So You Got a Bad Review

Well, shit.

There it is. That bad book review. The one that makes your stomach drop, your blood pressure rise, and your immediate response something along the lines of, “Did we even read the same damn book?”

You’ve poured months, maybe years, of your life into this story. You’ve created characters, built worlds, agonized over dialogue, rearranged chapters, and stared at the same sentence for forty-five minutes trying to decide whether it needed a comma. And now someone has just informed the world that your literary baby is ugly.

Naturally, you respond with grace, dignity, and professionalism.

HAHAHAHAHAHA.

No. You don’t. At least, not immediately.

First Comes the Outrage

First, you read the review. Then you read it again. Then you read it a third time because surely you must have misunderstood something. Nope. They really said that. And now you’re offended. Not just mildly annoyed. You’re personally, professionally, and possibly spiritually offended.

You start composing a response in your head. Actually, if you’d paid attention in Chapter Seven, you would have noticed… And then comes the realization that the reviewer has apparently missed an entire subplot, misunderstood a character’s motivation, and interpreted something you deliberately wrote as a flaw.

The audacity. The absolute audacity.

Then Come the Revenge Fantasies

Now, I’m not suggesting you actually do any of these things, but let’s acknowledge that the human imagination is a remarkable instrument, especially when fueled by wounded pride. Perhaps you’ll write a devastatingly clever response that exposes every flaw in the reviewer’s argument complete with footnotes and an annotated bibliography. Perhaps you’ll create a PowerPoint presentation explaining all the things they missed, complete with citations, animations, and possibly a quiz at the end.

Or perhaps you’ll become wildly successful, sell millions of copies, and dedicate your next book to “the person who said I couldn’t write.” You might even imagine looking them straight in the eye and saying, “Well, aren’t you a delight?”

The point is, your brain will offer you an astonishing variety of retaliation plans. Do not execute them. Enjoy the imaginary satisfaction for a moment, if you must, and then put down the metaphorical flamethrower. Remember, violence is never the answer.

And before you decide that your brilliantly sarcastic response deserves to be shared with the world, remember that the folks at Reedsy offer some sensible advice about handling bad book reviews. One particularly important piece of advice is not to engage publicly with negative reviewers. Annoyingly reasonable, if you ask me. But they’re right. Your imaginary revenge speech might be magnificent, but it should probably remain imaginary.

Find Your Person and Let It Out

Instead, find your person. You know the one. Your spouse, your best friend, your sister, or that fellow writer who understands exactly why you’re currently contemplating a career change and possibly a new identity.

You rant. You rave. You quote the offending passages and explain the subtext, the symbolism, and the character motivations. You explain why the relationship developed the way it did and why that particular character behaves the way they do. You may even use language that would make a sailor blush.

Your person listens, offers sympathy, occasionally agrees that the reviewer has missed the point, and gently reminds you that responding publicly would be a spectacularly bad idea. You ignore that last part for approximately seventeen minutes.

Eventually, though, something interesting happens. You run out of steam. The review is still there, the rating hasn’t changed, and the reviewer hasn’t experienced a sudden literary epiphany. But you’ve said what you needed to say, and now you can begin to let it go.

The Uncomfortable Truth About Bad Reviews

Which brings us to the uncomfortable truth that nobody particularly wants to hear when they’re still contemplating imaginary acts of literary vengeance.

The reviewer is allowed to dislike your book.

I know. Rude.

And here’s where I have to acknowledge my own hypocrisy. I’ve written an entire article about whether authors should review books. I believe that authors are readers, too, and readers are entitled to their opinions. Apparently, I just find that principle considerably less charming when I’m on the receiving end of an unfavorable opinion. Funny how that works.

Reviewers are allowed to misunderstand your characters, find your pacing too slow or your romance too fast, and dislike the very things you love most about your story. They’re even allowed to be wrong about what you intended, because once your book is out in the world, you don’t get to control how someone experiences it.

You can write a character whose confidence masks deep insecurity, and someone will see only the confidence. You can create a romance built on a connection that transcends ordinary understanding, and someone will call it insta-love. You can carefully construct a world filled with clues and hidden meanings, and someone will walk straight past them.

Sometimes that means you didn’t communicate something as clearly as you hoped. Sometimes it simply means the reader brought different expectations to the story. And sometimes your book just wasn’t for them.

That’s an important distinction, and one worth remembering when considering how readers approach writing book reviews. A book can be well written and still not appeal to someone’s tastes. Unfortunately, remembering that distinction becomes considerably more difficult when the book in question happens to be yours.

That doesn’t automatically make the review unfair, and it certainly doesn’t automatically make your writing bad. It makes the experience of reading what it has always been: deeply personal.

Remember Who You Wrote the Book For

Here’s what I keep coming back to, though. I didn’t write my book for the person who gave it a bad review. I didn’t write it for the algorithms, the Amazon rankings, the star ratings, or the strangers scrolling through Goodreads.

I wrote it because I had a story in my head that wouldn’t leave me alone. I wrote it because these characters became real to me, because I wanted to know what happened to them, and because there were worlds I wanted to explore, relationships I wanted to develop, and mysteries I wanted to unravel.

I wrote it because writing makes me happy.

And yes, of course I want people to read it. I want them to love my characters, lose themselves in my world, and stay up far too late because they absolutely have to finish one more chapter. I’d also like to sell enough copies to justify the amount of money I’ve spent bringing this book into the world. I’m a writer, not a saint.

But none of that changes the fundamental truth. The first person I wrote this book for was me.

And I love it. Not because it’s perfect. It isn’t. No book is. I love it because it’s mine, because I created something that didn’t exist before, and because I took a story out of my imagination and turned it into something another person can hold in their hands.

When I wrote about publishing a book, I was celebrating an accomplishment that no amount of criticism can take away. Apparently, I should have included an additional warning about the emotional roller coaster of reader reviews. But the achievement remains the same. I wrote a book. I published it. And somewhere out there, people are reading a story that once existed only inside my head.

A two-star review cannot undo that. Neither can a one-star review. Neither can a hundred of them.

So How Do You Move On From a Bad Book Review?

You get angry. You get hurt. You entertain a few wildly inappropriate revenge fantasies that will never see the light of day. You rant to your person until you’ve exhausted every possible variation of “BUT THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT!”

Then, when you’re ready, you close the review. Maybe there’s something useful in it. If so, take that lesson with you. If not, leave it where it belongs.

You don’t have to agree with the reviewer, thank them for their insight, or even pretend their words didn’t hurt. You just have to remember that their opinion is one person’s experience of your story. It is not the final verdict on your worth as a writer.

And then you open your manuscript, return to the characters who have been patiently waiting while you conducted your imaginary courtroom proceedings, and you write.

Because the story isn’t finished, because you still have something to say, and because, when it comes right down to it, the person you wrote that book for is still sitting right there at the keyboard.

You.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a sequel to write.