The Art of Understanding Conflicting Book Reviews

This is part of the Dissecting Reviews series, a component of my Indie Author How-To Index that’s meant to help authors learn from the reviews people leave on their novels. No, the Index is totally free. Have fun.

 

Very often, authors will get reviews that conflict with each other. One review will say they loved something, while the other will say they hated the same thing. It’s all very confusing. Some authors get hurt and lash out. Others brush this off entirely and just ignore it—but not you. You’re a professional. You want to constantly improve and constantly learn.

So what’s a professional author with thick skin like yours to do? It’s hard to learn from reviews when they contradict each other.

Well, the answer is actually pretty simple. It sucks, but it’s simple. It all boils down to preference.

Sometimes, the opinion of the masses is the same. If a bulk of your reviews comment on a certain element of your novel that is unclear or needs work, consider it. The Dissecting Reviews Indie Series is designed to help you do just that, so make sure to check out the whole string of posts.

But what about when the reviews are tied? What do you do when just as many people love something as hate it?

A review is an opinion. Bottom line. It always will be, no matter how it’s worded or who wrote it. So when you’re analyzing reviews to improve yourself as an author, you have to keep that in mind. One reviewer may have loved something another reviewer thought was cliché or underdeveloped. One reader might have detested a line of dialogue, while another reader thought that line made the book truly memorable.

In my writing classes, my professors always taught me that the author is the tie breaker. Bottom line—you get to choose. It’s your book. If just as many people love something as dislike it, you get to choose what you want to do. If you loved it, keep it. If you didn’t, change it. If you’re ambivalent…well, stop being lazy and pick a side.

 

An Example

In my debut novel Lichgates (Grimoire Trilogy #1), I’ve been walking a tightrope when it comes to the beginning of my book. Argh. I know—not a great place to have a great divide in readers. Your beginning is supposed to hook readers and draw them in. Keep them reading.

The problem with Lichgates’ beginning seems to be one of three extremes:

People love the almost-immediate action and magic.
They think I didn’t give enough exposition and character development before starting the story.
They think the beginning is too slow.

Seriously. Isn’t that a crazy range? Even I’m scratching my head, thinking…well, wow. The debate is pretty much evenly divided, so I have to pick a side.

With magical novels, the concept of the magical or paranormal needs to be introduced as soon as possible for the reader to be able to fully suspend belief. In that vein, I wrote in magical elements within the first few pages of Lichgates—at a cost. The cost was we don’t see Kara’s (one of the main characters) family or experience the life she had before she discovered the terrifying and beautiful world of Ourea that dominates the Grimoire series.

My tradeoff was exposition for action. As for it being too slow—well, this is the first in an epic trilogy. I can see how the world building could clutter the story line in parts, but I did my best to minimize that.

I personally am a rather impatient reader. I want to get to the meat of the story and discover the characters along the way. I don’t want to learn about their science classes or why they hate gymnastics until it’s relevant to the plot. Thus, how my Lichgates intro came to be.

However, plenty of successful novels have lengthy exposition. I mean, look at Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I swear that a fifth of The Fellowship of the Ring was spent in Hobbiton.

Alternatively, plenty of successful novels start out with an unexplained element that is later expounded upon. In Harry Potter, for example, we see Dumbledore in the beginning carry the infant Harry to his aunt’s house.  The magical element is introduced when he’s taking out the streetlights with his little flashlight-thing. We don’t really know who he is or what’s going on, so the reader survives on the tension-building magic and waits it out.

These conflicting examples of successful novels make me wonder what the right answer is. When I’m reading reviews that dissect my intro or just say they stopped reading, I absolutely want to consider what I could do to improve and make them happy. After all, I want to build a readership that enjoys my novels, since I’ll be writing for the rest of my life (a real writer never retries). However, I have to balance making those readers happy with the multiplicity of readers already in my target audience who think the intro works great. Ultimately, it’s up to me to weigh my reviews against my writing style to decide what I want to do with future books.

 

Important Note: I said future books. Don’t go drastically changing the content of your book between editions. Reviews teach you to improve on future novels, not the ones you’ve already published.

There are only two exceptions to that I can think of:

1) The comments are editing-related. Hire a proofreader to tweak the spelling mistakes or hire a copyeditor to fix plot inconsistencies. This can be uploaded as a new edition. However, sweeping changes in plot and characters should be avoided unless:

2) You have only a few reviews and no one is buying—that might be the only time you can unpublish and start fresh with edits. But read my whole indie index, read books, read blogs. Take the advice you like and do it right the second time. You can’t drastically change your book’s content a lot—it’s unprofessional and contributes to the “indies pub crap” mentality that I loathe with all my being.

 

 

What I Learned from Lichgates’ Conflicting Reviews

Though the rest of the Grimoire Trilogy doesn’t apply, since this is a continuing series, I will be working on tweaking my intros—among other things garnered from reviews—in my future novels. I want to push myself to strike a balance between exposition and action in the first few chapters of my novels. This is something I’ll research and look into, since I think it’s an area where I can improve as a writer. In subsequent novels, I’ll ask my editors to keep a sharp eye out for this in particular.

 

The Bottom Line

My point is: it’s all preference. When conflicting reviews aren’t really helping you, it’s ultimately your choice. Do what you think is right, and maintain both your and your book’s integrity.