Getting Some Perspective on Bad (and Good) Reviews

I’ve had books for sale on Amazon for more than a year-and-a-half now and have had the good fortune to rack up quite a few reviews, mostly 4 and 5 stars but a few stinkers. I know there are some writers who claim not to read their reviews, but I’m not one of them. I have come to embrace the idea that readers are the new gatekeepers of the literary world–not so much agents any more–and I want to see what my readers think. Even when what they think isn’t so nice.

When I got my first negative review (and it wasn’t entirely negative, mind you), I was incensed because the reviewer made some personal comments about me and what she perceived were my politics based on some characters in my book. I talked to people, who calmed me down, and started developing a new layer of the thick skin I used to count on when waiting for agents’ rejection letters.

And then that review was followed by lots of positive ones, so I felt better again. The balance in my world had been restored.

Or had it?

The negative review, I’ve often found, is motivated by some specific thing that let the reader down. I’ve had readers comment negatively on the lack of science in my time travel novel and the reliance on tropes having to do with virtual reality in Strictly Analog. In those cases, there was something in the books that took the readers out of the plot, caused their suspension of disbelief to falter, and they had a negative reading experience. It wasn’t just that they didn’t “get it”–in fact, they didn’t enjoy it. My fault? No. Just a poor match between reader and book.

It’s easy to write off those negative reviews and bask in the positive ones, but in many cases I’ve found there’s also some bias in the good reviews–a book clicks with a reader because it reminds him/her of events or places or people the reader is fond of; or because the reader was amused or aroused or intrigued or curious. The reader was able to suspend disbelief and was taken to another world populated by characters the reader could care about. Mission accomplished. Does that make me a genius? No. My book found its audience; that’s all.

Of course, if a writer is getting reviews that complain about typos and poor editing, holes in the plot, character inconsistency, lack of interest, a dud ending, etc. then it’s time for that writer to pull the book and hire an editor. Fortunately, I haven’t had any reviews like that, but I would argue that even those can be useful for writers, showing them their shortcomings and motivating them to improve.

I recently ran across a negative review of Strictly Analog on a blog (and was grateful that the blogger opted not to post the review to Amazon) in which the reviewer criticized the handling of technology in the book, arguing that some of it was inconsistent with the other tech in the novel and that there was far too much time spent explaining the technology rather than developing plot and character. Rather than being a knee-jerk complaint based on the reader’s biases, this was actually an intelligent, thoughtful, well-reasoned critique that gave me a lot to think about. The bottom line was still that this reader, I suppose because of his own techie knowledge and lots more reading in the genre, couldn’t suspend disbelief, kept being taken out of the world of the novel, but I was still able to learn something from the review.

Ideally, that should be the function that reviews perform for writers. They may or may not affect sales: most people tend to look only at the overall star rating and maybe read the first one or two reviews, never getting down to the real stinkers. But for the writer, it can be helpful to try reading between the lines of those reviews, to look for the places where a book failed a reader as well as the places where a book grabbed a reader and wouldn’t let go. That’s what we want to do, after all. And it’s good for writers to know how close they’re getting to the mark.

At the same time, it’s important not to be misled by the gushing praise. That may be as biased and knee-jerk as the barbs.

We need to look for the reasoned, analytical, and carefully considered reviews. Those are the ones most likely to shed some real light on how a book is doing. The rest, treat with interest, but not as weighty deciders of one’s fate.

So…I wonder about other writers: do you take it personally when your work gets a thumbs-down? And as a reader, what sorts of things prompt you to write and post a review?

Book Bloggers Mucking Things Up (Not)

So the editor of the Times Literary Supplement feels that book bloggers are doing a disservice to literary criticism, watering it down. Anyone with enough know-how to set up a blog and read a book can become a literary critic.

On the one hand, there’s a legitimate concern there. The proliferation of voices on the Internet opens the possibility that people who don’t know what they’re talking about will talk anyway. This has long been a concern for academics, as we insist that our students not cite Wikipedia entries in their research papers for fear that the cite lacks credibility. Sometimes that fear is justified. And sometimes the information is perfectly accurate, and may even have been provided by an expert in the field, someone with a Ph.D. even.

As regards book bloggers, the concern is that more and more people will turn to such voices as though they were authorities, while the real authorities (those people with Ph.D.s after their names) have their views ignored. God forbid.

The democratizing effect of the web is reaching into academia and the world of criticism the same way it has worked its way into the music and film industry. Now anyone can produce a cd or a film or a book or a blog and can get it out to the public with a few mouse clicks. The cultural gatekeepers have been bothered by this for some time, and this recent flare-up just shows they’re continuing to be bothered.

A lot of people have been coming to the bloggers’ defense, pointing out that most book bloggers are offering reviews about why they like a book rather than muscling in on literary critics’ territory. I’ve spent the last week looking at about a hundred book review blogs trying to find people interested in reviewing my own books, and most of those bloggers present well-written, subjective reviews explaining why this or that book is good or not good, worth the cost or not worth it, etc. They’re not throwing out heavy-handed literary criticism, the kind of thing you’ll find in academic journals.

The majority of that sort of literary criticism is being written by Ph.D.s for other Ph.D.s or for grad students and others who want to become Ph.D.s. so I don’t think the blogosphere is going to make a dent in that sort of criticism.

And as for the rest…honestly, the majority of the books being reviewed by bloggers aren’t the kind of thing that established critics are going to consider in the first place. Sure, there are going to be a lot of people at both ends of the spectrum reviewing J.K. Rowling’s new book. But the only places you’re likely to find a review of an independently published book is on a blog–or in some other spot where the author has paid to have his or her work reviewed. I’ve got more faith in the blog at that point.

In a sense, the book bloggers have found a niche that needs filling. And my guess is that they’re going to be reviewing some books that are considerably better than those that the establishment–both the “legitimate” publishers and their “legitimate” reviewers–will be wasting their pixels on.

Last week, I posted a review of a Neil Gaiman work. I thought the book was good, and I thought the review was pretty good, too. Others have agreed. Should I have tacked my Ph.D. onto the end of the review? Would that have made it any better or more legitimate?