Bad Review? Hmm, Is there Anything Good to Say About Them?

Helen Hollick

Funnily, enough, yes there is! I look at reviewing novels with two different hats (and I do actually wear hats!) as Managing Editor of the Historical Novel Society Indie Reviews, and as an author myself. As Managing Editor I have one main goal, and that is to improve the standard of indie-published novels. Indie (that includes all forms of self-publishing, whether using a company to help you produce your book, or completely Do-It-Yourself) has received a bad press over the years, with the assumption that if it isn’t good enough for traditional mainstream publishing, then it must be rubbish. Fortunately this out-of-date, somewhat bigoted view is rapidly receding because it has been proven to be wrong. Indie can, and often does, mean “darn good read”.

I have a splendid US and UK-based review team and, as with Indie B.R.A.G., our criteria is to review novels that we would recommend people to buy. To this end, we will not review a self-published book that is incorrectly formatted: you’d be surprised how many books we receive that have such tiny font you need a magnifying glass, or the text is left-justified (i.e. ragged margin on the right… margins should be straight on both sides in a published book.) Many are full of errors that should have been picked up at proof-read stage to the extent that it seems obvious the book has not had a proof-read, probably not a copy-edit either – and definitely not a full technical edit. Sorry to say this, but a family member who is/was a teacher is not a professional editor. In fact I reject more books from academics and teachers than I do from writers with no qualifications whatsoever. You might know your grammar and syntax, but can you tell a good story?

A badly produced book will garner a bad review, however, one thing we do try to do at H.N.S. is be fair and honest. If the story is good but it needs another polish we say so. If we think an editor would have helped the author bring that bit of realistic sparkle to a character we say so. There is nothing wrong with fair, honest and constructive criticism, although yes, it is disappointing to read the not quite so good review, the one you were not expecting because, let’s face it, you were hoping for a glowing five star one. (Incidentally a four star review is often paid more attention to by readers than the five star ones.)

I have received rude responses which range from, “You don’t know what you are talking about,” to, “I’m an academic history professor. How dare you say my book reads like a lecture!” I even had a threatening email from the person who responded with that one.

What baffles me, do these aggressive people truly believe that by being rude I will re-review the book with five stars? On the contrary; the email gets deleted, the sender blocked, and the book goes into the trash bin.

So how to respond to the less-than-enthusiastic review?

Simple answer. Don’t. If you must respond (really? Why?) Then do so once, and do so politely.

Go away, have a coffee or something, calm down, then read it again. You might just find it is not as bad as you first thought. I have thirty-seven reviews for my nautical adventure, Sea Witch on Amazon.co.uk* from twenty-nine 5 stars, down to one two star.

**[The Errors are as published]

(*Amazon.com has some slightly different reviews – two 1 stars which relate to a badly produced edition – not my fault, blame the publisher! I do think, however, to give a 1 star comment just because a comma is out of place is pushing it a bit!)

You are entitled to respond if there is an obvious error, the title spelt wrong, or author name, for instance. Or, as occasionally happens at HNS if a plot spoiler has been given away inadvertently. It can happen and that is annoying. If you contact the reviewer and ask for it to be removed, do be polite and sensible though. It is not a plot spoiler for the reviewer to say “X meets Y and they fall in love.” That is the plot, it is not a spoiler. “X turns out to be the murderer.” however, is a spoiler.

So what is the positive side of the poor review?

Readers are not stupid you know. They will see these obvious troublemakers and ignore such nonsense; in fact, might even buy the book because their curiosity has been aroused.

My favourite type of bad review are the utter inane.

The above are made up, but this last review is for real (although I have paraphrased.)

C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. You all know the story – put simply: four children discover a fantasy world which is bewitched into being eternal winter. One of the children (Edmund) is jealous of his sister. He meets the witch and is lured under her spell. How? Because she treats him to a whole boxful of Turkish Delight.

The review – and you just have to laugh – is: “This book is nothing but a marketing ploy by the author. All he is trying to do is sell Turkish Delight – does he have shares in a candy company or something?”

Moral of the story?

Calm down, shake your head, walk away and laugh at those silly people who just don’t get it!

Links:

An Amazon Near You (nice reviews to be left only please! 🙂