the whole book and never rewrite it lol.

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Negative reviews that are more about the writer showing off what a wit they are, are easy to ignore. I just think of them as being half-right.

The ones that give you the reasons for their review, I pay attention to.

I've been selling shareware for almost 20 years, and my uninstall routine asks the customer for comments on how the software can be improved. The comments along the lines of "you suck", I just delete. The comments that have given me something specific to work on are gold.

Like others here I do read my reviews - partly so I can use quotes from the good ones for PR ('masterpiece' for example goes down really well, particularly if from a professional reviewer in a well established publication), and partly because some of the good ones show me that I was able to really connect with the readers. If someone I have never met, who lives half a world away and who is clearly very different from me in almost every way, says 'this book is so close to my own experience it made me cry', well, that's enough to make it all worth it. For me.
Some of the bad reviews, however, made ME cry because they were so dismissive and aggressive. So - I cried.
That's life.
If you keep your emotions open you will experience all of them, nice and not so nice. I'd rather do that than shut myself down.
I have also, like other people, received borderline abusive reviews (mostly on Amazon UK), suggesting I was filthy and mentally disturbed. That is kind of scary and one of the many reasons why I write under a pseudonym.
But on the whole, the good reviews, the people who allowed me to touch their lives, have been in the majority and I feel honoured and excited.
If that kind of review was written on my grave stone I would die happy. Let the abusive reviewers write their own epitaphs.

I guess the thing to keep in mind that the reviews you get after your work is published, in most cases, that manuscript is done and finished.
You can't go back and change things the reviewers didn't like, and there's no profit in communicating with them directly to try and change their opinion.

You really can't jump in and tell them, 'no, your opinion is wrong. You didn't understand the story correctly, and it was actually X that happened.' Even if you manage to convince that one person, you can't do that from everybody.

It's definitely rough having somebody, perhaps very insultingly, seem to denigrate something you have invested so much work in, but post-publishing reviews very much fall into the, 'accept the things I cannot change,' take on the world.