What’s In A Bad Review?

Moving past the “this sucks” portion of the event, potentially a lot.  That you can learn from.  Because, if you read these reviews closely, the problem may not be with your book.  But, rather, with how its content ultimately matched with consumers’ expectations of what its content was supposed to be.  Are they really complaining about the writing itself–about any actual defects in technical execution, or in storytelling–or are their issues broader?  As in, are they objecting to too much sex, or violence?

If it’s the latter, then you can fix this problem pretty easily.

If, of course you’re self-published and thus have the luxury of controlling how your book is shelved.

The entirety of The Assassin‘s bad reviews, across continents, all shared one major theme: it wasn’t (initially) shelved in romance and people thought it should be.  They wanted a Hitman franchise-esque installment only with even less sex.  With hard-boiled white men and loving, paragraphs long descriptions of weddings.  Instead, there was…romance.  Which, admittedly, made up only part of the story.  There was (is) also gruesome violence.  And descriptions of new, exciting, and faraway places.  But, as I’ve discussed before, romance is de facto exclusionary.  Once a book contains it, it has to be shelved as romance.  Even if it, primarily, isn’t.  Which is why there are so many sub-categories to the genre: everything from science fiction romance to swords and armor romance to steampunk romance to biker gang romance.

Giving people the opportunity to avoid strong female characters (as opposed to props in tit armor), internal dialogue, and sex means avoiding some of these negative reviews.  Of course, negative reviews will still happen but you’re a lot better off if they’ve got something to do with the actual book.  “There was sex in this and I didn’t want to read a story with sex in it” isn’t the most useful use of one star and it certainly doesn’t help sell your book to others.  Whereas some negative reviews, believe it or not, actually do.

Even so, enough bad reviews can torpedo a book’s chances.  And then the question becomes, what to do now?  As I’m currently dealing with this issue re: two books, The Assassin and The Price of Desire, I’ll have to let you know.  But there’s an Iroquois saying, the two most powerful warriors are patience and time.  Some books take a long time to find their audience.  Some books never do.  And that, I think, for a writer, has to be okay.

Not every book is going to garner equal commercial success, but for many of us that’s not even the point.  The hurt of rejection can feel almost like somebody telling you your baby is ugly.  You want people to see what you see, to feel what you feel, more than you necessarily want their money (or anyone’s).  Because, even if some of us are lucky to eventually make a living doing this, the average writer–regardless of how they’re published–doesn’t and that’s not why we chose a career in the arts to begin with.

Thoughts?