#WritingWednesday - Guest Post: "Dealing with Bad Reviews" by Samuel Colbran

Dealing with bad reviews as an Author

It is a strange thing is when you start to write and to put yourself out there, you will encounter people who just don’t like your work. These potential reviewers could be from ‘not their genre’ or ‘didn’t like the writing style.’ You can be understood as you are a reader yourself and there are books out there that don't click. It is the personal attack that just comes out of nowhere and destroys your creation, how to deal with it?

One morning, you decide to check reviews, then head to Goodreads or Amazon, wondering if anyone has read and reviewed your book. Once there you see that your star rating has gone down, significantly. It happens you tell yourself, and of course, you then read the review. Worse mistake you can make, but you have to know.

This is one from my books, before this, I have not gotten less than four stars for a review.

‘Horrible. I can't even tell you how bad the story was because I was too distracted by the abysmal writing. Poor word choice, wrong word choice, mixed tenses, missing commas, extra commas, misspelled names, missing words, repeated words. Author needs a proofreader to fix his writing even more than an editor to fix his story.’

This was a one-star review, and when I saw it, I was dumbfounded, and that is when the questioning starts. You first forget the excellent reviews that have already written, and you start to base your entire book on this one review.

Depression sets in, should you take your book down? As this one person says, it the worst book in the entire world! Then after all this, sometimes you go and get some support from your friends, this could be good or bad, it doesn’t matter. What does matter, is that you dare to publish something, you are a fantastic writer, and there will be some people that hate your work. Don’t worry, move on to your next book. Naysayers will come and go; it is you who is marvellous and creative.

Never give up, push forward, look at this review and use it as fuel to do better. Also look at your great ones too, as they will show you that people out there love your work. Once you accept that not everyone will like your book, you can concentrate on being the best writer you can be.

By Samuel Colbran

I'd like to thank Sam for taking the time to write this post and share his advice on receiving bad reviews. It happens to all of us, and it's true that you can't please everyone all of the time. If you do get a not so glowing review, check out E.L James's one-star reviews for "Fifty Shades of Grey"; it'll make you feel better.

If you'd like to find out more about Samuel Colbran, you can check out his website here: www.samuelcolbran.com