The Creative Writer's Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist

Your Critics, and How to Deal with Them

128 Your Critics, and How to Deal with Them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . So, now you’re a published author! Your first book comes out, and you couldn’t be happier—that is, until people begin burning your book and throwing rocks at you. Or so it will feel. How do you combat so much ill-​ will? Should you combat it? Your Mainstream Press Critics While it’s frustrating to receive a negative book review, you should probably be thankful that the book was reviewed at all, especially given today’s climate, where so many newspaper book review sections are being reduced or eliminated altogether. What should you do when you receive a negative review? Probably nothing. It’s poor taste to write the reviewer. (A writer friend of mine told me about an author who wrote a passive-​ aggressive e-​ mail to him after my friend had written a mixed review of the author ’s book. What the writer accomplished was short-​ term satisfaction . The long-​ term result, however, is that my friend has told other writers about this exchange, which makes the author who’d written the e-​ mail look petty, especially since the review wasn’t, by any definition, all that bad.) It’s also unwise to write a letter to the editor of the newspaper complaining about the review of your book. If the letter is published, you’ll look like a whiner. In any case, your letter may cause the editor to reconsider assigning your next book to be reviewed, which might have received a positive assessment. No, it’s better to swallow it and move ahead. Bear in mind that the relationship between a reader of reviews and the reviewer is sometimes complicated. A negative review of someone else’s book doesn’t necessarily convince me not to buy the book. Oftentimes, I’m familiar with the reviewer’s other reviews and the times I’ve disagreed with him or her, so I tend to put reviews into a larger context. Other times, I’m familiar with the reviewer’s own books, and my opinion of those books may persuade me one way or the other to purchase the book that’s been reviewed. Remember the old maxim: Any press is good press. A bad review in the New York Times Book Review will still sell more copies of a book than no review in the New York Times Book Review. Getting Published 129 Your Amazon Critics I happen to believe that negative Amazon reviews (or any online bookstore that posts reviews)—reviews written by anyone who feels compelled to take the time to write one, whether they’ve actually read the book or not—have more of a detrimental effect on sales than a poor newspaper review.Why do I believe this? Because online stores such as Amazon thrive on the serendipitous nature of shopping . In other words, we are constantly being tempted by other, possibly more interesting books while we’re looking for a specific title, and if, after clicking on the title we’ve been searching for, we find a gathering of one-​ star reviews, our eyes are likely to wander to all of the other books being offered in the “Customers Who’ve Bought This Book Have Also Bought This Book” section. Think about it. If we go into an actual bricks-​ and-​ mortar store and find the book we’re looking for, there won’t be eight people standing there holding up signs with proclamations like, “Skip this one!” or “This one sucks!” But who are these people writing reviews on Amazon? What are their qualifications? A person who gave one of my books a one-​ star review gave a three-​ star review to an electric steam cleaner on the same day. To date, these are this person’s only reviews on Amazon. What compelled this person on a mid-​ December morning to write these two reviews? This person’s review of my book was, “This is a book of dark and twisted stories. I couldn’t even finish it.” I suspect , though I could be wrong, that this reviewer doesn’t read much contemporary literary fiction. The review of the steam cleaner read, “Works good but, wish it held morewater so I could clean largerareas without having to refill so often,” which only strengthens my opinion that this is a person who buys things without much investigation and then blames the maker for its perceived shortcomings. My point is that your book...