{"id":11294,"date":"2012-05-18T12:00:18","date_gmt":"2012-05-18T12:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/publicityhound.com\/blog\/?p=11294"},"modified":"2012-05-18T12:00:18","modified_gmt":"2012-05-18T12:00:18","slug":"authors-why-you-shouldnt-respond-to-bad-book-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/marketing\/social-media\/authors-why-you-shouldnt-respond-to-bad-book-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Authors: Why you shouldn&#8217;t respond to bad book reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.publicityhound.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/bad-news2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-11295\" style=\"float: left;margin: 5px 10px\" title=\"bad news2\" src=\"https:\/\/www.publicityhound.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/bad-news2.jpg\" alt=\"angry man reading bad book review on laptop\" width=\"230\" height=\"153\" \/><\/a>One of the most powerful tools for marketing your books is the treasure trove of online book review and book recommendation sites like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\" target=\"_blank\">Goodreads<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.authorsden.com\" target=\"_blank\">AuthorsDen<\/a> and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.shelfari.com\" target=\"_blank\">Shelfari<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You can create a community of hundreds or even thousands of raving fans who will examine which books you&#8217;ve placed on your virtual bookshelf. They&#8217;ll discuss, review and recommend your books. They&#8217;ll ask you questions about your characters or plot lines, and sometimes hang on your every word.<\/p>\n<p>But with the good, comes the bad.<br \/>\u00a0 \u00a0<br \/>\u00a0 \u00a0<br \/><strong>Prepare for Negative Reviews<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Somebody, somewhere, won&#8217;t like what you&#8217;ve written and respond with a bad review that they believe is completely fair and accurate.<\/p>\n<p>Resist the urge to respond! Here&#8217;s why:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you do, you&#8217;ll most likely invite another comment from the reviewer that&#8217;s nastier than the original. You won&#8217;t be able to help yourself. Before long, you and the reviewer will be in a <strong>drawn-out debate<\/strong> that looks and sounds like sour grapes.<br \/>\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>You&#8217;ll come across as too sensitive, unable to accept criticism, and resentful. <strong>Do you really want your followers to see you that way?<\/strong><br \/>\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>You&#8217;ll turn off other potential reviewers because they might fear that you&#8217;ll come back at them with both guns drawn.<br \/>\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>People don&#8217;t all like the same things. Go over to Amazon and look at some of the best-sellers. You&#8217;ll see negative reviews mixed in with reviews that gush about the book.<br \/>\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>You might develop a reputation on blogs and discussion boards as an author who can&#8217;t stand the heat.<br \/>\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Those public comments might show up when people, <strong>including publishers and journalists,<\/strong> do a Google search for your name or book title. \u00a0 \u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 <br \/>\u00a0 \u00a0 <br \/>What to Do Instead<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Practice acceptance. Know that you are not alone. And move onto the next project.<\/p>\n<p>If your&#8217;e still angry, walk away from the computer. Take a walk. Take a nap. Resist the urge to keep going back to the bad review and reading it again, hunting for any inaccurate morsel. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t appeal to your fan base and ask them to write good reviews to &#8220;push down&#8221; the bad one. Don&#8217;t ask them to stand up for you in the debate. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Instead, read this <a href=\"http:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/topic\/show\/848925-reviewer-abuse\" target=\"_blank\">lively discussion about &#8220;reviewer abuse&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0on Goodreads..\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>As a publicity expert who teaches reputation management, I know how damaging these public squabbles can be.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Am I wrong? \u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.publicityhound.com\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-11299\" title=\"Book Review sites 500 x 62\" src=\"https:\/\/www.publicityhound.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Book-Review-sites-500-x-62.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"62\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the most powerful tools for marketing your books is the treasure trove of online book review and book recommendation sites like Goodreads, AuthorsDen and\u00a0Shelfari. You can create a community of hundreds or even thousands of raving fans who will examine which books you&#8217;ve placed on your virtual bookshelf. They&#8217;ll discuss, review and recommend\u2026&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/marketing\/social-media\/authors-why-you-shouldnt-respond-to-bad-book-reviews\/\" class=\"rmlink\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","iawp_total_views":38,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[638],"tags":[608,633],"class_list":{"0":"post-11294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-social-media","7":"tag-authors-publishers","8":"tag-consumer-reviews","9":"entry"},"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Joan Stewart","author_link":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/author\/jstewart\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/purelysupp.com\/publicity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}