Cailin Riley Books

You recently published your first novel and now, weeks later, the reviews are rolling in.

Most of the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads are between 4-5 stars, so you’re feeling good. There are a few 3-star reviews sprinkled in but they don’t bother you much because, as you reason, maybe those people were just having a bad day or they don’t really enjoy fantasy books anyway.

But then you get an alert on Goodreads: A 1-star review just rolled in. Before you know it, you’re tearing through their review, disagreeing with every part of their critique, and deep diving into their other reviews to see if they are legit or just an angry person who hates all books. And now your day is ruined.

Has this happened to you?

There’s no denying that negative reviews suck.

I’ve gotten them myself, so I know. I’ve had 2-star reviews with lengthy explanations as to why my book should have been titled something differently and they felt “cheated.” I’ve gotten a 1-star review with no explanation. All fun stuff.

Handling a negative review depends largely on how much you care about it and what was said in the review.

If a low rating was given with no explanation, my best advice is to ignore it. It still stinks and drives down your ratings, but you can’t work with no feedback. I like to chalk those up to the person was just feeling grumpy that day. Or maybe they simply stumbled across my book and hated the cover, who effing knows.

But if they leave an honest review, I think you have more choices.

You can read their feedback and choose to accept the things they say or reject them. For example, I got some feedback on my first book that the title wasn’t very apt for the content because I didn’t include a section explicitly stating how to fight the patriarchy. And in retrospect, I think that’s fair feedback. But if somebody gives a bad review just because “they didn’t relate to the content,” I’m going to give that less weight and say it’s less indicative of my performance as an author. I wrote that book for twenty-something women, not a forty-year-old man, so no duh you probably didn’t relate to it.

Even when critical feedback is warranted, it’s important to put a limit on how much time and attention you give it. No author or writer is perfect. We’re going to make mistakes.

But hopefully we will also learn from them and improve over time.