Are 1 star reviews really that helpful?

[[deleted user]]

Wow, this thread is rather mind boggling.

I think one star reviews can be as helpful as any because criticism helps you become a better a writer. However, some books piss some people off. My work has done it to a few people and quite a few authors have lit my fuse as well.

With that being said; I don't take bad reviews personally. Writing is an art form and art is always subjective. One person will love your book and another will hate it; it's just nature of how things work.

As a self-published author it's your job to put out the best product you can for the reader. No, you aren't going to catch every typeo or mistake; major publishers aren't able to achieve this feet, but making excuses for having a book filled with elementary mistakes is ridiculous. Don't blame the reader when they call you out on it; fix your book and learn from the experience.

[Ian]

Linda wrote "What I do expect, and will give no quarter on..."

Love that phrase. You hear it so rarely these days.

I'm still fairly new to all this and am constantly shocked by the way some authors react to negative reviews. I've seen a few (really just a couple) unfair reviews where the reviewer clearly had some sort of motive behind their negativity. For the most part, reviews are just honest opinions. I'm grateful for the critiquing I've gotten in my reviews. I'd like to publish another book someday and know that the constructive criticism I have received will help me to make it better.

[[deleted user]]

See, I always do that.

In my brain I know it's F-E-A-T, but I always type F-E-E-T.

I must have a fetish for feet that has yet to surface.

[Rose]

Paul wrote: "See, I always do that.

In my brain I know it's F-E-A-T, but I always type F-E-E-T.

I must have a fetish for feet that has yet to surface."

LOL XD

Cursed homophones. I do it with certain words as well.

[Rebecca]

Rose wrote: "Paul wrote: "See, I always do that.

In my brain I know it's F-E-A-T, but I always type F-E-E-T.

I must have a fetish for feet that has yet to surface."

LOL XD

Cursed homophones. I do it with c..."

And so the sordid truth comes out: we hire editors to hike our psychoses.

[Rebecca]

Yow. I guess that reveals the truth about me--because I really would rather be hiking!

[David]

Linda wrote: "David:

No, I would not take a vehicle back over a single misspelled word any more than I would one-star a book over a single misspelled word. That's never been the point.

The point is that if a ..."

I'm not asking anyone to give me their money. I've even offered my books for free on occasion. So money is not the issue. The issue is I spend countless hours on editing all for what? To get more critique. No matter how great my book may be, it's demise is due to a few "badly written" sentences? Next time I will just put down a bunch of words and have no plot whatsoever if that's what you care about the most.

I don't handle criticism well. Sure if you inbox me and say "David your book is good but I highlighted a few mistakes you may want to fix." I will listen and gladly fix those errors. What I don't care for is input from people who refuse to read my books because I'm not an English scholar. Again I am open to critique as long as it's from people who are supportive and respectful. I have no problem sending the pdf or word file to someone to highlight the errors for me to fix. I just don't want it from someone argumentative,arrogant and stubborn. I've had people come up to me and ask to edit for me, but they have made life misrible, criticizing me about everything from my writing to the way I sleep. I can't work with someone like that.

Yes, I do care about the description errors, but again no one has offered to come forward and help me with it (free of charge) I am NOT aware of it's errors. Again you guys are assuming I'm some college graduate with a background in writing. I haven't been in grade school in over 12 years, college in over 5. naturally with the little I know about grammar I will make mistakes. Part of being human.

I have not spent 17 hours editing the description. And again I have been 3 years unemployed I can barely afford gum from a gas station. I can not afford an editor so until someone develops a warm heart and does or at least point them out for me it for free. This is the way it will have to stay.

[Marília]

I'm not sure exactly why I'm stepping into this discussion, but several things that were said by several people made me think about myself.

I understand David's problem (I'm staying away from the empathize/sympathize discussion because I think something got lost in translation for me). I have the same problem in not knowing when something is wrong. It's very frustrating, at least that's how I feel. When you read the same thing over and over and to you it seems fine, how are you going to know it's not if no one tells you specifically what is not fine?

It may come across as laziness and maybe that's the problem, but sometimes it is just lack of knowledge. And it is hard to get help in that department if you don't have money or friends who can help.
I don't think it's a matter of having different standards exactly, but a matter of recognizing differences in what you criticize. I'm going to make a silly comparison and I hope no one yells at me for it, but here goes: As much as I try, I'm never going to be a great volleyball player because I'm too short, but I love playing volleyball and I don't want to give it up even though I'll never be great at it. If someone wants to give me pointers that have nothing to do with my height, that's great. Back to books, I'm all for constructive criticism, even if it is inside a 1-star review (though I'm pretty sure I'll cry when I get one), but the key word would be constructive.

I did find a few typos after I had reviewed my first book a hundred times (about 18 times), and there are mistakes still there, as one of the kind people who left me a review stated - and if I knew what they were, I would fix them. After I finished my first book, I learned I'm not very good with commas and the way I punctuate dialog is wrong. I honestly had never noticed, but now that someone has pointed it out, I'm doing my best to study my mistakes and fix them. And I have started correcting my books, but they are already out there because I honestly thought they were finished. I don't know if that makes me seem lazy, but I spent almost 10 months trying to get someone to look at the first book when it was finished and help me correct it since I had gone as far as my knowledge of English would allow me. When I found no one to help, it was either publish or hold on to it indefinitely. Some people may think it was wrong of me to publish it that way, and I'm not sure whether they're wrong or not. I do know that, had I not published it, I wouldn't have learned all the things I did afterwards.
Sorry about the rambling, and I hope I didn't throw any logs into the fire (maybe I'm just sleepy, but I don't remember if that expression exists in English).

[Alexes]

Marilia, I'm glad you posted here. I hope I won't offend you with what I'm going to say. Quickly, I will tell you that I couldn't finish your book--even though I was very interested in the story--because your attributions were set as separate sentences, which drove me crazy. I also thought you way over-wrote your sentences and repeated information, but that's a matter of taste and some readers like that. The thing is, there are books at the library and sites online that will teach you punctuation. If you read American, English, or Australian books, you will see how dialog is ascribed. I'm surprised that in ten months you couldn't find a local-to-you critique group or find one online. Agent/Author Query list people looking for critique partners. Here in Southern California, Craig's list always has writing groups looking for members listed. My sister lives in a small town in Utah (pop. 200) and they have a writers group. Your problem may have been not knowing how to find the resources you need. Which is too bad, because you've created a cleaver and interesting story, but your book is hard (impossible for me) to read. If I were in your shoes, I'd line up a crit group or crit partner to start, pull the book from Amazon and any other outlets, clean up the manuscript, and resubmit as a fresh product. At the very least, get some books on grammar and how to prepare a manuscript. You have talent. You're doing yourself a disservice to have created this original story but to have presented it in a way that turns off your readers. Best of luck to you.

[Brian]

One book on grammar for me that was really good and a lot of fun to read is Eats Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. There's probably a copy available through your local library. I do understand on being broke. When I first started writing fiction I was on food stamps. Still am on LEAP in fact. You're probably going to need to study a little grammar like I did.

Did you know, that the first Harry Potter book was never edited? Why would such a thing be? It turns out that Rowling was on public assistance at the time. She couldn't afford a pack of gum either and because she was unproven as a writer the publisher wouldn't put out money for an editor either. Of course now she could buy out the entire gum factory but not back then.

[Ian]

I am a high school dropout who drives a truck for a living. I only say this because I want people to understand where I'm coming from here. I'm not some over-educated elitist that believes you're not "allowed" to write if you don't have an English doctorate. I've run into a couple of them and find them insufferable. That being said, if you don't have a basic grasp on grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure, you shouldn't be writing books. I'm not saying never, but you do need to work on those things first. If you have a great story to tell, you're doing yourself and your readers a disservice by telling it when you're not ready. I did miss a few things in my first book, but you can count them on one hand (maybe two, you might need to involve a couple toes) If it's every sentence, or even every paragraph, I'm sorry, but you have work to do before you write any more books.

[Karma♥Bites ^.~]

Well said, Ian.

I always find it interesting whenever I see lack of higher education given as an excuse (and yes, I see it as an excuse, vs. explanation) for poor writing. Basic grammar, punctuation, and syntax (sentence structure) are taught and supposedly learned by the time one leaves grammar/primary/grade/middle school. This knowledge is not limited to university graduates or English scholars. Heck, a HS degree isn't required.

If motivated enough, people can overcome a lot, find ways to teach themselves, and get ahead somehow. There are RL examples of this: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162... and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Murray; and http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/07/us/from...)

Books are precious to me because they continually re-affirm what I could easily forget (especially re: foreign languages). I may have learned the basics in primary school but reading books taught me much more than school lessons. By reading books for pleasure, I also learned—consciously or unconsciously—new words, plays on words, simple to complex sentence structures, etc. And reading well-written books meant that I absorbed the correct information.

There are free resources, the least of which is the public library. The availability of digital lending makes this an even more convenient option. But worst case, one can read on-line articles on certain sites for examples of proper English.

And David, "it's" is the contraction form of "it is". I believe that you meant to use "its" = possessive form.

[Sharon]

I would like to share an outstanding resource that is available on-line for free. I used to keep a hard copy of this excellent primer at my desk when I was a newspaper editor (yes, sometimes even editors have questions). The Complete Plain Words may be found on-line at this link.

I must admit that I'm part of the group who finds people posting from computers that they can't afford to learn grammar. Your computer will take you to any number of places, not the least of them educational sites that cost nothing to access. For goodness' sake, iTunes University is full of free lectures and university courses that one may view and study.

[Shaun]

Especially with the information on the internet these days, lack of education is nothing more than an excuse. There are free books and free websites. There are a lot more websites like this one, where writers and readers gather where questions can be asked and help can be requested if you ask politely. With all these resources the only thing keeping you from publishing a decent book with as few errors as possible is your own desire to work at it.

Case in point. How do I get the small mark over the letters Marila's name?

I will be one of the first to concede that getting an editor isn't necessarily cheap. My first book came to $385 for the editor and that was a friend of a family member. Prices for good editors can stretch up into several thousand dollars. As has been said though, there are critique groups and other ways you can have people look over your work. Editors can charge that much because that IS what their work is generally worth. The work of a competent editor can make or break a book and can be the difference between selling a few copies to family members or actually getting a check on a somewhat decent basis. So if you find someone who will actually edit your work for free, a barter of some kind, or a minimum fee when funds are tight; you would be a fool to turn it down and release your book unedited. There's the saying "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth." Doing so pretty much brands you as rude, ungrateful and arrogant.