And they hated it. :( I was a little shaken up by the abruptness considering it's the third day since its launch and he only read 2 chapters. But I checked the reviewer's account, and he has a history of reviewing poorly in the genre that I'm in (fantasy).
Authors, what's a good coping strategy for bad reviews?
(Posted on r/books, told me to post it here instead.)
Posted Dec 7, 2023, 12:46 AM UTC
Don't read comments or reviews. You created something, let it exist on its own now. Work on the next thing.
True, I want to, but first things first is promotion. :p
Promote your work, don't read comments or reviews. Have fun!
Think of all the well-regarded and great media you hate.
For example, I don't like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones. I have bad taste I guess. Everyone loves that stuff, and me not liking it makes no impact on how good it actually is.
I'm sure there is great stuff you hate too.
There is no dispute in taste.
Yeah, you have a point. I guess I was unlucky with this guy finding my book.
Luck is the real deal.
If you posted your book details on Reddit, you could have been hit by the troll. Someone has been going around leaving one star reviews on indie books posted on Reddit.
Yikes. That's pretty scary. Indie authors definitely need good first impressions.
If it had been boring, people would have ignored it. It prompted somebody to react.
Bad reviews are part of the game. Wear them like a badge of honor :)
Definitely true, but I didn't think it would be so early in the game.
Bad luck. You will get better reviews. :)
Brutal honesty time… Most self published books are garbage and there’s a pretty good chance, yours, in its current state is not the rare outlier.
I know you’re bummed and trying to grasp at straws like, ‘this guy gives a bunch of fantasy books low ratings’ but what you’re not realizing is that he’s someone who likely reads a lot of fantasy and believes there could be good stuff in self publishing so is wading through the crap looking for it.
There’s good advice to not bother reading reviews but for someone new and unvetted through traditional avenues there could be good points in those reviews if the work is badly written.
I glanced at your prologue and it was rough. Your first sentence is just nonsense that doesn’t have anything to do with that paragraph or your story. The second has a glaring grammatical error (you describe your character as “a residence” when the context clues hint you weren’t being metaphorical there. This is the beginning of your story. Most readers will close the preview and move on at that point. The rest of the prologue has similar issues, it’s not tight, reads like an authors note on the background of a character and then it just jumps over a year in the few paragraphs that are there.
Some people do very well with badly written books but they’re usually celebrities or influencers and their audiences don’t care about quality. Everyone else needs to work harder if they want to find an audience and positive reception for their works.
I get the thesaurus comment as well now that I've given it a once over. I agree with your criticisms and encourage OP to look at what purple prose is.
As an aside, it's really cringe and self insert af to give your MC your name, that would immediately stop me from reading.
I agree with everything u/GwenAundomiel said. The prologue is essentially unreadable as is and could use a lot of work. I know its easy to say "well even Tolkein gets bad reviews" or to dismiss the review as "abrupt" but I think this is a good opportunity to work on your craft.
Also, the review itself is very fair, considering what I have read. They didn't say they "hated" it either, they offered specific criticism, gave an example, and even said they would push through.
This is the kind of feedback that beta readers or critique partners would give too, and is something that you can catch next time. Because when you write your next book, it will be better if you take this kind of feedback into account.
I'm not very far into the book, but after the initial exposition in chapter 1 I've found this to be a very rough read. It feels like the author stared at a thesaurus for every sentence to add as much description as possible.
Example:
"...Jared captured the image of an intricate dragon of which the wings took an outstretched extension"
This is incredibly difficult to read, too many words are used instead of simply "Jared saw an image of a dragon with it's wings spread". It takes forever to get to whatever the subject of that sentence is and makes reading the book a chore. So far, every line is like this and shows no sign of improvement.
I'm not sure if this is a translation issue, or perhaps the author paid the wrong editor but I'm going to try and push through the start and hope it gets better, if it does I'll be back to upgrade my review.
Now i almost want to hve you read my books and see what you think hahahaha
Fuck ‘em
Don't listen to everyone saying to ignore reviews. You won't grow like that. Especially in this case. Im sorry to say this, I know it's not what you want to hear, but after reading the first 2 chapters in the sample, I agree with Brett. You use exclusively purple prose, to the point where there are probably tens of thousands of unnecessary words. They don't add anything and just makes it more tiring to read.
You need extensive rewrites, and it is clear that there hasn't been any editing done, considering there was a major grammatical mistake in the first paragraph or two.
Might be challenging for you though, since purple prose seems to be deeply ingrained in your writing style, but please look it up and try to find ways to improve. Basically be more direct in your writing, and use something like pro writing aid, as it can detect overly complex sentences, and also grammatical mistakes among many other things.
In your post asking for how to handle criticism, you've managed to attract some criticism.
I'd like to offset that somewhat by congratulating you on finishing a rather long book. That's a huge accomplishment and something you should be proud of.
(You should definitely be paying attention to the criticism in this thread though)
I think just be objective about it. It is what it is.
Once you finish writing something and put it out into the world, it's not really yours anymore. You own the rights to it, but it is at that point objectively a thing that exists in the world separate from you. It's like it has a life of its own. If you can then stop being its creator, and start looking at it objectively, then there's a lot to be learned from how people react to it.
If they only leave negative reviews, then don't take it to heart. Some people are just assholes, so try and succeed in spite of them.
You wrote a book and there are people out there reading it. Thats more than most people ever accomplish. Be proud. Not everyone is going to love it. Don’t give another thought to the ones that don’t.
Too bad so sad. Move on.
dont pay attention ignore it stuff it in a desk or smth and find someone who appreciates books
Can you DM me your book name? I’m interested to know what it’s about and actually read it.
DM'd
Bro. I see 1-5 bad reviews, i investigate- some of my favorite art pieces in writing and other media has mixed feedback. Now if you have 10+ all bad reviews thats a warning. Dont be stirred by haters. Are you reading indie books? Are you thrown off by one or two bad reviews?
For bad reviews, look for ones that have meaningful criticism. Hopefully, you're open to criticism.
It needs an editor. Rule 1 of self publishing... pay for an editor. This feels like a first or second draft. I didn't get far, but I'm not a paid editor. If you don't want an editor, join a creative writing group. They generally help workshop through things like this.
If we were in a writing group together, and you brought me the prologue, here's what I would say:
There are a lot of unnecessary comparisons, and adjectives that feel extra. I think that's what the thesaurus guy means. Here's one that stuck out for me.
"With his impatient annoyance brightening like the moon, his thorough explanation gave his doctor a more comprehensive scan that would be best, and the doctor agreed with wholehearted approval."
When you boil away the fluff, the sentence reads: "His explanation gave his doctor a scan. The doctor agreed." And that doesn't make sense, because the explanation can't give a scan. It could convince the doctor to agree to a scan, which is what I think you meant, from the context around the sentence.
There's a lot of telling, rather than showing here. I wouldn't say the doctor agreed wholeheartedly, especially since the patient was impatient and annoyed. I wouldn't say that the annoyance brightened, especially like the moon. Why are we talking about the moon? It would be better if a scene was set where Jared receives the bad news. Or skip it, and just open with Jared coming to terms with it. The C word is heavy enough and relatable as a huge thing without having to rely on much background. You could show us the argument. Have him ask for a second opinion. Have the Dr. argue back, that these tests are always conclusive. Then Jared comes to terms, maybe showing how angry he is.
And one minor thing... if it's a common turn of phrase, use it. You don't have to fluff up things or change it by turning phrases like "planned to get a second opinion to "planned on visiting a second doctor for a variance of opinion." You can be concise. Brevity isn't bad.
Hope this finds you well. :)
Just because he might have hated it (assuming he isn't just a troll) doesn't mean everyone will..
Tell him you'll eat his babies and shit them down his throat, obviously.
If you post that as an actual author reply, I'll buy your $4.99 book on principle.
Yo OP, you've gotta do it. I read the review and guy deserves it. His complaint may be legitimate, but the rating is too low for his reasoning. Guy is just a prick who gets off on being a wannabe critic. I'll check your book out and let you know if it sucks or not, no worries. Congratulations on getting your work out there.
Criticism is a weird thing to deal with. Many times it will be obvious which ones are actually worth giving attention to. Like this one sounds like one of those times where like you said they have a history of bad reviews so why let it get to you when your book is just another thing to add to the list of things this person hates? They seem to hate everything so why expect your book to be any different for them?
Don't read them. Reviews aren't for the authors they're for other readers.
Too late, lol. But yeah probably won't be reading more bad reviews. It definitely drains you.
Did the criticism ring true for you? Can you learn anything from it? Or was it just some AH leavining a bag of flaming poop on your doorstep?
The guy said that my writing is akin to cramming a thesaurus in every opportunity.
I can't really get anything from that, but I'll fix parts of it if it's confusing for them to read.
I’m sorry you got a review like that, but I think there’s a lot you can do with that comment. Being over-wordy can definitely impact immersion and flow, especially for fantasy readers who generally are there for plot more often than prose.
A general rule is that if a simple word will suffice, there has to be a reason for using a more complicated one. Those reasons can be almost anything, but there does have to be one. I actually see it quite frequently—an author will discover a cool word and try to incorporate it into their story but it just doesn’t work. Better to just put that word in your mind vault and wait until your story demands it, when no other word will do!
And it can be a trade off… a more complex word might seem to be more accurate but sometimes you have to ask yourself if that accuracy is worth altering your pacing and immersion for.
That being said, maybe the reviewer was just looking for something different than your style. In that case there’s nothing you can do but shrug it off.