Anne Blackburne

Did you know that authors depend upon good reviews to help sell their books? It may seem obvious; good reviews may convince individuals to purchase books, but they also move books up in rankings in various sales venues, and can even help get an author onto a best seller list.

This is why you may have seen authors ask their readers to take a few minutes to post a review if they enjoyed a book. It doesn’t need to be long. Simply saying, “I loved this book!” and giving it 4 or 5 stars will help out your favorite authors.

Of course, all authors dread getting the other kind of reviews; negative ones posted by people who did NOT like their book.

Generally speaking, negative reviews should not be posted simply because you didn’t enjoy a story that was well written and correctly presented.

What I mean is, if a story is advertised as being “spicy”, and you prefer to read books that are “clean” or “cozy”, meaning no sexual content, overt violence, cussing, etc., then it’s not the author’s fault that you picked up their clearly labeled book, were shocked by the content, and hated the book. It wouldn’t be fair in that case to give the author a bad review. Instead, just walk away. Leave no review. Move on to another book more to your taste.

On the other hand, if a book is full of sexy scenes after being promoted by the author as being Christian romance or a cozy mystery – both of which are understood NOT to contain spice – one might suspect intentional misrepresentation, and that’s reason for a poor review. Or if a book is just a hot mess – as if the author didn’t even bother to try and eliminate typos, grammatical errors, spelling errors or worse, major plot issues, that could be a reason for a poor review.

But even then, a 3-star rating (out of five) is punishment enough for most author errors. One-or-two-star ratings are just unnecessary; and sometimes downright mean!

A one-star rating can crush an author’s spirit, making him second guess his ability to write and whether he should just give up and pack it in. You can see why leaving such a review requires some very careful thought. Author egos are fragile enough as it is!

But I recently received a one-star rating that I simply had to laugh at. I won’t reveal the poster’s name or even where the review was posted, but I’ll share what they wrote in a review of my recent release, “Mary’s Calico Hope”, from Barbour Publishing’s Heart of the Amish series:

Subject Line: Too expensive!

Review: Have not read it. Not going to read it though I really want to. I can’t believe it costs $11.50 for 258 pages.

That’s it! This person left a one-star review for my book, and hadn’t even read it!

A major rule for authors is to never, never engage with readers about their reviews. All an author can accomplish by taking this road is to create bad feelings and lose readers. Worst case, it could end their writing career.

In fact, conventional wisdom holds that the smartest thing an author can do is to avoid looking at their reviews. Obviously, I didn’t follow that to the letter of the law. But I don’t make a habit of reading reviews. Sometimes someone has something less than lovely to say, and if you see it, that’s your own fault.

I was looking at performance ratings on a website, and it was just THERE. So I read it. And I’m glad I did, because it’s just ridiculous, and gave me the idea for this article.

I just shook my head and laughed at this review. But if I were to talk with this person, I’d inform them that I don’t set the prices for my books. Also, the going price is closer to $15 . . . $11.50 was a sale price. Lol. And finally, why don’t they just get a library card and read it for free?

A word about pricing: If I pay $15 or even more for a book I want, I look at it like this – I’ll be getting up to 10 hours of entertainment for that money. Viewed that way, it’s a bargain! Also, consider the hundreds of hours the author spent writing, rewriting, proofing, editing and marketing the book. Then consider that most authors receive rather modest advances – or none at all if they are self-published. And that most authors never earn out their advance, meaning they never get more money for their books.

At that point, maybe you’ll agree that that $15, or in this case, $11.50, was pretty fair.

In any case, please do leave reviews for books you enjoy. If you didn’t like a book, think carefully about why before slamming an author with a one or two star review.

The ego you save may be mine!