Managing Bad Reviews

WAS IT SOMETHING THAT I WROTE? 
by
Cindy McDonald

Sometimes you hit the nail right on the head, and sometimes you hit your thumb! Well, my thumb is pretty red and swollen, and every time I find a new review posted on Amazon for my book, Hot Coco, it begins to throb and ache until I find the courage to read the review.

The fact is that HotCoco is what I call my love/hate book. Some readers love the book, and some readers hate it, and when they hate it—they really really hate it! Gulp!

Okay, so would anyone despise this masterpiece of humor? *Sarcasm*

In my humble defense: not one reviewer has complained that the book is poorly written. Thank God! However, I do get complaints that it is degrading to women, that the characters are just plain stupid, that (and this is a spoiler folks) Mike and Coco never get together, hook-up, or become a couple. I even had one reviewer complain that I talked about the horses too much—the entire series takes place on a Thoroughbred farm...just sayin’.  Another reviewer couldn’t figure out what genre I was writing in. Is Hot Coco chic-lit? Rom-com? Or just a hot mess tossed into the fiction department? Ouch!

Deep breath...

Would you enjoy this book? I have no idea. That said I will tell you that over the two years that poor Coco has been available she has been downloaded (free and paid) over 20,000 times. Yep, you read that correctly—twenty thousand! Hmmm.

True confession: I have considered un-publishing the book because of the nasty reviews, but I have decided that I must take the good with the bad—especially recently. In January a rather big-time reviewer discovered my Unbridled Series. She read the first book, Deadly.Com, and requested copies of the rest of the books. Yikes!

I was beside myself! I didn’t want to send her Hot Coco because I thought for sure that this, the second book in the series, would turn her off and I’d pay a very high price. So I packed up the other three books and mailed them off to her. Well, it didn’t work. She discovered Coco on her own, downloaded it, read it, and absolutely loved it to the point of dedicating an entire week in April on her blog to my Unbridled books. Additionally, she remarked that Coco was her favorite and she laughed out loud through the entire book! What? Someone liked Coco? Seriously?

 Very cool!

Out of the six books that I have published Hot Coco is also my most reviewed book. The other five books that I’ve published stand solid as 4.5 and 4.9 star-rated books. Coco? Well...she is sitting pretty at a 3.4 star rating on amazon and...wait for it...2.86 on Goodreads. Oh well.

Was it something that I wrote? I sure hope so. The truth is I am glad and proud that I published Hot Coco—and she isn’t going away anytime soon. She is a fine second book for the Unbridled Series and the epitome of the well-used statement: you simply can’t please everyone.

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Why Authors Should like Poor Reviews

by

Will Macmillan-Jones

Louise asked me to write a piece, from the perspective of a new writer, on the subject of book reviews.  From a readers’ point of view, a book review is an interesting and useful tool in helping you decide to buy a book - or not.  From a writer’s viewpoint (especially a new writer) they are close to being a major breach of the Geneva Convention on Warfare.  Or citeable as a cruel and unusual punishment.  And that’s the good ones!

Publishing is undergoing a bit of a sea-change with the growing involvement of the internet.  Now, I write what I assure people is comic fantasy.  If you fancied such a book, you could turn on your computer, search Google, and see what came up. Alternatively, you might seek out the book review websites and blogs like this one, and see what they had to say.  Either way, you would soon be looking at a truckload of books and mostly both the titles and the authors would be complete unknowns.

I’ll admit it.  I’m unknown.  Bet you’ve never heard of me before, and (trust me on this) you aren’t the only one.  But I’d like to be known, and not only to the police! Aside from a major lottery win, it’s unlikely unless my stuff starts selling.  And that means getting reviews.