Rant: Bad Reviews

A little while ago, I book-marked the book blog page located HERE so that I may become inspired to write rants like the one I wrote for the re-editing of Huckleberry Finn.  Well, I've found an article that might be of interest to those that are apart of the book blogging community.  You can find the original article HERE.

We've had to write them before: Bad Reviews.  It's just a fact of life, I guess.  Not every book you come across will be worthy of a five star review.  Maybe something was off, but you still enjoyed reading it.  Maybe everything was completely wrong and reading the book was physically painful.

I've had the privilege of getting a response to a review by an author, but the review was positive, so it was a completely different experience.

According to this article, a self-published author reacted in an explosive manner to a negative review of her self-published book.  She had the nerve to respond to this reviewer in the comment box saying that she preferred the positive reviews she received for the book on Amazon.  The worst part is, the reviewer acknowledged her complaints and everything just went downhill from there.

I don't know how many writers there are reading this, but those of you that are, perhaps you can attest to the fact that it's no fun getting negative feedback.  No one likes it, but it's always going to be there and that's what makes us better as writers.

What I'm confused about is why this author felt the need to say anything at all.  It's one person's opinion, you can't change their mind no matter how much convincing you do.  In the end, a good book is in the eye of the reader.  This reviewer was putting ideas and opinions out into cyberspace.  The least she could have done was thank the reviewer for the honest review.

I don't mean to come off as particularly critical.  My point is certain things should be common sense, but only a few people understand what that actually means... it's a little frustrating... all of this could have easily been avoided.

What are your thoughts on this occurrence?

I'm going to try and post a review tonight.  You'll still have a review sometime next week, because I'm supposed to finish 'Invisible Man' this weekend.  Have a lovely day!

--Jude