Using Critical Reviews as Resources

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Wired’s founding executive editor Kevin Kelly stated that if writers and other artists have “one thousand true fans” then they’re able to sustain a living from their art.

I don’t honestly know how many true fans I have (and I prefer calling them readers instead of fans) but I know I get nearly-daily emails from readers.

And I do know one true ‘fan’.  She is, actually, my number one fan (no Stephen King reference intended).  She is also my number one critic.  Since she doesn’t have a public presence, I won’t call her out by giving her name online.

She started emailing me over a year ago, giving me feedback on various books in various series. She has mentioned reading each of my books numerous times.

I’m almost positive that she knows my characters better than I do.

The emails start off with a list of things she enjoyed about the book and end with things she hadn’t enjoyed or character issues she questioned.  Sometimes she’d mention absent recurring characters or elements that I had used in other books in the series that hadn’t appeared in the most recent book.

I always wrote her back, thanking her for reading my books and for her feedback.  And when I had a new release, I knew she’d be emailing me within the week with a detailed critique.

I’d wait for her feedback with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension.  Because…there was nothing I could do.  The book was published and, aside from small corrections, I wasn’t planning to go back into the document to add scenes or rewrite large portions of the book.  But she always had such good points.

Finally I decided that I was approaching the situation the wrong way. Here was a very perceptive reader who loved my books and had constructive, heartfelt criticism of my work.  Why on earth didn’t I just shoot the book over to her before I published it?  Let her be a beta reader.

I emailed the reader and asked politely if she might be interested in an advance copy of the manuscript.  I said a downside would be that it wouldn’t be formatted for Kindle yet (I know that’s her preferred way to read) and wouldn’t be professionally edited prior to her reading.  I cautioned her that I may not use some or any of her suggestions but that I was very interested in hearing her thoughts.  And I mentioned that she wouldn’t feel she had to spend any additional time reading the material than she usually did.

My experiment worked out really well.  I used roughly 75% of her suggestions to improve and tweak the book.  She was excited to get an advance copy for free and I was excited to get a preview of a critical review.  I sent her a free copy of the finished book and thanked her in the acknowledgments.

There have been recent, widely reported incidents of writers behaving badly in the face of bad or sometimes somewhat unfair reviews.

When I hear these stories, I’m always surprised.  Not because bad reviews don’t sting (they can and do), but because they frequently present an opportunity for the author in terms of reader base research and areas that might require improvement (especially if it’s a chorus of complaints targeting specific story or character elements).

Besides enlisting a reviewer as a beta, I’ve used critical reviews to gauge reader reactions to suspense, humor, character arcs, and other elements of various books.

I think if we look at our worst, constructive reviews as opportunities for improvement, it gives us the necessary distance and objectivity to find the usefulness in the reviews and overcome the sting.

If you’ve received negative reviews (as I have), what’s been your strategy in dealing with them?

Image: MorgueFile: JDurham

 

 

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