REVIEW: How Do You Deal With Negative Reviews?
Posted: July 4, 2015 Filed under: health, opinion, Publishing, Reading, review, Writing, writing skills | Tags: amazon, critic, feedback, goodreads, information, negative, review, scathing 5 CommentsCan You ‘Deal’ With Negative Reviews?
I don’t ‘deal’ with negative reviews, since there’s nothing to deal with. A negative review is the opinion of a reader, intended to express their feelings about your work to other readers (not, I repeat, not to you, the author, because that is what ‘feedback’ is for). By the way, I make a distinction between a negative review (where the reviewer criticizes the book) and a bad review (where the reviewer criticizes the author).
I read all the reviews I can find. Not because I like to flagellate myself, but I’m interested in the opinions of my readers, even if they don’t contact me directly. Sometimes you can glean information that might help you avoid a scathing review in the future. File that nugget and go on your way.
The one thing you should never, ever do, is try to convince the reviewer that they are erroneous in their opinion. That has about 0.001% of actually succeeding.
You write a book, but you publish a product. If the product is good, then the ratio of negative to positive reviews will be low. If it sucks, the majority of your reviews will suck. You control the product, not the opinion. If you cannot live with the negative reviews, pull the product.
Personally, I don’t want to give a negative reviewer extra power by becoming upset. Reviews are like the weather, you don’t know what you’re going to get. It’s more useful to carry an umbrella than to become angry at the sky for the rain.
There is no book that receives 100% positive reviews. And that is good. Because a book that pleases everyone is probably not worth reading.
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Amsterdam Assassin Series 
You’re right it’s practically impossible to change reviewers’ minds. On the other hand I don’t expect everyone to like my book. It challenges too many preconceived ideas. I don’t think negative reviews are a problem,our challenge is finding readers who will enjoy our books. Any ideas?
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Not expecting everyone to like your book is a good attitude. I wrote my books primarily because I wrote what I wanted to read but couldn’t find, and I don’t expect my tastes to be that singular that nobody else would appreciate my stories.
I do think I was right about that, and apparently so did a few publishers, but I can fully appreciate that someone who doesn’t particularly likes to read ‘my kind of books’ tries them on for size and finds them wanting. I also had a few giveaways where people signed up without reading the blurb, but becoming a fan despite not enjoying stories about freelance assassins/morally ambiguous characters/grey vs. black/white characters. Anytime I can pull someone over to the dark side, it’s a bonus.
As to gaining more visibility, I have two articles on that subject, the first is this one: https://amsterdamassassin.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/visibility-on-amazon-changing-categories-and-keywords/
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Thanks. Just shecked it out. And the second one is?
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The second one is Visibility part 2: https://amsterdamassassin.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/visibility-on-amazon-changing-categories-and-keywords-part-2/
zondag 12 juli 2015 01:58 +0200 from Amsterdam Assassin Series : >
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Thanks đŸ™‚
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