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For an author reviews are this double edged sword. I love to see someone enjoys my books, it can make me squee to have someone babble how good they are. And then you get the negative review and it makes you feel like someone just shoved a knife in your back.

I do not believe in a perfect story. Everyone likes different things in story just like everyone likes different foods. I hate avocados. Blech. But if you like them cool. Same thing with story. I think The Great Gatsby was boring. Lord of the Flies was stupid. And why in the world does anyone think James Joyces Ulysses is worth reading? But – other people love them and that is okay.

So this means telling me you thought the plot was slow, the characters boring, the world stupid might make me sad, it doesn’t hurt cause other people love exactly what you didn’t like. But other reviews, oh they hurt.

Here is my normal process. I write the blasted book. I try to edit as I go as it makes me less likely to scream. I think export it as a whole document (and note most of my stories are 100k+) and I go through to check for spelling errors, grammar errors, typos, and always the dreaded comma. Seriously people why do we have one little piece of ink “,” that does like twenty things? English is annoying. But that is besides the point or is the point, one of the two.

Once I’ve done that I send it to my betas. They read it, point out my many mistakes. I fix those and then send to my editor. She goes through it once, sends it back and I go through and fix everything again (by this point I want to scream how can I make so many errors?) then I format it and send it back to her. She edits it again and sends it back. I fix them all again and then I’m done. By this time I hate the story and everything about it. I upload it and move on.

Back to the reviews. The ones that hurt are the “poorly edited” or “too many typos” or “needs a proofreader.” Those make me want to sob in horror. At this point I’ve spent a thousand or so on editing and we STILL miss things. But when you lose stars because of those issues (and we all know stars on Goodreads and Amazon means everything) it hurts.

So what do I do? Mostly I really do try to avoid all reviews. They either pump up my ego or make me want to cry, neither of which is healthy. But when I see them and they are about editing or grammar or something that I should fix it hurts.

Now I am not saying don’t ding an author for that it is valid, but take a long look. How many errors are we talking about? Hundreds? Okay there is an issue. Ten? In a 100k book? I’ve seen worse in NYT bestsellers. Understand the author is trying and decide how much it upset you. And then if you need to give a negative review do it. But I beg you, for the soul of the poor author–don’t do a 1 star if there are no other reviews at all. Give it a week, then go back when there are reviews that liked it and be honest. Just remember we are trying and this is mostly one person trying to manage everything.

Okay headed back to write now. Enjoy!