Handling Negative Reviews

[Annabell]

Four Reasons Why You Shouldn't Let Yourself Get Ruffled Up By Bad Reviews


Indie published Author L. Joseph Shosty opens up about his experience with negative reviews, how he's learned to handle them and the advice he would give to fellow authors.


More advice exists for coping with and combatting rejection than probably any other subject concerning the craft of writing. Once, articles with titles such as “Ten Ways to Survive That Rejection Letter” or “How to Write Characters That Defy Rejection!” were prevalent in industry magazines. Other topics, such as how to write or even how to edit, were overshadowed by what can really only be called a subculture, one that was about accepting and overcoming being told no. Why? Because, statistically speaking, the sheer number of would-be writers out there who never saw print, and would eventually give up, were far in excess of those who would eventually be published.

Today, things are different. Print-on-demand, self-publishing, and e-publishing have opened up dozens of new doors. More people are seeing print than ever before. The ratio of the eternally rejected to published authors is more balanced. Virtually anyone can see print, in fact. It’s not so much a question of if you’ll get published, it’s a matter of when and in what form you’ll do it.




This, however, presents a brand new problem for writers. The Internet, which has been the driving force behind the new wave of publishing, has also bridged the gap between author and reader so keenly that virtually no distance between the two remains. Feedback now comes at the speed of light, and readers are obliged to become critics. Online booksellers encourage readers to rate and review books on their websites, in fact. Bloggers regularly review books as part of their routine. Some sites, in fact, are totally devoted to book reviews. And of course, you have online book lover communities, like Shelfari and Goodreads, which use social media to connect readers like never before. This doesn’t sound like a bad thing, and it’s not. So, where, do you ask, is the problem?




The problem exists with the writer. Most of the advice out there, as I’ve said, is about how to handle rejection. Little is said, however, about what happens after you’ve punched through the editorial wall and gotten your work out there for public consumption. What happens when you get a bad review? What does getting a bad review mean? How do you cope? This article will hopefully answer some of those questions.

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