bad reviews

This post is a little bit of a rant, a little bit of me being confused and a little bit of an FYI. For those of you paying attention, you may have noticed that I haven’t posted a single review of a book sent to me as a review request yet this year. You might be tempted to think I’ve stopped reading such books all together. But you’d be wrong.

Granted, part of the reason is that I broke my wrist mid-December and quit reading novel-length books for a while. I did make a huge dent in my short story/novella shelf though. But that was only a couple weeks and not the whole reason behind my lack of request reading.

DNF The primary reason I haven’t posted any such reviews isn’t that I haven’t read any such books. In fact, I’ve started several. The problem is that I couldn’t finish any of them! I’ve examined myself and my behavior to see if I’m being harder on requests than I am on other books, but I honestly don’t think so. I think this is something originating outside myself.

I keep a very open acceptance policy, so it’s no surprise that I receive a lot of books I’m not interested in reading. Now, it should be remembered that the reason my policy is as it is is because I can’t get authors to read and follow my policies. If I state I don’t accept short stories or Christian fiction I can GUARANTEE I will get a request (probably several) asking if I’m interested in reading their short Christian romance. I got so tired of fielding requests that I had stated in advance I didn’t want that I just stopped bothering.

This is almost certainly a minority ruining everything for the majority. I, of course, can’t know how many authors saw my disinterests and decided not to submit. But enough either thought they were the special snowflake exemption or (more likely) never even read the policies to know that their novel was outside my preferences.

I mention all this because that explains me having to wade through a river of requests that I have no interest in. But as I’m clear that this is the process in the policies (for those who read them) I don’t feel too bad about it. It’s the reason I only accept ebooks. This keeps it cost free for the authors and they’re out nothing but time if I don’t read their book.

This still leaves the question of why I’m having trouble finishing the books I do pick out of the pile. I don’t want this to be any sort of Indie or self-published bashing. I love such authors and have read a ton of such books that I loved. Similarly, I’ve read and raved about some books I received as requests. For example, The Bone Road, Murder Takes Time, The Guest of Honor, The Seraph Contingency, The Nirvana Plague, and The First Noble Truth were all requests and all received high praise from me. I recommended each one, both online and to people in real life. Heck, I tried to get my book club to read the last one.

But what they all also have in common is that none of them were read particularly recently. I’ve run this blog for three years and in that time there seems to have been a change either in the quality of books seeking independent blogger review or a change in the authors seeking such reviews. Because I am noticing a precipitous reduction in the quality of books I’m receiving.

Qualifiers: This is obviously subjective and is based on the books I have attempted to read. There could be gems in and amongst the ones that I haven’t. This is not meant as a sweeping statement about all indie/sp books and authors in general. It also isn’t directed at any particular individual(s) who has sent me a book. I am talking trends here.

And obviously, I can only guess at the cause, but here is my guess. I call it the scattershot method of review request. It is incredibly hard to find bloggers who are open to self-published authors. Things are a little better for indie authors, but it’s still a limited playing field if you’re seeking reviews of your own book.

Authors are told to expect large numbers of rejections and bloggers who will accept their book but never actually read it, not to mention just being ignored. So, for a lot of authors, it doesn’t seem time efficient to research bloggers and pair their book to appropriate ones. It is easier to simply send their book to every single blogger willing to publish a contact method and hope something sticks.

keep calm and read my book This is of course why I gave up trying to get authors to pay attention to my preferences in the first place. Sometimes authors never even make to the blog, let alone the policies. I’ve been propositioned on Twitter, on Goodreads, in friend requests, by contact page, in the comments of other books’ reviews (on the blog, Amazon and GR), on Facebook and my personal email. Authors are desperate to get their book before a reading audience.

What’s more, I think this same sense of desperation sometimes carries over into the production of the book itself. It creates a sense of needing to rush. As if there is a fear that if they don’t get their book out and in front of bloggers soon they’ll miss the self-publishing bubble or be further down the reading list. And I think there is an overlap here. Those authors willing to skip researching a blogger before sending their request are often the same who are willing to skimp on the services that would result in a higher quality product.

So, what bloggers like myself often end up with is worse than a slush pile. It’s a flood of ill-conceived, poorly edited, weakly plotted books that are of no interest to ourselves. And somewhere mixed in and among them are stellar reads, books so well-written, meticulously plotted, developed and put together that they really should be hitting big six selves. But those same books are too often hidden in the refuse. (I’m sorry, I know that sounds harsh, but I hope you take my point.)

On the upside, as an intrepid author with one self-published book under my belt, I have learned a TON about what not to do as both an author and a review requester. There are a certain number of writing mistakes that I know I’ve been guilty of in the past that I am painfully aware of now because I’ve seen them in other such books. As a review requester, I know I fouled up when I sought reviews of TWE. I’ve admitted that before. But scattershot was never one of my sins.

So, the question becomes, other than shutting the door to requests, what can be done about the problem? While I think that I recognize some of the causes of it (and I imagine there are others), I don’t have answers. But I’m putting this post out in the world partially as an explanation for the tapering off of the number of requested reviews I’m posting but also to ask authors to do better. The blunderbusses are ruining it for those who are trying to be conscientious. Conversely, I’d love to hear from other bloggers. Do you have similar experiences or is it just me/coincidence somehow?

Bad reviews are a huge topic of discussion in the indie/self-published author forums. Sometimes it feels like a good half of all discussion board threads are dedicated to it. Of course, there are good reasons for this. They’re a big deal. Yep, they are. Plus, every new author has to go through the same harrowing experience of getting their first one or two or few and it helps a lot to have like-minded others to bounce it off of.

Sometimes these authors want to be told the reviewer is out of line. It’s a Band-Aid to the ego. Sometimes they want to have the points made by the reviewer confirmed to allow future growth. Sometimes they just need to hear, ‘Hey, yeah, I’ve been there. Sucks huh?” Camaraderie goes a long way.

I was there a year and a half ago, when I published The Weeping Empress. Academically, I knew I would get bad reviews. Theoretically, I understood that everyone likes different things and there was no realistic way to please everyone. I’d even emotionally armoured myself against any possibility of mean spirited, troll-like bullies who take a perverse joy in throwing literary bombshells at new authors. Honestly, I don’t think TWE has come to the attention of one of these yet, but I was prepared. Despite all of my mental gymnastics, I didn’t really understand the whole bad review situation, not really.

In then end, I was jejune. All I understood was that at some point I would be embarrassed because someone somewhere would think me unworthy of having published a book. This is an especially hard lump for self-published authors to swallow since they don’t have the inherent affirmation of being accepted by a publisher before presenting said book to the public. It’s a little niggling fear in the back of our heads at almost all times. But there is so much more to the question of how to mentally navigate receiving a bad review than whether you allow yourself the luxury of embarrassment or not.

Which brings me to why I’m writing this post today. I’m not claiming any expertise. I’m not even sure what would provide a person with enough experience to make such a claim, but I have two avenues of important observations that makes me qualified to write this post. One is being a self published author with a book on the market that has received rave and revolting reviews. Another is as a reader and reviewer who has written hundreds and hundred of reviews of indie and self published works. I’m looking at this topic from both directions and I’m still seeing a lot of new authors who just don’t get it yet. (The yet is important, because I think anyone who plays the field long enough does eventually.) I’m hoping this post helps a little.

I had two experiences within days of each other that brought this post to mind at this point in time. The first is that TWE just received a zinger of a review.* It now has the honour of being one man’s, who’s written 280 some odd reviews, ONLY one star review. Ouch. Like a rather hardened writer, I read it, frowned a little, shrugged and moved on. It doesn’t deserve any more of my attention than that. But it left bad reviews on the mind.

Second, I posted a review on Amazon and noticed that the rating stats of the book in question looked like this:

5 star: 45
4 star: 11
3 star: 2
1 star: 1

I’m not claiming that there is anything hinky going on with this book or its author. Even if, out of curiosity, I did click on the first three 5 star reviews only to find each reviewer gave every book they read 5 stars. Or even though there were six comments following the lone 1 star review condemning her for her opinion.

But I’m pointing out that I noticed these things because it highlights the point I’m going to eventually make with this post. So many good reviews with no bad ones looks suspicious, even if nothing suspicion-worthy is going on. Bad reviews lend credibility to a book’s good reviews.

Readers of Indie and Self Published books are a savvy bunch and they’ve learned what a sock puppet looks like. They’ve considered that authors have friends who will boost their rating for them. They’ve seen the advertisements that guarantee 5 reviews for $90. They now go into the market suspicious, so it takes very little to raise their eyebrows. And more than a few are willing to write off an author because they think he or she is cheating the system. Can you blame them? If an author has so little faith in their own work that they need to pad their numbers, how good can the writing be?

What they may not know, or know and give less credence to, is that reviews (good, bad or otherwise) are hard to come by. Sometimes authors really aren’t trying to cheat. They’re just trying to compete. I get that. But readers really don’t have any obligation to consider all sides of an issue. They have every right to pass a book up for any reason they choose.

While I think that’s the most important point here, there are a number of other reasons that bad reviews are good for a book. Bad reviews prevent further bad reviews. It’s counterintuitive, I know. But it’s true. Yes, a bad review may dampen sales a bit. But think about who’s passing the book up.

If you gathered 45 likeminded people in a room, you still wouldn’t get 45 identical preferences (part of why the above stats looks so suspicious). It stands to reason that some readers won’t like a book. If that’s the case wouldn’t it be better for the author that that particular person not pick it up in the first place? So, those readers similar to the writer of the bad review will by-pass the book and therefore not review it.

Contrarily, those to whom the review doesn’t resonate, who like the same things the reviewer disparaged are just as likely to pick the book up as a result. It’s true, sometimes a bad review can even encourage people to read a book. If the previous point was counter-intuitive, what should I call this point? If the issues the reviewer chooses to highlight happen to pique another’s interest, it can encourage them to read a book. This is especially true if the subject in question is a little on the controversial side to start with. I’ve also, more than once, read a book just to see if it’s a bad as people say. Curiosity is a curious beast and you really never know what might cause someone to scratch that itch.

Lastly, No reviews can often be more damaging to a book than a poor review or two. Even if someone didn’t like a book, it’s still been read by someone, thereby proving itself readable. Books with no reviews don’t have this benefit. There are no quality gatekeepers to the self-published or indie marketplace. New authors are complete unknowns to a reader and many times readers will choose not to take a chance on a book that doesn’t have at least one person who claims to have read it.

I’ve left out bad reviews are amazing learning tools for authors because I really wanted this to be about how poor reviews can benefit a book’s sales or likelihood of being read. But the list really wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t include this one. As hard as bad reviews are to read, they can be chocked full of tips on how to improve future writing.

Of course, I have to concede that many of these points are dependent on the bad review being centred on a reader not liking a book or some aspect of a book. There is very little that can be gained by a review that says horribly written, badly edited, and atrociously formatted. The only benefit of such a review that I can think of is that an author knows to pull the product and start again.

I believe there is a process to learning to truly accept criticism and bad reviews as part of the writing and publishing process. It starts with the difficult and personal need to harden oneself to the harsh words of strangers, moves to being able to let such comments flow past without cringing (too much) or even not looking for them at all, then eventually comes to the point when a writer is able to look at the most vitriolic review as still beneficial to their end-goal. This is the point when those more advanced in the process can help those newer to publication. This might even be when people can let themselves think of their-selves in terms of an author instead of a writer.

I’d be more than a little interested in hearing other’s thoughts on this subject. There are thousands of new authors out there, just starting this journey and it’d be nice to hear from people at all points in the process.