{"id":875,"date":"2019-04-09T21:47:23","date_gmt":"2019-04-10T04:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/?p=875"},"modified":"2019-04-09T21:47:30","modified_gmt":"2019-04-10T04:47:30","slug":"bad-reviews-mfrwauthor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/09\/bad-reviews-mfrwauthor\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Reviews #MFRWauthor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m reminded of Shakespeare\u2019s line in <em>Henry VI<\/em>, \u201c\u2026let\u2019s kill all the lawyers!\u201d except in my mind it\u2019s \u201c\u2026let\u2019s kill all the reviewers!\u201d (Just kidding!) The line in the play is a mockery of what would happen if those who are meant to represent the accused are done away with. Chaos would result, along with the justice system. The writing world without reviewers would also suffer, though perhaps not collapse.<\/p>\n<p>Reviewers present one person\u2019s snapshot of a book, one person\u2019s truth as he or she sees it, at the time they read the book, and so is not the end all, be all for the book or the author. Authors shouldn\u2019t take it as such, either. So here are a few things to remember after you thrown a pillow against the wall (throw only soft, non-breakable stuff!) and cry into said pillow after you retrieve it.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Reviewers point out things wrong with our books that we can fix in our next book. Characters not cleanly drawn? Descriptions lack depth? Not enough (too much) emotion? Do better next time. Reviewers give us a chance to improve.<\/li>\n<li>Reviewers aren\u2019t God. They can make mistakes. They can be wrong. They can be totally off their rockers and\u2026 Well, let\u2019s leave it there. Read what a reviewer says, evaluate it objectively to see if you feel they\u2019re right, and then move on. Rehashing a criticism does no good.<\/li>\n<li>Reviewers provide as much joy saying nice things as they do saying negative things. When I reviewed (yes, I\u2019ve spent my time on the Dark Side), I always tried to say something nice even when I wasn\u2019t particularly fond of a book. I also tried to phrase the good comments in a way the author could use it in a snippet for their website.<\/li>\n<li>Reviewers are people, too. They appreciate being thanked for their work, even if you don\u2019t feel like thanking them. Maybe they were having a bad day when they reviewed your book. A polite word might make all the difference the next one of your books they decide to read. Like chicken soup, it can\u2019t hurt.<\/li>\n<li>Reviewers are one way to publicize your book, so take everything good from a review that you can and (as my brilliant author friend, Jan Selbourne, says) flog it for all it\u2019s worth!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Reviewers are good for the writing industry. If we are blessed with good reviews, thank goodness! If we are cursed with bad reviews, get the angst out of your system and keep on writing, taking any useful advice from the review that you can. Good luck!<\/p>\n<p>Read the next blog in the blog hop by going <a href=\"http:\/\/mfrw52week.blogspot.com\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nomadauthors.com\/deesknight\/\">Dee<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2q7ovi4\">Only a Good Man Will Do<\/a>: Seriously ambitious man seeks woman to encourage his goals, support his (hopeful) position as Headmaster of Westover Academy, and be purer than Caesar&#8217;s wife. Good luck with that!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2q7Jp0S\">Naval Maneuvers<\/a>: When a woman requires an earth-shattering crush of pleasure to carry her away, she can&#8217;t do better than to call on the US Navy. Sorry, Marines!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m reminded of Shakespeare\u2019s line in Henry VI, \u201c\u2026let\u2019s kill all the lawyers!\u201d except in my mind it\u2019s \u201c\u2026let\u2019s kill all the reviewers!\u201d (Just kidding!) The line in the play is a mockery of what would happen if those who are meant to represent the accused are done away with. Chaos would result, along with &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/2019\/04\/09\/bad-reviews-mfrwauthor\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Bad Reviews #MFRWauthor&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,466],"tags":[499,497,8,494,495,498,500,130],"class_list":["post-875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-writing","tag-bad-review","tag-book-reviews","tag-dee-s-knight","tag-henry-vi","tag-reviewer","tag-reviewing","tag-shakespeare","tag-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9wA33-e7","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":880,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875\/revisions\/880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nomadauthors.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}