Bad reviews are a fact of life, not only in writing, but in just about every other job as well. Online, everyone from doctors to retail workers are rated and reviewed. Many businesses use surveys/customer feedback as a basis for pay raises and incentives.
No one likes to hear that they are doing a “bad” job, but no matter what or who is being reviewed, it’s only an opinion and those are subjective. One person’s amazing is another person’s blah. A great book to one is a horrible one to another.
No matter what your profession, don’t let bad reviews get you down. If the review has valid points, then use them to improve yourself. If you don’t agree with the criticism, forget about it and move on.
Sometimes reviews can be biased. For example, I’ve seen a one star review given from one author to another. That same author who left one star left a five star review of her own book. Interesting to say the least.
Regarding legitimate reviews (unlike the one above), some people will love your work, some people will hate it, and others might not have strong feelings about it either way. That’s life. You can’t change the fact that bad reviews happen, but only you can decide to persevere and stay positive about your writing.
Find out what other authors on the MFRW 52-Week Blog Hop think here.
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I’m an author and I leave reviews for many of the books I read. I don’t compare anyone’s books to mine (nor do I review my own books). I do my best to keep the reviews objective and informational: plot holes, banal dialogue, wandering apostrophes, missing/wrong words, information dumps, etc. When a book wows me, I’ll mention that, too.
As Holly pointed out, we authors are more sensitive to quality issues than most readers. I try to keep that in mind, but it kind of pisses me off when I read a book and see the author hasn’t bothered to educate herself on her craft before putting her book out there, as this drags the reputation of our genre down. Sometimes I wonder, has she never read a good romance novel? I’m not talking about differences in taste, but egregious craft issues like Holly mentions above, stuff that any published author in any genre should know. That said, if I can’t give an honest 4-star review, I won’t post it–out of a sense of author solidarity, I suppose. Readers have no such code, nor should they.
Holly, the reviews you’re leaving sound genuinely helpful to both readers and writers.
Sadira, I see your points. A few errors in a story do not bother me. I’ve seen them in all sorts of books from indie to traditionally published ones. I’ve seen them in my own work after publication and have winced, especially when they’re not something that a publisher could or would fix after publication. If a story is riddled with errors to the point of being distracting, but is still interesting, then I hope the writer will continue to improve. I agree that trying to offer the best product possible is important and hopefully what most writers strive for.