I Know I Shouldn’t…

But I started looking at the reviews for Maiden Flight on Amazon. Oh, boy. First, let me preface by saying, I looked at the page to see if something my editor told me about that I’m not supposed to mention (but it may have something to do with it being free for a while *wink, wink*) had gone live yet. It hadn’t and the newest review caught my eye. It was from a fellow author who said a lot of things that had me nodding and other things about other reviews on the book that had me freaking out!

You see, a few years back, my publisher decided to give this book away for free for about a month. Up ’til that point, I mostly had good reviews for it on Amazon. Then the negative reviews started pouring in. Here’s a sample:

“i have never read a more pointless book in my life. there is absolutely no charactor development or much of a storyline at all! … . this book read like a short story and seems as though a second grader with a dirty mind wrote it. seriously my dog could write better. dont be stupid by wasting your money on this book.”

I left in her lack of punctuation and misspellings, to be fair. And kudos to her dog!

Or this…

“I was so disillusioned with this (I hate to even call it a book). It has to be one of the worst written and tragically immature hunks of garbage I’ve started in quite some time.”

Or this…

“I thought there might be dragon shape shifters, but there wasn’t any. I gave it 2 stars instead of 3 to balance out the 5 star reviews (two of whom are people I suspect get paid to review books)”

FOR THE RECORD - I have NEVER paid anyone for a review. It disgusts and alarms me that someone would assume I would. What disgusts me even more is that “5 of 7 people found this review helpful.” Yeah. Make of that what you will.

And how about this one…

“This reads like bad Eragon fanfiction and I’m sincerely glad I didn’t pay a penny to read it.”

Thanks for pointing out that you got the book for free! And again, for the record, I believe my book was published before Eragon. Maybe that’s a fanfic of mine? ;-P

And another…

“If this had not been a free book, I would want my money back.”

*sigh* Well, I’m glad I could make someone happy.

There are lots of positive reviews, but unfortunately, most of the “yes” answers to the question “was this review helpful?” seem to be people who hate me and my books. I’m not sure what that does to my rankings on Amazon, but it can’t be good, right?

I’m truly sorry that people got a freebie they turned out to hate. Unhappily, the same has happened to me in the past, but I didn’t feel it important enough that I go out and trash the writer over it. Maybe I’m just nicer, or have less free time than other people. *shrug*

Maiden Flight is about to enter another freebie period again, so I suppose I should brace myself for more bad reviews. Honestly, it’s hard to read these things. It feels like one person is holding my arms back while another delivers body blows to my abdomen. Pow, pow. Ouch!

There might also be something sinister going on. There was a lot of controversy a few months back about authors who created fake Amazon personas and went on to give their own books glowing reviews. Some even admitted to using those same personas to trash competitors. I’m not accusing anyone, but I’ve heard hints from people in the know that this has been going on with some of my books. I don’t know how much stock to put in these whispers because honestly, I’ve trained myself to mostly ignore reviews. For all the great ones, it’s the small percentage of awful ones that really stick with you and get you down. (At least it does that to me.)

But people I trust in the industry have said that my reviews have been skewed by such tactics in the past. Seeing no way to prove it, I just shrugged and moved on, but those comments have sat in the back of my mind for a while now, and actually going in and seeing the terrible things people said about this  book… well… I honestly don’t know what to think. I can only hope that karma is real.

For now, I just wanted to set the record straight about the accusation that I somehow paid for reviews. I also want to thank those readers who have enjoyed my books over the years and written reviews to that effect. (Psst – the check is in the mail. *wink*) And fair warning – the Negative Nellies will no doubt be showing up again sometime soon after Samhain does its thing and makes Maiden Flight free again for a short, promotional period. BRACE FOR IMPACT!!!

Oh, and if anyone feels motivated to go over to Amazon and hit the “like” button on the reviews they agree with (oh, boy, hope it’s not the negative ones!), you can do so by clicking here.

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