Hey, Negative Reviewers: Get Your Facts Straight!
So, yeah I got my first negative review on Coming Home, and I know there will be more to come–you can’t please everyone all the time, you know. However, if someone is going to leave a bad review it would be nice if it was pertinent, helpful, or not downright incorrect. So, since Amazon didn’t have pre-orders until just last week, and because I have no clue how long a sample is, I put the first four pre-edited chapters of Taken at the end. Normal right? A good deal too, huh? Well, one person thought it was one chapter of preview–first mistake–and that the preview consisted do 1/4 of the book! Okay… I double checked and it was only 14%, so that reviewers math is a it off. Even so, why would some one complain about four free chapters of a pay book? When I looked at the persons other reviews I saw they were for almost all free books, so I surmised the reviewer was mad she had to pay 2.99 for the second book, four chapters of which she already got for free. I don’t know about you, but I think the 100k+ words between the two books is completely worth the 2.99, not to mention the third book will be free as well … That is if I can get Amazon to put it up as such–that’s a battle in itself.
The person also claimed there was to much info in the book … say what!? I deliberately glossed over a ton of stuff just so I wouldn’t bog the story down. Sure there is a bit of explanation here and ther, but I couldn’t NOT explain everything :/ Of course, when I did look at the books the person reviewed they were all around 10-20k each.
So, all in all my thought are this: If you are going to negatively review a book, make sure it is a word count you are comfortable with, be detailed as to what you thought was bad in it–don’t just say it’s trash and there is too much but then say the characters are well thought out and the idea is good … that doesn’t tell me anything–and make sure the details you are giving are accurate. Seriously people, you can’t just pull numbers out of your ass and think folks will accept it. When they see how inaccurate you are it makes you look Ill informed and not credible.
On the positive side though, poor negative reviews like that tend to boost sales lol :D
If you want to read Annan’s second book and judge for yourself be my guest. Coming Home is free on all e-readers so you’ll waste nothing but time. However, keep in mind only the Amazon version has a huge preview. The only reason I added it to that version and not the others is because I publish mainly through Smashwords and they give 20% previews of books so that is what I added of Taken to the end of Coming Home on Amazon.
