Publishing Help

Negative Feedback

I should perhaps tackle this subject later after we've dealt with promoting your book, but because it happened to me recently, I'm going to deal with it now.

I just published a book about a week ago. It was available for a couple of months as a pre-order so it didn't surprise me to see an early review of the book come through just days after the book went live on the site. However, my stomach dropped when I saw those ghastly three stars.

Yikes. I'd never had a three-star review before. It hurt. I read what the reader wrote and it hurt some more. This is a woman I'm familiar with as she is a regular in one of the Facebook groups I frequent. She LOVES books in the romance genre, particularly short reads. After reading my book, she canceled her pre-order for book #2 in the series. Ouch.

However, she did have some useful things to say, things I can learn from. Even if they hurt to hear them.

So, my main bit of advice about negative feedback is this:

NEVER COMMENT ON NEGATIVE FEEDBACK. Ever. Don't do it. It's unprofessional.

However, if the review is abusive in any way, where it isn't just tearing your book apart, but you personally, then absolutely report that to Amazon as abusive and they will most likely remove it.

This reminds me of another big rule about feedback. It's not exactly relevant to this article about negative feedback, but it's something that you'll need to know.

CLOSE FRIENDS AND FAMILY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO REVIEW YOUR BOOK. Amazon has algorithms and such that can detect if a review is coming from someone who knows you well. They'll delete the feedback and they may give you a warning. It's best to make sure family knows ahead of time that they can't review. I always direct family to Goodreads instead for reviews.

I've debated with myself about sending my reviewer a message on Facebook to thank her for her review and let her know that I will take her advice and answer some of the unanswered questions in a future book in the series. This could convince her to continue reading the series, or it may just make me seem desperate. I'm not sure which, so I haven't done anything yet.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!


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