Trouble with an Amazon Reviewer

I would do nothing about that particular review. That may very well be that person's opinion.

Instead I'd nicely ask those people you mention who have read it if they wouldn't mind leaving a review if they have the time or inclination. (I'd also say it's okay if they prefer not to--don't want to apply awkward pressure to the situation )

Don't take any action. And in the future, I wouldn't contact Amazon about anything but personally abusive reviews or a pattern of blatant troll reviews.

You can ask others who've read it if they wouldn't mind reviewing, but avoid asking family to review, if those groups overlap. Amazon doesn't like that.

buzhidao said:

I would do nothing about that particular review. That may very well be that person's opinion.

Instead I'd nicely ask those people you mention who have read it if they wouldn't mind leaving a review if they have the time or inclination. (I'd also say it's okay if they prefer not to--don't want to apply awkward pressure to the situation )

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^ This...

You can please all of the people some of the time. some of of the people all of the time, but never all of the people all the time. You wrote a book and published it to Amazon, which runs partly based off user reviews. It's not if there will be trolls, ya just gotta roll with it, painful though it may be...

Wow, that is a harsh review, and I feel bad for you. Did you run the story past an editor before you put it up? I looked at the opening pages and saw a few issues, and it's possible the reviewer couldn't get past them to enjoy the story properly. If you're happy with how the book turned out, ignore the review. But if you think it might call your attention to some problems you could fix and make the work better, then it could even be helpful in the end.

I'll just pop in here. I just checked out your book via the "Look Inside" feature. Honestly, you need some work on it still.

Have you hired a professional editor to go over it? How about formatting?

Were your beta readers family and friends, or did you find some people that were impartial?

The most obvious thing at first glance is the formatting. Extra spaces between paragraphs are unnecessary and can distract the eye with too much white space.

As for the opening, I think you're trying to explain too much, too quickly. Your second sentence has 31 words, to start, including 4 names that we're not familiar with yet.

I'm just going to pull out this little snippet.

As his father's eldest son, he was obligated to care for his people as the man who was now their king, . . .

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This can and probably should be it's own sentence to start. It also raises a lot of questions. Is his father dead? Did he step down? Kidnapped? It can also be cleaned up quite a bit.

"As the eldest son, he was now the king..."

Being shorter, and more succinct, while the question of what happened to the king is still there, it has more finality to it. It feels more like "This is how it is." than the original sentence with its extra exposition.

That's just what I'm seeing in the first paragraph though.

I would like to reiterate my initial questions though. Did you have a professional editor go over it? Did you have impartial beta readers?

gambit924 said:

May I ask, what issues did you notice, Marlys?

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There are some sentences that aren't clear, sentence fragments, problems with capitalization, incorrectly punctuated dialogue, and the similarity of names is confusing. If you like, try putting the first few pages up in SYW and I (and other critters) can give you more detailed feedback.

gambit924 said:

As for him. I doubt that's his actual opinion given that he's never given a good review on anything that wasn't a toy, game, tool or ridiculous. Plus he borrowed it for free. As I said, I've been paying very close attention, and if you get something for free, shouldn't you at least have the decency to have a real, actual opinion on it rather than one word? I'm not going to make trouble about it, but it's not cool. One word. Yes Amazon runs on reviews. But usually they're reviews from people with more than a one word vocabulary who can use punctuation.

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Remember that reviewers aren't writing reviews for the sake of the author. They're not there to help you improve or be constructive. They don't have to give examples or be carefully worded. They're usually not written by professional writers, so wouldn't be expected to be beautifully edited. Reviews are literally what the reviewer thinks of the product. Probably aimed at other readers, but sometimes reviewers just want to get their thoughts out, especially if they hated it. That thought can be a star rating with no comment or a single word. They can hate everything they read. It doesn't mean the reviewer is in the wrong or doing anything bad. One of the best things you can do is repeat that yourself until you believe it, because all the while you're thinking bad things about the reviewer, it'll encourage you to react badly.

Though focusing on things that might get you good reviews isn't bad advice, it might not happen. Some books won't appeal to reviewers and won't sell many copies. It doesn't mean the one-star review is to blame for that, so avoid assuming all issues are due to that review. I've so far avoided any one-star reviews, but it doesn't mean I have a lot of reviews or sell many copies. So don't place too much importance on that one review.

gambit924 said:

as I have been assured that the book is good by others. Others who were my beta readers and such.

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Were your beta readers friends of yours? Because such "reviews" can't usually be expected to give you the kind of constructive criticism that improves your work. (They feel good, and dog knows sometimes I'll take the encouragement where I can get it. But you can't trust them to be accurate where other readers are concerned.)

I have contacted Amazon about taking it down, as it's not a relevant review.

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Unless you have proof that someone has set out to write a misleading review (like, they never read the book, or were paid to write the review), a harsh review isn't irrelevant, it's just harsh. I know it hurts, but hopefully you can take some of the advice you're getting here to heart, and keep at it.

I also looked at your sample. There are a number of errors that make it appear to be the work of an amateur. For one thing, dialogue should be like this:

"I'm talking," he said.

Not:

"I'm talking." He said.

It seems like a minor thing, but it's a distracting enough error that I can see how someone might call it unreadable.

Also, exclamation points are generally something to use sparingly. In a few instances, you used multiple exclamation points for the same sentence. Again, that makes the writing come off as the work of someone who doesn't know much about writing.

These errors, in my mind, detract from the potential your story has. With the story in its current form, I don't think you're going to get many people to read past the sample. As others have suggested, you should probably run it by an editor (or at the very least a beta reader who is well-versed in the mechanics of writing). You'd probably be best-served by unpublishing it until you've fixed the issues. In its current form, it's only going to hurt you as a writer.

Again, it's hard for me to say much about the story itself because the mechanical errors are distracting. They break immersion, and if the reader isn't immersed in your story, they're not going to enjoy it.

I'm sorry if this came across as a bit harsh, but my aim is to help you (unlike that reviewer). In its current form, this story isn't going to sell. That's not to say it won't ever sell, once corrected, just that its current form isn't doing justice to the story.

I see you've moved on from the reviewer question. I looked at the opening too, out of curiosity when I opened the thread, and the first page has, among other issues mentioned above, dialogue tags that are inconsistent. Most are wrong; a few are incorrect, but they're very inconsistent.

I found that stuff very distracting. Seconding the idea of putting an excerpt up in SYW if you want to work on the writing.

I don't know what readers you've had, but just personally, If I look inside and see two errors on the first page? I'm out. I'm sure there are people who will read on, but I also know I'm not alone in that.

gambit924 said:

No, that's good, RWM. Thank you for that. It's helpful. At this point not going to do the SYW thing, but I may put it by another reader who may be able to help. I have had a couple, but the one I had edited parts later in the chapter because this beginning was sort of tacked on. Now I'm thinking about axing this beginning. IDK. People don't seem to like it regardless.

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This is the exact reason successful indies will always recommend paying for a good editor. It's an investment. They're qualified, and they know what their job is. Personally, I don't really like people doing things like this for me for free because they don't really have a stake in how it turns out.

It can also remove quite a bit of the stress of writing, I find. I am personally not a hugely detail oriented person, so I was delighted to find that I could pay a decent editor to fix minor problems that I know I can't sort out myself.

Something else to consider: now that you've got fiction up for sale, I would probably recommend not butting heads with too many people on social media. There's nothing wrong with strong opinions obviously, but the fact is if you piss off a bunch of people, they can really easily get back at your by putting one star ratings on your book. Is it okay that people do that? Of course not. But they still do it. Just a fact of life, and when it happens, you'll be the one to suffer. It's unfortunate, but its PR. I'm sure a lot of celebrities have strong and controversial opinions, but they know not to actually say them out loud. Doing so would only hurt their career.

gambit924 said:

At this point not going to do the SYW thing

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I must be going mad, because I swear I critted this in SYW a while back...


eta: Went searching and found it. Bit of a derail, coz this thread's about the review, not about your book itself, but while I'm here ... I see you changed up the opener a bit from the chapter originally posted in SYW. The squirrels never got around to commenting on dialogue punctuation etc in that excerpt, because there were larger structural issues. But yeah ... I suggest fixing the punctuation. If I see glaring errors like that on the first page of "look inside", I'm not buying that book, no matter how good the story is.

be frank said:

eta: Went searching and found it. Bit of a derail, coz this thread's about the review, not about your book itself, but while I'm here ... I see you changed up the opener a bit from the chapter originally posted in SYW. The squirrels never got around to commenting on dialogue punctuation etc in that excerpt, because there were larger structural issues. But yeah ... I suggest fixing the punctuation. If I see glaring errors like that on the first page of "look inside", I'm not buying that book, no matter how good the story is.

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There's a really good point here - with feedback from beta readers and in the SYW forum, you can't expect feedback to be all encompassing. If people mention problems A & B, it doesn't mean there isn't a C there as well.

That's not the fault of SYW, of course. People are kind to give up their time. But since they're doing it as a favour, it's just not going to be the be-all-and-end-all.

Just remember if you go looking for an editor, check with them what services they offer and what services you're paying for. There are several different levels of editing, from developmental to light proofreading, and all the proofreading in the world isn't going to help if you have deep developmental issues with the story.

Deep breath time.

I just had a look at your opening page on Amazon and it's clear your book needed a lot more work before it was published. However, as it's already been published you shouldn't put it up in SYW: it's done. It's out there. Too late.

And you can't do anything about reviews you don't like because reviews are not for you, they are for your potential readers; and if your readers don't like your book they are entitled to say so. It's not up to you to police that.

All you can reasonably do here is forget about that one-star review. And if you're going to publish anything else, spend a lot more time on revising it first, work with experienced beta-readers, and then consider hiring a good editor. To be honest, the problems I saw with the first two pages of text on Amazon make me feel that you need to spend more time learning your craft before considering publication, and in my opinion you'd be wasting money if you paid anyone to edit work which is at this stage of development.

I'm sorry to be so blunt. But if you want to avoid getting more one-star reviews you need to up your game. And if you do, things can only get better, right?

The character's name was repeated to often.