Every 10 days or so on my social media, I remind my followers to leave reviews for the books they’ve read, whether they’re my books or not. Every author deserves a review. If you’re traditionally published, good reviews and subsequent sales may determine if your publisher picks up your next book. If you’re independently published, the number of reviews you receive may mean that your publishing platform does some extra, free marketing for you.

Reviews aren’t mere pandering to an author’s ego, though they certainly give that a boost. They are reinforcements that we can write and that people do enjoy our work.

So, reviews are good.

For the most part.

Running the Risk

You always run the risk that you’ll have that one reader who disagreed with something you said in your book, who couldn’t suspend belief and accept your story, who, for whatever reason, doesn’t believe you have the “right” to write. That happens to big name, established authors, too. I’ve seen one- and two-star reviews for Stephen King and Nora Roberts. Independent authors aren’t the only ones to suffer that humiliation.

“Bad” reviews often center around sex (too much or not enough), language (filthy or not filthy enough), characters (too likable or not likable), and story (too many tropes or not enough tropes for the genre). Of course, there are also the bad reviews because an author decided to write genre fiction instead of literary and vice versa.

It goes back to the old adage that you can’t please all the people all the time.

Recently, someone gave my debut novel from 2017, A War of Deception, a three-star review. The reason? The reader read the first four chapters and declared they each read as if it were four different books, so the reader quit. Well, yes, the first four chapters of that book introduce the main characters. If the reader had given it a bit more time, I think the review might have been different.

Then, there are the trolls, people who out of spite or jealousy or whatever decide it’s incumbent upon them to not only ruin an author’s day but to “shoo” potential readers from buying the author’s books.

Several years ago, I had an editing client whose manuscript was a hot mess. I found 22 grammatical, punctuation, and stylistic errors in the first paragraph alone, but I continued for several more pages, at least 40. I decided to contact the client and explain that her manuscript was almost uneditable, and if I did edit it, it would take me much longer than what I’d estimated and therefore cost her more. I offered her the choice of my going ahead, or she could withdraw the manuscript with no charge to her for the 40 pages edited. She opted for the latter.

Some days later, a friend emailed me and said I should go look at my Goodreads page. At that point, I had five or six books out in the world, mostly short story collections. All of a sudden, each one had a one-star review with nearly identical comments along the line of “This author thinks she knows how to write, but she clearly doesn’t.”

The reviewer’s user name looked familiar, and I decided to check the email exchange I’d had with the aforementioned client. They were so similar, it couldn’t be coincidence.

Lucky for me, this was back in the day when Goodreads was responsive, so I contacted them, explained the situation, gave them the reviewer’s user name and my ex-client’s email address. A week or so later, I heard back from Goodreads that they’d looked into it and decided it was likely my disgruntled ex-client being spiteful. They took down the reviews. Wonder of wonders.

A Bruised Ego

Yes, as a writer, I’m supposed to have a thick skin, but thick skin can still bruise.

That experience left a mark, a bit of trauma to the writing ego. Indeed, so much so, I still hesitate to seek out book bloggers, even in my genre because all it takes is one who might disagree with an unconventional protagonist or my politics or the subject matter. Nor do I respond to an almost constant influx of emails and messages offering to review my books for a fee.

Recently, though, a thriller writer showed how to handle that dreaded, one-star review.

Amid dozens of four- and five-star reviews, a reader had posted a one-star review based on the “filthiest language I’ve ever seen anywhere” and that the protagonist was disgraceful for being so “horny.”

I’ve received similar comments about language I’ve used but no bad reviews because of it, and I’ve always responded that in a thriller if something goes wrong or bad, the protagonist isn’t going to say, “Oh, fudge!”

In response to her one-star review, this author posted a video and talked about it. She said almost the same thing about language in thrillers that I had. This author writes vigilante thrillers, so the themes and action aren’t, you know, Sunday School-worthy. Neither is the language. Her writing fits her genre.

She also pointed out that even in genre fiction, where maybe you get a bit more leeway with your characters, if you write a female character who enjoys her sexuality, a lot of pearl-clutching happens, because protagonists must be icons or some such nonsense.

No, characters need to be realistic, and if your protagonist likes sex, you shouldn’t make him or her celibate — unless it’s Father Brown, of course.

Her video was awesome and resonating, and all the comments she received were supportive.

What did I do?

Went right to Audible and bought an audio box set of her first three books. Yes, the language is tough. Yes, the protagonist likes sex. Yes, the themes are murder, abuse of power. Yes, the language, the sexuality, the themes are appropriate for the genre. And . . .

The books are damned good.

I went back to the author’s video to comment that I’d bought some books, only to discover many others had done the same.

This author showed the perfect way to respond to a one-star review. Oh, and not once did she say, “Go buy my books.”

This self-righteous reviewer probably thought she was discouraging people from reading good books, but she got a result she likely wasn’t bargaining for.

---

Here are some guidelines I use when I review someone’s book:

1. Say what you did and, yes, didn’t like about a character or the story itself, but keep it constructive.
2. Tell us how the book made you feel when you finished it.
3. Point out scenes or dialogue or action that really stayed with you.
4. Go ahead and say if something made you uncomfortable, but explain why.
5. Remember that the author is a human being, too, with feelings. There’s a reason why we call our books “book babies.”
6. If all else fails, just leave a three-star rating; we’ll get the message.