We Just Gotta Suck It Up

It’s time for that doleful yearly tradition (though it tends to happen every few months) – new author freaks out about a bad review, and then the Internet falls on his or her head.

This time, the freakout involves BookTok, a subset of the TikTok video social media app, which manages to combine the least-desirable features of YouTube and Twitter and somehow make them worse. To sum up, a BookTok person gave a new author a mostly favorable review, but complained that the ending was predictable. The author took this personally and shot back, which resulted in the traditional Internet Rage Pileup and the author’s book contract getting canceled. Granted, at least this time the author didn’t attack the critic with a wine bottle (that happened once), or show up at the critic’s house.

If you are a writer, there is one rule, and one rule only, you must follow with bad reviews:

Never, Ever, Ever Respond To Reviews.

In other words, you just gotta suck it up and move on.

I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been doing this for twelve years now, and I’ve gotten every kind of bad review under the sun. Here are just a few of the negative opinions that people have either 1.) written in bad reviews, 2.) or taken upon themselves to email to me personally or send via Facebook Messenger.

-The book is badly written.

-This book is an insult to the English language.

-I hate the main character.

-The main character had no flaws.

-The main character had too many flaws to be believable.

-The main character was too self-loathing.

-The main character really should have been more self-loathing.

-My wife is an English teacher, and she was laughing at how bad this book was.

-This book was Christian propaganda.

-This book was anti-Christian propaganda.

-There is too much profanity.

-There is not enough profanity.

-The book was too long.

-The book was too short.

-Things that happened in previous books were referenced in this one.

-Somehow the author insidiously wrote this book to deliberately insult me on a personal level!

-I am annoyed that the main character was not meaner to his children.

-I am recently divorced, and I hate this book because the main character reminds me of my ex, who was the literal embodiment of the devil and the ultimate source of all evil in the cosmos.

-The main character’s romantic choices were WRONG!!!

-I emailed the author detailed criticisms of this book and he never responded! Clearly he hates his readers!

-Too much violence!

-Not enough violence.

There was also, for a while, a guy writing like 3,000 word reviews on his blog about how much he hated my books. He stopped eventually –  I hope he found a girlfriend.

So for all the stuff listed above, I only very rarely responded, and only when it was something simple and factually incorrect that I could easily point out – like someone complaining that the book wasn’t available on Google Play when it really was, that kind of thing. Overall, though, I avoid responding to anything remotely negative.

And to be fair, after twelve years of self-publishing, I don’t feel the need to respond. I don’t feel much of anything at bad reviews, other than a moment of vague annoyance like when you see someone driving inattentively. Like, when you’re a new writer, bad reviews really do sting. But I haven’t been a new writer for a long, long time now. DRAGONSKULL: DOOM OF THE SORCERESS was book #141, and after one hundred and forty-one books, I can’t even remember what I actually wrote half the time, let alone the opinions people might have had about it. (By the time I get to book four or five in a series, I have to spend a lot of time searching the previous books with CTRL+F to remember important details.)

I am always grateful when someone enjoys the book, and indifferent when someone does not.

But for the newer writers who haven’t yet written so much they can’t remember everything they’ve written, here are some tips and tricks to help you deal with bad reviews.

Tip Zero: If you’re just starting out, maybe you should write under a pen name. I didn’t, but I’m told for people who do it’s a useful elemental of psychological compartmentalization – all the bad reviews are for Pen Name, not for you.

Now on to the rest of the tips.

1.) You aren’t obliged to have an opinion about a bad review.

Social media creates the illusion that you have to have an opinion about everything. This is especially true on Twitter, where everyone has a Hot Take about the latest events of the day. Like, there’s a news event of some kind, whether serious (war in Ukraine) or trivial (celebrity says something dumb), and then many social media users feel the need to express an opinion about it. But what is most of that if not indulging in the vice of gossip? It’s talking about people you’ve never met and with whom you have no relationship.

That learned reflex, I think, transfers to some writers who have meltdowns over reviews. Someone posted a bad review of my book! I need to share my opinion about it!

But you don’t. In fact, I think training yourself not to share every opinion you have on social media is a skill many people would find beneficial.

Just because someone didn’t like your book doesn’t mean you’re obligated to respond to it. Indeed, you don’t even need to have an opinion about their opinion.

To quote the Book of Proverbs: “Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.”

2.) Don’t respond to negative emails.

Generally, I try to respond to all reader emails, unless its negative and I don’t want to engage. Sometimes you get emails or Facebook messages from someone, and you can tell they’re just spoiling for a fight. Especially if you get an angry email complaining about the book on Monday, don’t respond, and then an even angrier email arrives on Wednesday complaining that you still haven’t responded.

Arguing with people over the internet is almost nearly always an enormous waste of time. If it’s a concrete problem that’s within my power to fix – corrupted file, reader can’t find the book, and so forth – then I’ll respond. Otherwise, it’s just not worth the energy, and getting into an argument over the Internet is always more of a time and energy sink that you might anticipate.

3.) Don’t engage in reader-oriented spaces.

Generally, I think it’s best for writers to stay out of reader-oriented spaces, especially if the writer’s work is being reviewed or discussed in that space.

What do I mean by reader-oriented spaces? I mean a place like Goodreads, that’s devoted to book reviews, or a YouTube book reviewer’s comments section, or the feed of a BookTok video creator. Those areas of the Internet are devoted to readers discussing books, and it’s never a good idea for an author to inject themselves into the conversation there. It’s especially a bad idea of the writer’s book is the one actually being discussed. because that sort of discussion can spiral out of control very quickly.

So, if you’re a writer, it’s best to avoid Goodreads and BookTube/BookTok. If you really must engage there, it’s probably wisest to create an account under a different name and never, ever mention your books.

4.) Read the other reviews

If a bad review really gets under your skin, it might be worthwhile to read the other reviews the person in question has posted. This is easy on Amazon or Goodreads – you just click on the reviewer’s name, and you’ll see their profile page along with all the other stuff they’ve reviewed.

Often you’ll discover that the reviewer just hates everything. Or you’ll see that the reviewer dislikes something you like, or likes something you don’t, which gives you an easy way to discard their opinion.

On a more serious note, you’ll sometimes see that the reviewer is in chronic pain and bad reviews are a way of lashing out. A while back a study found that many of the high-volume Internet reviewers are homebound and frequently dealing with high levels of pain. Like, if you click on the reviewer’s profile on Amazon and see that they’re also reviewing adult diapers, compression socks, orthopedic shoes, and back braces (sometimes reviewed in excruciating detail), they’ve probably got a lot of other problems to deal with. Which shows once again that it is best not to engage with bad reviews, because you can never tell what someone else might be going through.

5.) Delete or block as necessary.

Bad reviews are one thing, but if someone makes a nuisance of themselves on your social media pages or keeps emailing you, go ahead and block them.

I haven’t done this all that often, but I have done it. It’s not something I’ll do right away. Sometimes online writing lacks nuance, and you can completely misinterpret what someone was saying. Or there are technical difficulties. Once I had a Facebook comment along the lines of “I hope your head gets chopped off”. Five minutes later, the second half of the comment came through “because it makes up for what you did to that character, LOL LOL LOL . Great book! Looking forward to the sequel!” (The original version had many more spelling errors, alas, and I had to read it a couple of times to figure out what the commentor was actually saying.)

But if someone is consistently unpleasant I’ll just block them. Accepting that bad reviews exist is a necessary state of mind for a writer. Tolerating bad comments on your own social media and website is not. The block button is there for a reason!

6.) Plod onward.

The best writing advice is to keep writing. If you do that long enough, eventually you will build up a much thicker skin to criticism. You will learn not to take any bad reviews personally and move onward.

There are few substitutes in life for sheer plodding persistence.

Hopefully if you are a new writer, these tips will help you learn to handle bad reviews without a public Internet meltdown.

-JM