Bad Reviews—Six Reasons to Be Glad You Have Them

"What? Glad?" sez you. "There is nothing that makes a writer sadder than a bad review!"

That's true. They can feel like a sudden, nasty downpour on the biggest parade of your life.

Whether you self-pubbed or worked with a traditional publisher, the publication of your first book is a moment of personal triumph. You want to shout it from the rooftops: “HEY WORLD, LOOK WHAT I DID! I AM AN EFFING AUTHOR, PEOPLE!!”

And your book starts to climb up the charts. Wow. People are buying it. People you aren’t even related to!

Reviews start coming in. People like you. They really like you!!

But then…somebody doesn’t.

There it is, your first bad review, sitting there on Amazon or B&N or Goodreads, with its puny single star.

You feel like your head is going to explode. You’re not sure what will come out when it does--curses or tears--but it will probably be both. You want to fire off a response, saying what a moron the reviewer is because—well, first off—it’s not a zombie book. That’s why there are no effing zombies, OK??!! Don’t give me two stars because there are no zombies in my heartfelt story of a woman’s journey healing from her addiction to Hugh Grant movies, OK? And you say it’s too short? Almost like a novella? That’s because it IS a novella, you cretinous worm from Hell. It says so RIGHT THERE in the product information.

But of course you don’t write that down. That would be professional suicide. You know that.

You step away from the keyboard. You call your BFF/Sig. Other. You reach in the cupboard for your chocolate stash and eat a whole Lindor truffle bar while your BFF/Sig. Other is reciting platitudes about how you can’t please all the people all of the time and this too shall pass. 

You hang up and get in the car. It’s Haagen Dazs time. And yes, you go to the store and rent “Notting Hill” one more time.

OK, it’s good to mourn. You need to get that stuff out of your system. If you live near a place where it’s safe to throw things, go do that. I find throwing rocks at the ocean surprisingly satisfying.

But you do have to face that computer sometime, and when you do, it’s still there, those three nasty sentences that stink up your whole Amazon page like somebody’s poodle took a dump on your life-is-a-banquet buffet table.

Your career is over. It’s ruined. Nobody will ever buy your book again!!

Not true.

Quite the contrary, in fact. Bad reviews can actually be good for sales.

How?

1) They show you’ve joined the big leagues. 

All popular writers get bad reviews. Just go to any bestseller’s buy page.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone “nothing more than a shallow tale about a misfit who makes good.”

The Hunger Games  “semi-familiar plot, predictable ending, eh not worth my time.”

The DaVinci Code “Highs: the French sentences are correctly spelled. Lows: everything else.”

Freedom “I started to dog-ear pages on which cringeworthy prose appeared, and I did damage to 90 percent of the book.” 

Or even better, the classics.

Gone with the Wind “I use to feel bad about Sherman burning Atlanta, but that was before I read this book." 

Pride and Prejudice “This is without question the worst book I've ever read in my entire life. The style is clumsy though the author strives to impress with an aristocratic pompousness so typical of social climbers of her day.”

The Great Gatsby “this book is twilight without the vampires, which by the way is an equally horrendous affront to intelligent readers…I don't need a book about stupid rich people.”

Great Expectations “a shapeless mess of a story…presented in the most abrasive fashion possible.”

(I especially love the irony of that uber-clumsy sentence about Jane Austen, don’t you? I think there is a good deal of what shrinks call "projection" in negative reviews. Some wannabe writers seem to see their own faults in everybody else's prose.)

2) They prove your reviews are genuine. 

It’s no secret that some authors game the system by trading reviews or even buying them from unscrupulous review mills. Or they pressure everybody in their church Ladies’ Auxiliary to write versions of the same exclamation-laden rave.

BTW, I hear Amazon elves are making a sweep and removing lots of suspect reviews. Unfortunately, some legitimate reviews have been removed too. Be careful you follow Amazon’s guidelines to the letter. NOTE: don’t repeat a phrase from another review or the product description or you can get flagged as a phony reviewer even when you’re not.

The truth is most successful books do not have a full five-star rating. When readers see a page with nothing but five stars these days, they tend to feel skeptical.

3) They demonstrate what your book ISN’T. 

Knowing what your book is NOT can be as useful to a reader as showing what it is.  Sometimes a negative review comes from a person who got the wrong idea of your genre or subgenre. So the review will steer readers from buying the wrong book and generating more irate reviews. (One bad review hurts our feelings, but a whole bunch can seriously hurt sales.)

I had one reviewer call my rom-com thriller Food of Love “rubbish”, because, she said, “I read lots of lesbian romance and this was the worst I ever read.”

Well…yeah it probably was. That’s because it’s not a romance. And it’s not about lesbians.

All my work has strong, sympathetic GLBT characters, but anybody looking for hot girl-on-girl action is going to be seriously disappointed. So thank you, “rubbish” reviewer, for setting people straight (no pun intended.) Whoever told her FoL was a lesbian romance was misinformed—so I’m happy she’s cleared that up.

Another author I know got a one-star for her historical mystery because somebody ordered it thinking it was how-two book about medieval embroidery. OK, the one-star is a pain, but better than a whole bunch of one-stars from dozens of irate embroiderers.

4) They help you target your demographic. 

A review that tells readers what group doesn’t like your book can actually encourage the right readers to buy.

I read a complaint from an author who said she got two stars from a reviewer “because the characters engage in pre-marital sex”. 

Oooooh. There’s sex in it?  So you’ve been identified as a writer who does not write for evangelical Christians who wear promise rings.

That shows you DO write for readers who like a little steam in their lattes. In a world where 50 Shades of Gray is the number one bestseller, that hurts you how?

I had a similar experience with a reviewer who said my mystery Ghostwriters in the Sky was “too complicated.” He said he “couldn’t tell who the bad guys were until the last page.”

Thank you! That tells readers who like a complex, unpredictable mystery they’re in the right place.

5) They rally the troops.

If an author is unfairly reviewed or attacked by trolls, the fans will be outraged, too. It might even get them to write that review they’ve been meaning to write forever. (If you need more encouragement to review your favorite authors, read my post on Amazon reviews here.)

I haven’t had a lot of time to read (or write reviews) during this marathon year, but one book I loved was Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby. When I put it on my Goodreads page, I noticed a lot of clueless one-star reviews, obviously from people who didn’t realize it was about a minimally-produced record album like the Beatles’ famous “Let it Be…Naked”—and NOT about a lady with no clothes on. I made the time to write a review I probably would never have written otherwise. I hope I steered some of the right readers to the book.

Or there was the time I went to check out a new book mentioned in a Tweet and saw it had ten reviews already: all one-star—all attacking the author personally, saying nothing about the book.

It was an obvious example of cyberbullying. (For more on dealing with bullying in the trollosphere, Kristin Lamb has a fantastic post this week.)

Do you think I bought the book and, after enjoying it, gave it a good review? You betcha! (I also hit the "report abuse" button.) Plus I tweeted it to my followers and wrote an encouraging message to the author. Most humans are moved when we see a fellow human being persecuted.

6) They tell you what readers want 

Elizabeth S. Craig has blogged about how she learns from her negative reviews, and she displays a healthy, professional attitude we all should learn to emulate. You can learn a lot from your readers, who will let you know if they were angry when you killed off Aunt Millie, or didn’t like it when your romantic interest turned into Snidely Whiplash in your last book.

And believe me, if you have any typos, or your work needs editing, they’ll let you know about that, too.

On the other hand—make sure you’re reacting to a majority opinion and not just a handful of people in a bad mood. You don’t want reviewers to change your voice or artistic vision any more than you want your critique group to do that. 

In spite of all this, I do realize some reviews can be spiteful and useless.

Some of those may have been purchased. There are services that offer to leave bad reviews to bump authors ahead of you off the Amazon bestseller lists. (I’ve personally seen review mill sites, but they move around, so I don’t have a link right now.) On the plus side, their mostly illiterate “reviews” get taken down quickly. Amazon is on to them and will remove the review if you report abuse.  

Then there is the segment of the population who invent reasons to criticize and find fault with everything because they get off on it—especially if they can work themselves up into a self-righteous rage to justify their cruelty. Rage can produce a high very like cocaine. (See my post on Trolls, Sockpuppets and Cyberbullies.)

Unfortunately the anonymity of the Internet is where they thrive.

I’ve observed that freebie books tend to get the most troll attacks. That’s partly because people devalue things they don’t pay for, partly because they’ll download free books in genres they don’t usually read, and also because a lot of people simply hate self-publishing (change is scary).

Some people assume all freebie books are self-published—they’re not, but nobody is accusing these people of being rocket scientists.

You can usually tell a troll attack from an honest review. Trolls make it pretty obvious they haven’t read the book and use generic phrases—usually including “riddled with typos” and “obviously in need of an editor” even when they’re reviewing Jane Austen. They often dump lots of identical one- and two-stars all over Amazon. 

This is why Amazon has that “report abuse” button. (But never use it for an honest negative review.)

Sometimes a reader can leave a negative review because of something that has nothing to do with the quality of your book. Maybe your protagonist has the same name as the guy who just dumped her, or her own novel just got rejected by an agent who sat on the full for 18 months, or his mom just told him he he’s got to move out of the basement, and at 42, he really ought to find full time employment since he’s been working on that novel for 13 years now...

They aren't "abuse" in the Amazon sense, but do remember those rants aren’t reviews of your book. They’re verbal temper tantrums--the result of somebody having a bad day—or a bad life. You just happened to be in the line of fire. Smart readers can usually tell when the review is about the reviewer's issues, not the book. 

And chocolate helps. Or throwing rocks at the ocean.  Or maybe even watching a Hugh Grant movie.

What about you, scriveners? Have you seen clueless reviews of your favorite authors? Have you started to get bad reviews yet? Do you have any advice on how to cope with them? 

***

I have a bit of sad news this week. My US publisher, Popcorn Press, has closed its doors. But they have been incredibly gracious about handing all the files to me so I can re-publish with MWiDP. Thanks, Les—you’re a meticulous editor and fantastic book designer. And Kate—your covers are fabulous! Popcorn started as a poetry press and may be reborn as a poetry-only publisher some time in the future.

FOOD OF LOVE is now live under the MWiDP imprint on Amazon US and Amazon UK as well as Barnes and Noble. THE BEST REVENGE should be up there by tomorrow. The one downside is that I’ve lost my Amazon rankings, so FOOD OF LOVE, which had been on the bestseller list for romcoms in the UK since December has lost its status. A few “likes” and tags would be helpful, if you have the time. 

And YES, MWiDP will be re-publishing the Popcorn books in paper, AND, my other three mysteries should all be available in paper in the next few months. Yay treeware!

***

And don't forget the Digital Age Authors Intensive on July 14th!

You can learn all about how to be a writer in the digital age from iconic author Catherine Ryan Hyde and author, screenwriter, and radio personality Dave Congalton, as well as tech wizards, marketing specialists...and me. So if you're going to be on the Central Coast of California next weekend, don't miss this. There are still a few places available. Go here to register. 

Thanks to all of you who bought HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE last week and pushed us up the writing guide bestseller list into the top 20--ahead of the new Kindle edition of Strunk and White! 


Also: my Camilla Randall mystery SHERWOOD, LTD. is featured on Kindle Romance Novels this week and I'll be at RomanceUniversity.org on Friday the 13th!

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Trolls, Sockpuppets, and Cyberbullies—How to Blog Part IV: Dealing with Difficult Blog Visitors

Blogging is fun, and a wonderful way to network and build your author platform. But it’s not always rainbows and unicorns. Sometimes a visitor may disagree with you or be confrontational in some way. Nothing wrong with that. If it’s done in a friendly manner, disagreement can be an excellent way to stimulate conversation and learn to see things from another point of view. I’ve learned a lot from people who have pointed out my mistakes and blogging faux-pas.

But the occasional commenter crosses the line from polite disagreement to a verbal attack or full-on temper tantrum.

Starting a blog is like opening a shop. Anybody out there on the street can drop in. Most people who come by will be great. But some might be substance abusers or suffer from mental illness. Some might be looking for a fight. Others can be just plain mean.

Do remember it’s your blog, and it’s your responsibility to make it a safe place for your commenters, so if one of your followers is attacked, speak up. 

Problems can be compounded by the fact that online we can’t see the dangerous ones coming. When you meet somebody in person, you get a lot of clues about how to interact with them. A woman wearing a tinfoil hat and muttering about the invaders from Betelgeuse probably won’t be the one you choose to chat up as a new friend, and most of us aren’t going to worry much whether some guy sporting racist tattoos and an Aryan Nation baldscape likes us or not.

Age is a major clue, too. When you meet somebody in her seventies, you won’t expect her to have the same world view as somebody of seventeen.

But when people comment on blogs, we treat them all as peers. This can be good or bad, depending on the type of interaction.

Here’s an example. This week I used the word “Luddite” in a short, friendly blog comment. Another commenter found the word highly offensive and went into a three paragraph rant against me.

(Actual Luddites were an early 19^th cent. group in the English Midlands who resisted the Industrial Revolution and revered a mythical Robin-Hood type figure called King Ludd.)

When a Boomer like me uses the word, we usually mean somebody who thinks the Internet is a fad and still takes photos with the Instamatic he got in 1976. To the young woman who had the melt-down, apparently it means somebody who doesn’t have the latest Kindle Fire. If she’d seen my matronly, aging self, she might not have assumed I was attacking her lack of geek-chic.

Although you can’t be sure. She also might have been one of those people who surf the ’Net looking for ways to feel insulted. Insults generate self-righteous rage, which produces endorphins that some people find addictive. They will ferret out anything that can set off their anger triggers, so they’ll feel justified in beating others to an emotional pulp.

Insult-Ferrets are just one of the disruptive types who might wander into your blog. I’ve listed some others here.

Your first instinct will be to delete an out-of-line comment, but that’s not always the best solution, especially if you’re dealing with Cyber-Taliban types. They may feel you haven’t properly submitted to their will, so they might launch a crusade against you on other blogs and forums and the problem will escalate.

I’ve made suggestions on when to delete comments. Do immediately delete anything that is bigoted, libelous, or deliberately hurtful to any of your readers.

It helps to remember you can’t please all of the people all of the time. Humor is subjective, and some people will feel offended by any kind of joke. There are common brain conditions that leave people unable to understand whimsy, hyperbole for comic effect, or irony of any kind, so a lot of humor is a mystery to them.

Remember people tend to judge other people by themselves. Happy, friendly people assume others are happy and friendly until proved otherwise. Angry, nasty people assume everybody else is angry and nasty, too. When they accuse you of bizarre things, they aren't saying anything about you; they're telling you what is in their own heads.

And the truth is—no matter how nice you are, some folks are just not going to like you. You have to ignore them and concentrate on the people who do.

Here are some of the disruptive people to watch out for.

1) Trolls. “Troll” is an all-encompassing term that means pretty much anybody who’s looking to cause trouble and might be lurking under a cyberbridge. Trolls thrive on creating conflict for its own sake. If they happen on a Christian blog, they’ll post an atheist manifesto. Then they’ll go to an atheist site and tell them they’re all going to Hell. Their posts are often obscene or bigoted. They’re probably living in their mom’s basement and haven’t had work since they lost the dishwashing job at Krusty Burger in 2008. These are people who feel pretty helpless in the world, and this is how they make themselves feel powerful.

Solution: Don’t feed trolls! Any engagement at all will be perceived as encouragement. They crave attention and don’t care if it’s negative or positive. Delete the post and try to laugh about it with offline friends. No matter how nasty the remark, remember it’s not aimed at you. It’s the whole world these people hate. And even if you feel sorry for them, if you're not a mental health professional hired to treat them, your best bet is to give them a wide berth.

Tip: Trolls usually post as “anonymous” so if you’re hearing from them regularly, you can change your settings to require a name in order to comment.

2) Sockpuppets. On the Interwebz, “sockpuppet” means somebody using a false identity to praise himself or attack his competitors, posing as an independent third party. The term first originated in Internet communities and spread when customer reviews started gaining importance on shopping sites. Somebody using a false name might post comments praising his own product or knocking competitors. Sockpuppet reviews are sometimes offered for sale. I saw a site recently that offered positive one-line reviews on Amazon for $5, or negative ones for a competitor’s book for $10. That explains why you sometimes see Amazon pages with 25 or 30 nearly identical, generic reviews. (I don’t think they fool very many readers.) People also use sockpuppets for blog comments that promote their own agendas. Bogus, fee-charging agents, for instance, sometimes pose as clients to talk up their agency on writing blogs.

Solution: Use your judgment and delete as necessary. If you know the puppet’s true identity, you can respond with the person’s real name, and that may deflate them. If you see an obvious sock puppet review on a writer’s Amazon page, report abuse.

Tip: If you have a tech-savvy friend, they can usually find the identity of a puppet visiting your blog through their IP address.

3) Insult Ferrets. These people are rage addicts looking for a fix. They’re surfing the ’Net looking for things that make them feel insulted, so they can justify going on the attack. If the young woman I mentioned above is one of them, she’ll have a whole list of trigger words besides “Luddite.” She might go off on a blogger for using the word “Heffalump,” because that’s what her cheating ex-husband called her when she was in her third trimester. Or the word “blue” will send her into a wild temper tantrum because everybody says her eyes are blue, but they’re really blue-green, kind of, when she wears that green blouse. Insult Ferrets tend to be narcissistic and think everything is about them.

Solution: Try to soothe ruffled feathers, but realize you’ve done nothing wrong. If a Ferret attacks one of your commenters, call her on it in a friendly but firm way. If you’re attacked on your own blog, apologize, even if you’re clearly not in the wrong, but only respond once. Don’t engage in conversation. Don’t delete unless the comment is seriously over the top, because that will anger the Ferret further and anger is what they feed on. They’ll come back for more.

Tip: You can block addresses by reporting them as spam.

4) The Politically Correctibot. This is a version of the Insult Ferret—people who browse blogs looking for perceived insults—not to themselves, but some downtrodden demographic. They often have the linguistic sense of Spellcheck software. They might attack a blogger for using the word “fatuous,” calling it an insult to fat people. Or they’ll attack anybody who talks about Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi” as being unsympathetic to the Holocaust. I once got attacked for being “ageist” on this blog because I suggested that some of us Boomers have trouble learning the latest ways of the Interwebz. I can guarantee the attackers weren’t Boomers, because we KNOW how hard it is to keep up with this stuff.

Solution: If they’re berating you, it’s probably best to simply ignore them, but if it’s one of your commenters being dissed, speak up. Often you can leave an idiotic comment in place, because it doesn’t harm anybody but the person who wrote it.

5) The Cyber-Taliban. These are Ferrets and Correctibots who operate as a tribe. They see themselves as the righteousness police—often enforcing a set of rules unknown outside their own niche demographic. I knew an author who had in some mysterious way stepped on the cybertoes of a fanatical online group. The day his next book came out, he got ten one-star Amazon reviews. I sent him a sympathetic tweet and immediately got flooded with DM’s warning me not to associate with the “evil” author.

Solution: Report abuse. Then run. Disengage from these people in any way you can. Delete if the comment is over-the-top, but otherwise, it may be wiser to let it stand so they think they've "won." But then unfollow, block, and unfriend. There’s no way to have a rational encounter with mass hysteria.

6) Cyberbullies. The fanatics above were being cyberbullies. But bullies don’t need to be motivated by righteousness. Some are just mean. Destroying innocent lives and reputations is fun for them. You’ve seen the headlines. They often work in packs and can, in some cases, actually cause death by making vulnerable people commit suicide. Teens are especially susceptible to this, both as victims and perpetrators, but adults can be victimized too. I have personally received death threats from some Cyber-Taliban bullies. Scary stuff.

Solution. Report them and get help on the National Crime Prevention Website if you're in the US. They are breaking the laws of most countries. There is no reason to put up with criminal behavior, even if it’s “only on the Internet.” Delete seriously offensive comments, but you might want to leave some up if you can stand it. A self-incriminating post will catch up to the perpetrator eventually and will get you lots of support and sympathy from sane people.

If you see somebody being bullied on a blog, try to reach out to them through their own blog or other social media. They may be newbies who could end up seriously hurt.

Some bloggers are cyberbullies themselves and can cause real pain to unsuspecting people who think they’re in friendly territory. Victims may think they’ve somehow done something to deserve the snark or personal attacks.

NOTE: If you feel you’re in real, physical danger from a cyberbully who shows knowledge of where you live and work, contact local law enforcement immediately.

***

The most important thing to keep in mind when dealing with blog meanies is: DON’T TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Remember it has nothing to do with you. You’re just a random victim. How you should deal with them individually depends on the severity of the attack and how strongly it affects your blog and your followers. 

NOTE: That word verification ‘CAPTCHA’ thing does nothing to keep the meanies out. It only keeps out spam robots—the ones trying to sell Ukrainian porn and knock-off handbags. Your spam filter also works on bots, and it’s usually just as good as the CAPTCHA. The rest you can delete yourself.

But CAPTCHA will keep out commenters. I highly recommend turning it off.

Monitoring your comments will keep the nasty comments from appearing on your blog, but it also prevents any type of conversation in the thread, and comes across as amateurish and paranoid, so I don’t suggest monitoring comments on your newest posts unless you’re under a severe meanie attack.

What about you, scriveners? Have you had any encounters with these people? How did you handle it? Do you have any disrupters to add to the list?

Next week, on February 15^th, I’ll be visiting Romance University, where I’ll be talking about introducing your protagonist. On Sunday February 26th, Ruth Harris will be at the helm here, talking about how to write fiction based on factual events. 

VALENTINE BLOG HOP: Click the pink box on the right for our Val Hop page. You have two more days to enter for some pretty amazing prizes.

INDIE CHICKS ANTHOLOGY: This week's great episode, from Cheryl Bradshaw is here. 

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