How to React to a Negative Review

First, prepare to be surprised. No one will react to your book exactly as you intend or imagine. The reason for that is that writing (and reading) is attempted communication between alien worlds. Your interpretation of the words you use is not identical to that of your readers because your experience is different. Our unique experience has taught us our meaning for concepts, phrases, and individual words. Our mind is a pattern-identifying thing. It interprets new experience in the context of our unique old experience. For example, if I use “June Cleaver” as a descriptive term for a character, I may admire her as a mother to her children, a counselor to her husband, and the keeper of the hearth. You may pity her for her subordinate role, or be angry at the sexism that relegated her to the role. Alternatively, you may not know who the heck “June Cleaver” is. What I intended to convey may not be at all what I intended, in which case what I wrote did not work for you. Sometimes we fail to connect. That’s life.

Second, stay positive. After all, someone took the time and trouble, not only to give you a read, but also to think about your book. It has been my experience that a bad review almost always provokes someone else to write one in refutation. Note: let others defend you. Don’t do it yourself. You will seem petty and unprofessional.

Third, learn something. Even if an unkind review is more negative than you think it deserves, see if you can discern the reason for the criticism. It may be that the reviewer is ignorant, opinionated, and primarily pumping his own ego. However, it could be that your skills need honing, or your book needed another edit, or it had holes in the plot. If you are like me, you never believe that your work is perfect, or even finished to the best of your ability. A true artist sees more and more wrong the longer he is finished with his work.

In conclusion, remember that we began by defining the writing/reading exchange as attempted communication between alien worlds. Sometimes a story just doesn’t work for a particular reader. True, that may be the reader’s fault, not ours. Nevertheless, we have failed to communicate. Look carefully at the places where you and your reviewer failed to connect. Maybe there is something there that you can use to do better next time.