Why I Write Negative Reviews
Chuck Wendig said something interesting recently, about why it's a bad idea for authors to write bad reviews. Now, I'm pretty sure by "bad reviews" Chuck - who is a very smart and thoughtful guy, as well as being a superb writer - meant "hatchet jobs", and he's right. There's no point in ever writing one of those, whether you're an author or not, because they're wasted effort. They tend to piss off the target, they waste your word count (as Chuck notes), and they don't actually provide actionable intel to the audience of the review. I mean, sure, they're fun, in a brief, Hulk-like catharsis sort of way, but chasing the wittiest bon mot in the dogpile is not the sort of thing that produces any sort of lasting career boost.
But if you take "bad review" to mean "negative review", I have to part ways with Chuck. He makes good points: that you should be writing your own stuff instead, that you're potentially costing another writer sales, that fans of the literary turdball you just launched into McCovey Cove might see your byline on your next book and thing "I'm not buying anything from that meanie". But I think, as someone who's been doing reviews for multiple publications for a good decade or so, that not writing bad reviews actually does more damage.
Because if the only reviews you write are good ones, you're being dishonest to the audience for those reviews. Write honestly about everything that comes down the pike - not viciously, but honestly - and you might just gain readers who appreciate your insight and approach, instead of losing the knee-jerk fans who don't want to hear anything bad about their favorites. I started reading Spider Robinson and Tom Easton, not because of their fiction, but because I enjoyed their book review columns in Analog back when I was in high school, and wanted to hear more of their auctorial voices.
But more important, I think, is the impression you can accidentally create. If you only write reviews of the good stuff, then everything you don't review automatically gets seen as potentially being bad stuff. Because, well, you don't touch the bad stuff in print, and you didn't touch God-Emperor of Pern, so it's at least reasonable to assume that you thought God-Emperor of Pern was bad stuff. Never mind that even the most productive reviewer gets snowed in by ten times as much material as they can reasonably discuss, and that there's going to be tons of good stuff that slips through the cracks. If you make it policy to only review positively, then there will be those who assume that anything you don't hit...was a miss.
I'd rather not give that impression. I'll cheerfully review both positively and negatively, even when it means struggling for far longer than I'd like with a review of a book that I loathed so I can say something useful about it, even when it means slogging through 800 pages of a slow ride to a place I've already been to make sure I did in fact read every damn word of the thing I'm going to be talking about. Far easier in those cases to ditch the book and scotch the review, and move on to something more fun to read and write about. Because if I tackle the whole spectrum, the assumption as to what I'm leaving out can't default to "bad stuff". It can only be described as "stuff I haven't gotten to yet", and that's fairer to other authors than merely taking a few special works into my charmed circle.
So as long as I keep reviewing, I'll review the good and the bad. There's no other way to do the job fairly. That doesn't mean I'll resort to chainsaws - even with the books I hate most, I always try to provide a rationale for disapproval and a suggestion as to who might enjoy the work as it is. But it does mean that I will serve the readers, editors and subjects of my reviews as fairly and as honestly as I know how - because in my opinion, that's best for all of us.
But if you take "bad review" to mean "negative review", I have to part ways with Chuck. He makes good points: that you should be writing your own stuff instead, that you're potentially costing another writer sales, that fans of the literary turdball you just launched into McCovey Cove might see your byline on your next book and thing "I'm not buying anything from that meanie". But I think, as someone who's been doing reviews for multiple publications for a good decade or so, that not writing bad reviews actually does more damage.
Because if the only reviews you write are good ones, you're being dishonest to the audience for those reviews. Write honestly about everything that comes down the pike - not viciously, but honestly - and you might just gain readers who appreciate your insight and approach, instead of losing the knee-jerk fans who don't want to hear anything bad about their favorites. I started reading Spider Robinson and Tom Easton, not because of their fiction, but because I enjoyed their book review columns in Analog back when I was in high school, and wanted to hear more of their auctorial voices.
But more important, I think, is the impression you can accidentally create. If you only write reviews of the good stuff, then everything you don't review automatically gets seen as potentially being bad stuff. Because, well, you don't touch the bad stuff in print, and you didn't touch God-Emperor of Pern, so it's at least reasonable to assume that you thought God-Emperor of Pern was bad stuff. Never mind that even the most productive reviewer gets snowed in by ten times as much material as they can reasonably discuss, and that there's going to be tons of good stuff that slips through the cracks. If you make it policy to only review positively, then there will be those who assume that anything you don't hit...was a miss.
I'd rather not give that impression. I'll cheerfully review both positively and negatively, even when it means struggling for far longer than I'd like with a review of a book that I loathed so I can say something useful about it, even when it means slogging through 800 pages of a slow ride to a place I've already been to make sure I did in fact read every damn word of the thing I'm going to be talking about. Far easier in those cases to ditch the book and scotch the review, and move on to something more fun to read and write about. Because if I tackle the whole spectrum, the assumption as to what I'm leaving out can't default to "bad stuff". It can only be described as "stuff I haven't gotten to yet", and that's fairer to other authors than merely taking a few special works into my charmed circle.
So as long as I keep reviewing, I'll review the good and the bad. There's no other way to do the job fairly. That doesn't mean I'll resort to chainsaws - even with the books I hate most, I always try to provide a rationale for disapproval and a suggestion as to who might enjoy the work as it is. But it does mean that I will serve the readers, editors and subjects of my reviews as fairly and as honestly as I know how - because in my opinion, that's best for all of us.
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