Saturday, June 13, 2009

Dealing with Negative Reviews as an Author

If you are a short story writer or a novelist, not everyone is going to appreciate your work. In fact, some folks might downright hate it. And a lot of them are very vocal, especially online. They might right reviews on Amazon, or they might write reviews for other Web sites having to do with books, publishing, writing, etc.

Some of the reviews are going to make you angry. Why couldn't that idiot see the genius of what you were doing? Some reviews might make you sad. Why did that reviewer have to be a meany and hurt your feelings when he or she doesn't even know you?

It happens. The best advice I can give you is to get over it. Everyone has their opinions, and not all of them are going to match with yours.

If you're overly touchy about your writing, don't even bother reading the reviews. Just stay away from them. If you can hack it, then go ahead and read the reviews, take any positive criticism you can find, remember to put it to work in the future if you can and move on.

That's the best thing you can do. Sulking about reviews isn't going to help get your next story written. Crying over reviews is only going to hurt and stilt your potential.

Just remember, human beings often have a capacity to focus on the negative. For every bad review you may receive, there were probably 20 people who liked your story or book just fine, but they didn't comment. It might seem unfair, but it's often how life works.

And remember you can help out others by leaving positive reviews for books and stories you've read. What goes around comes around, the old saying goes, and maybe a little of that will come back to you.

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