Authors, Reviews and Commenting

Most of the advice I’ve seen for authors is not to read reviews, although by no means all. I’m going to disagree and say it’s a useful practice but you’d be wise to put on your armour before you do and remember that a review is an opinion. One person’s opinion, and that person could be anybody. A review might be one backed by a great deal of education and experience in the genre or it might not. It might also be backed by some personal experience that has nothing to do with your story but which heavily colours a reviewer’s reaction to it. Be ready to take every individual review, whether it damns you or sings high praises, with a great big pinch of salt. I was, for example, quite pleased by my first five star review for The Black Mausoleum, until I read it and found it was simply an observation that the book wasn’t available for kindle. It was courteous of the gentleman who wrote it – there are plenty of one-star reviews for exactly the same reason.

It does happen that a single review, good or bad, can tell you something important about your writing. The most eviscerating review I’ve ever had is this one (we all secretly like to show off our scars). It’s an outlier review by and large and I have no idea, really, why that particular book didn’t work for that particular reviewer. But the savagery aside, he has a point in the penultimate paragraph. It’s a weakness and I won’t do it again and I kind of wish my editor had made a fuss about it. Speaking of dealing with bad reviews, there’s a half-decent piece here, which says much the same as I would say. But I’m lazy so I give you a link instead. 😛

The big trouble with taking any review in isolation is that you don’t know whether it’s an outlier or not because you’ve got nothing else to compare against. So when you your Special Forces vs. Alien Invasion novel gets slated because your sweary SAS men don’t use exactly authentic language and models of firearm, this might not matter for 99% of readers. But it might matter greatly for one person who reviewed it and so that’s what they picked on. It’s a thing you could change if you wanted to, next time, with a bit of research, but you only know that it mattered to one person.

What you need, in order to have perspective, are the ten other reviews that make no mention at all of authenticity and say things like ‘gripping pace’ and ‘furious action sequences.’ So my advice on reviews is to read them all and take each one individually (good or bad) with a huge pinch of salt and only pay attention when someone brings up something very specific. Otherwise it’s the trends that matter. One review that says your characters are great but your worldbuilding is shallow doesn’t mean all that much. Ten reviews out of ten that all say the same thing are starting to tell you something. And even if half your reviews say your worldbuilding is shallow and the other half say it’s detailed, that’s telling you something too – probably that the people who care about worldbuilding think it’s shallow and the people who don’t…don’t.

What you do with all this is up to you. Change or don’t change, the art remains yours. No one has to act on feedback but it’s generally wise to at least listen to it. Generally, I find, it’s the bad – or perhaps worst of all the mediocre – reviews that are most informative. Which leads on to the entirely other matter of commenting on a review…

Creator: “Look! I made something.”
Reviewer: “Ew! What a streaming pile of crap! My eyes, my eyes!”
Creator: “Hey, dickwad, I made this – how dare you criticise me.”
Reviewer: “That’s what a review is, dumbass.”
Reviewer runs around the internet to all her friends pointing a finger and yelling: “Look! Creator is being a jackass.”
Creator runs around the internet to all her friends pointing a finger and yelling: “Look! Reviewer is being a jackass.”
Random strangers who have no idea who either Creator or Reviewer are take up arms and renew centuries-old feuds.
Scotland breaks from the union.
Twitter breaks.
World economic collapse ensues.

This exchange helps no one, least of all other authors, thanks. I don’t buy the existence of some arbitrary distinction between “reader-space” and “author-space” but I suggest that any author who wants to comment on a review should have a good long hard think about why they feel that need and particularly why they feel that need to respond in public. A published novel has been released to an open audience who are equally entitled to speak back – and you do want reviews, right? You want people to have heard of your work. And my personal view is that a reviewer is making a choice too by placing a review in a public space such as a magazine or an open-access blog on the internet but I’d also accept there’s a difference: it’s a different sort of public space.

Publishing a novel is like posting a notice on the town noticeboard – it’s as public as can be. If you’re lucky enough to have a review in the national press then maybe that’s close to the same. A review site on the internet strikes me as more like a pub. It’s technically a public space but it has its local regular clientele and they may not appreciate your intrusion. You can walk into Mordor and jump up and down shouting, “Sauron is totally an arse” if you like but don’t be surprised when a bazillion orcs jump on you.

Sometimes someone will say something in a review that really, really pisses you off. When that happens, please just walk away for the good of all of us (and dear lord, don’t ever reply to a one-star review unless you have nothing better to do with your life than be pointlessly angry). Sometimes a reviewer will says something that’s just plain wrong (often through no fault of their own, release dates being a common one). If you feel a correction is necessary, please do so courteously and with respect even if you don’t feel like it. Now and then a reviewer will say something that makes you deeply curious as to why. Perhaps, on those occasions, a private approach would serve both parties better.

Reviews are there to be learned from, some more than others. Some reviewers are internet-jackasses and some are delightful and some just have good days and bad days and exactly the same goes for authors. We’re all humans, after all.

Editor’s Note: When the article was first posted, the links were accidently omitted. The live links have now been added in.

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