The Author and Criticism

One consequence of putting your writing up for sale and public view is that, naturally, people will express opinions about that writing. For most authors, their stories are pretty near and dear to their hearts, and so they always hope that people will say nice things about their writing.

This is, of course, not always the case. More generally, this is always not the case for stories in general. There isn't a novel published that doesn't have someone expressing negative opinions about it. Even a book received with great enthusiasm will still have some one-star reviewers out there saying how this is the worst piece of crap ever used to justify the murder of defenseless trees.

When a review's positive, of course, it's easy to respond to, if you choose to respond at all: you say thanks, maybe particularly mention some key observations the reviewer made that were especially happy-making for you, and everyone's cool with that.

Not quite so simple when the review is… not so positive.

For many authors – and I admit, myself included – the first gut reaction to seeing a negative review is to either be crushed with self-doubt, or erupt in righteous anger at this FOOL who doesn't see my GENIUS! This is often not helped by a reviewer who does, in fact, miss some key point or misinterpret something in a way that feels like it must be deliberate.

Some authors give rather free rein to these impulses; I've seen some that make arguing with reviewers and other critics of them and their works a routine. In some cases, it appears to be at least partially a deliberate "branding" choice. They expect criticism from specific groups, and as they never intended nor expected significant sales to come from those groups, they use this as a sort of loud advertising method, saying "I am not one of those, I'm one of you guys here!"

For some, this may even work. I personally consider it a really risky strategy, and if it's not a strategy, it's really a bad idea to do it.

The more common advice to authors about responding to reviews, especially negative ones, is "don't". This is certainly, in my view, an overall wiser course of action than the confrontational one. One negative review from one reviewer doesn't necessarily mean all reviews of your work by that reviewer will always be negative, but one acrimonious confrontation with the reviewer will go a long way towards assuring nasty reviews or – often worse – no reviews at all. Few people want to waste time on assholes, and a confrontational author can easily get themselves slotted in that category.

I prefer a third approach, when feasible.

You see, as I said above, "no reviews" is often worse than "negative reviews". Even a negative review usually means that someone spent the time and effort to acquire and read your book; often, they've spent money on your book. They've invested in you, and a negative review says that for one reason or another they didn't feel the investment was worth it.

As Heinlein and others have pointed out, fiction writers aren't usually competing for the chance to be recognized as Great Authors, they're competing for "beer money" – the entertainment budget people have for themselves, and a budget that is split between books and all the other entertainment modes, including movies, video games, eating out and going on dates, and so on. If they spend their money on you at all, that is in itself a compliment; for whatever reason, they thought you might offer them a better value than all the others that week.

So I often prefer the approach of thanking the reviewer. I think about how *I* would like an author to address me after a review, and you know what? Yelling at me about how wrong I am isn't one of the images I prefer, and I don't think most other reviewers look forward to that kind of confrontation either.

"You thank them for a bad review?"

Well… yes and no. A negative review, but not a bad one. The difference to me is in the effort and/or attention expended on the book. A bad review is one that doesn't seem to be properly addressing the book, or that showcases that the reviewer actually didn't read the book – or that are effectively contentless. Examples of the first are reviews where the review rants about the author rather than the novel, or – as happened to one of mine – gives a one-star review because at the time there was no Kindle edition. The second were exemplified for years by the work of Harriet Klausner, Amazon's most prolific reviewer, who often posted reviews that revealed that at most she skimmed the back copy and opened the book at a few random spots. The third category can include both positive and negative reviews, most of which will be very short: "this book is awesome", "this book sucks". This has no information on which a reader can evaluate how the book was good or bad, and thus whether this reviewer's opinion is likely to be in line with the reader's own.

**Note: The "contentless" review, and even the other "bad" reviews, do have one area where they still serve an author's purposes: Amazon. As Amazon has an ascending scale of promotion options they employ as the number of reviews rises, the type or length of the review for Amazon doesn't matter nearly so much as whether there's 50 reviews versus 20 reviews.***

For bad reviews, I prefer to simply ignore them. There's nothing to be gained by arguing under those conditions, and many of them are written by people who aren't even likely to see a response.

But a thoughtful negative review? That I will thank someone for. That's a review that shows someone took the time to read my work. Perhaps they didn't see what I wanted them to see, but that means, usually, that my writing failed to do its job for that reader. The same phrases and approaches in writing, for good or bad, don't work the same way for all people. For example, there are people for whom mountains are beautiful, majestic, and shining, and for them descriptions of grim, brooding, gloomy mountains may not work well; someone who's a fan of nature may find a description of a glorious megalopolis to fall utterly flat.

So I will generally thank such a reviewer. I will show that I appreciate the effort they have gone to, let them know if I agree with them on any particular points of interest, and end with a hope that they might one day find one of my other books of interest, and reiterate my thanks for the review. If there are some important factual errors in the review, I may mention them… or I may not, depending on the review tone, on how easily I can contact the person, and so on.

This is, in my view, the polite thing to do. And it has more practical aspects. You cannot know for sure either (A) what significance, or connections, a given reviewer may have, or (B) who else may also read your response to the reviewer. And by being polite, you invite dialogue, if the reviewer is so inclined.

I have, in general, found the result of such responses to be positive. Not infrequently, such a comment has led to an in-depth discussion of the work, and even, on at least a few occasions led to the reviewer revising their opinion of the work. More frequently, the reviewer at least ends with a positive opinion of me, and this doesn't hurt my chances to impress them positively with a book that may suit their interests and preferences more closely.

And yes, while I was planning to write this at some point, its appearance now was triggered by just such a review – a two-page long review blasting my self-published Oz novel Polychrome to ashes, on the very grounds I expected it would be. The fact that I expected such reviews, and even the precise points found within the review, doesn't necessarily make it easier to read them, and when the work is one into which I personally put a lot more direct effort into producing, it stings a lot more.

When I mentioned this, my beta-readers were all very supportive… and some a bit hostile towards the reviewer (who fortunately is not online, or at least not in their professional reviewing capacity as far as I know). That pushed me into not only sending my usual thank-you reply, but also into finally writing this article. I can understand – and am gratified by – the instinct a reader has to defend a work they like, by an author they respect. But that's a personal gratification and not one that I want ever directed outside, especially not at a reviewer.

Admittedly, this is probably hard to make work if you don't actually feel any positive vibes towards a reviewer. I honestly am grateful for any review where the reviewer obviously put in the effort to read and think about my book; some people may not find it easy to get past the negative portions of the review.

Still, I feel – very strongly – that this is overall the best response to critical reviews: not to hate them, nor to debate them, but to accept them for what they are, and thank the reviewers for the fact that they chose your book, out of the literally hundreds of thousands published every year, to review. Because the true enemy of all authors… is obscurity.

Sure, I'd rather all my reviews were glowing peans to my brilliance, and that they were accompanied by choirs of angels writing me checks, but that's not happening even to the best authors on the planet. That being the case, all I *can* ask for is that I be *READ* -- by anyone – and if some of those people decide that they regret the choice and want to air their objections, hey, they still *read my book*… and were sufficiently affected by it to feel it was worth responding to.

And in the end, that's really all any author can hope for.