Graeme Rodaughan's Blog: Writing The Metaframe War Series - Posts Tagged "optimism"

Here's my attitude and advice about negative comment about my books.

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Scroll down to the community reviews and filter on the "1 star," reviews.

There are 3161 of them today.

Stephen King has sixteen times more 1 star ratings on one book than I have total ratings for all my books.

Here's the bottom line, negative comment, snarky comment, etc, indicates that my book is reaching more people.

If my marketing is successful, I will attract one star reviews. The fact I don't have 1 star reviews is not an indication that my books are marvelous (and I love my books and I love the stories I tell, but I'd be kidding myself if I thought that they were for everyone), but that my marketing is not reaching enough people.

When my marketing is successful, I'll start getting 1 star reviews.

I'd love to have 1000 one star ratings at 1% of my total ratings. Let's add in 4000 two star ratings at 4%, for a total set of critical reviews of 5% (like the Salem's Lot profile) for 100,000 ratings.

If I have 100,000 ratings for A Subtle Agency, I've sold 10,000,000 books. I've paid the mortgage. I've retired from the day job, and I'm writing full time, and producing three books a year instead of one.

The day I get my first genuine 1 star review, I'm breaking open a bottle of champagne as my marketing is beginning to reach enough people to find those inspired to criticize my books.

Today is a good day to get a 1 star review.

(H/t to Klingon philosophy...)