Well, it happened. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later and it happened yesterday. I got my first bad review for my book and my heart sank into my stomach.
Ever since I published Little Rebellion, I knew that someone is going to have a negative opinion about my book and I believed I was ready for it simply because I knew it was going to happen. It turns out that I wasn’t.
Basically, the reviewer stated that the book is not edited (which is true, I don’t have a publishing house and couldn’t afford an editor) and that the subject was good but didn’t live up to expectations and that they abandoned the book because of the grammar.
Immediately my brain did what it likes to do and assasinated me. I started thinking that no one is going to like my book, that it’s horrible and that no one is going to buy it because of that one review.
This is also the first time I got a negative review for my published work, because the reviews for Identity Crisis and Rehab have been for the most part positive.
I am trying to find a balance between accepting a bad review and not spiraling into thoughts about removing my book, deleting it completely from the internet and giving up on writing a sequel.
I know that the book is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea and this is just one review which shouldn’t affect me this much but I am scared that one negative review is going to turn people away from buying the book. There have been 93 downloads of the book and I wish I knew what everyone thought but unfortunately there have only been 5 reviews for the book, 4 of them positive and one negative.
And I decided to hold on to the 4 positive reviews even when it’s hard. Writing and self-publishing has a learning curve so I decided that once the sequel is done, I will simply save up some money for an editor. I have to accept negative reviews as a constructive criticism that will help me put out better work in the future.
Considering the fact that a lot of writers read this blog, I know that this might have happened to some of you so I would just like to know how you dealt with it and what was your journey with reviews and getting feedback on your work. Let me know down in the comments.
Love,
Luna
Don’t forget that my first novel is available on Amazon: Little Rebellion
Also you can get my poetry books: Rehab and Identity crisis