DEALING WITH BAD REVIEWS

DEALING WITH BAD REVIEWS

We all dread the bad review by the grammar Nazi police. It is hard to read and harder to take. However. If you do get a bad review discard the "holier than thou" attitudes that the Nazi Grammar police can tend to have, and instead pay close attention to the actual critique. Ex. (filled with sentence fragments, tense changes, and grammatical errors.)  Research through the millions of sites on the internet to find out what the reviewer is talking about, and learn how to fix it. Then consider a rewrite. If you are having trouble with it, hire an editor (I know. I have little money myself, but I was forced to do this in the end) and make the changes they suggest. My editor reads for not just grammar, and punctuation, but for continuity as well.
Lastly but not leastly (yes I know that is not a real word) pick out the positive parts of the review ie... (the story seems interesting, and I liked the characters.) They obviously think just as you do that there is a story to tell.
The sad truth is that if you follow the forums on amazon you will see that there are mean spirited people out there who abhor indie authors and delight in tearing them down. That being said there are others who are just frank about their reviews and actually critique your work. As authors we have to occasionally take one on the chin, and then figure out which type of person we are dealing with. We have to take constructive criticism constructively, and we discard spiteful criticism.
Keep on writing and if you get a bad review pick it apart looking for the jewels of wisdom it may or may not contain. If you find something constructive, apply it to your work and be the better for it. If not, well then do what you would do with any other junk mail. Discard it.
Keep writing and keep learning. - Brian Randleas