Another day, another author on Twitter showing their whole ass in disrespecting reviewers. I’m sure you’ve seen this too or heard about authors going after bloggers or readers who have given them a “bad” review (where bad can be anywhere between 1 and 4 stars and can be simply something the author disagrees with) and making their lives hell, which YIKES. It's a bad, bad look for an author and for the future of their writing career.
Once your book is published, you can no longer control what people will think about it. All you can do is make sure to put out the best book possible, and then it’s in the readers’ hands after that. Reviews are the readers’ domain, not the author’s, and ideally you shouldn’t even look at Amazon or GoodReads or book blog reviews. (And if you’re going to look at them, for the love of all good things, don’t comment on them, don’t like them, don’t acknowledge that you’ve read them—let those review spaces be reader spaces where readers can share their honest opinions with other readers.)
But all that said, I know I’m probably not going to be able to stop you from reading reviews of your book. Unless you have superhuman willpower, you’re probably going to read them--who could resist?--and to be honest, you probably have to in order to gather blurbs for social media promo cards and, c’mon, just to sate your curiosity. (I know you want to hear that people loved your baby as much as you do!)
You have to have a thick skin in this business, but honestly, I think you could have the skin of an elephant and still feel the sting of a harsh review when people don’t love your book baby. If you’re going to read the reviews, you’re inevitably going to come across a review that’s negative, or that you completely disagree with, or both, and you’re going to have to deal with your emotions around that.
So here are some question to ask yourself when you get a negative review:
1) Is the criticism valid?
That visceral “HOW DARE” reaction when you read a negative review is totally natural, and you can sit with that for a while. Once you’ve processed it, reread the review and see if there is anything you actually agree with or you can understand where the reader was coming from. Maybe you can see how the love interests got together too quickly by some standards, or maybe you do tend to overuse that phrase. Okay. How much of what the reviewer is saying is just that the plot/characters/setting/whatever wasn’t their cup of tea? I know there are books that I haven’t liked that it seems like everyone else raves about. Reviewing is such a subjective process, and not every book will work for every reader.
2) Is the criticism useful?
If it makes sense to, you can apply the valid criticisms to your future writing. So maybe you'll focus more on pacing next time or do a quick Ctrl-F for that phrase that you overused. If there are criticisms you see being repeated in multiple reviews, that is perhaps something that bears looking into. Channel those bad reviews into improving your craft for next time.
3) Can you take the good and take the bad*?
(*I am so very sorry if I just put The Facts of Life theme song in your head)
Find the good things to take away from those “bad” reviews. Was there something that the reviewer liked? Great! If they give you absolutely nothing good to grab onto, is it worth spending your time thinking about this review? (And then circle back to #1 to check in again: is the review valid?) Is their negativity something you can laugh at? If they’re judging you for the “excessive sex scenes” or “depraved language,” this is something you can use as a selling point if you know your readers love some excessive sex scenes and depraved language—lots of readers will one-click just for that reason. [raises hand] On the flip side, if you write chaste romance and the reviewer was mad at the lack of sex, your ideal readers might love to know that you're keeping it PG.
If there’s nothing good in the review and it's not valid, then at least be proud that your work moved them to respond to it even though they didn’t like it. There’s power in that, my friend. Your words did that. And then move on and stop thinking about it--it isn't worth your time worrying about it.
Make sure you read the glowing four- and five-star reviews too--everyone needs that ego boost sometimes--and ask the same questions: is it valid? is it useful? what can I take away from it? Here, you can see what people have responded really well to, and lean into that in future. If you’re going to read reviews, make it a purposeful exercise and learn something from them.
Lastly, don’t let bad reviews get you down. Constructive criticism leads to growth, and that’s what you need as a writer to keep developing so you can continue to put out great stuff! And if reading reviews is too painful for you, then just don’t do it. You don’t need to beat yourself up by reading every review (you can even sort on GoodReads which star reviews you want to see!) and obsessing over the bad ones and what you could have done differently. Get a trusted friend to pull out good reviews for you, and make sure you’re getting positive constructive criticism elsewhere to continue to grow.