How anticlimatic

So a few weeks back I self-published my first novel on the amazon kindle store. All was going well, I was selling a decent amount of copies (in my opinion), but still no reviews.
And then today, I got my first rating on Goodreads. And it was a 2 (out of 5 stars). I would lie and say that I'm fine with it, but the truth is I was never a confident person to begin with, and now I'm doubting my writing abilities even more. I know many authors deal with this kinda thing, and I just have to suck it up. I'm not complaining about the rater, if she thought my book deserved that rating then I'm glad she was honest.

My question is though, now that the only rating I have is a bad one, will people even bother to buy the book? Anyone have any inspiring, hopeful stories to share?
Someone please feel free to tell me to stop sulking and being so pathetic -_-

Firstly, thank you everyone. I know I was being a bit over-dramatic (my only excuse is that I'm new to this) so thank you for quelling my fears. It's good to know that bad ratings aren't the end of the world.

Secondly, the most strange yet exciting thing happened yesterday. I checked back on goodreads to discover that the rater had changed her rating from 2 to 4. When I read the comments underneath, someone else asked the rater why she had given it that rating, as they were planning to read it. The rater said that it was a mistake and that she did enjoy it after all. The other person mentioned that since they'd seen the 2 star rating, and they'd been rethinking reading the book.

Interesting, much? Looks like I kicked up a fuss over nothing, and apparently had a bout of good karma

alvin123 said:

I have a question. Are you promoting this? If so, do you mind telling me in your opinion, what is the best way to promote a Self-Published book?

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Hi Yes, I am promoting. Every self-published author has to do so. As for the best way, it's really hard to say. There are many very effective ways of promoting, and I can give you an idea of what methods worked really well for me.

Changing my signiture to include a link to my book on all of the forums I visited really helped to boost my sales, as well as putting my book up in the AW library. Goodreads is another useful exposure device. I also join websites such as worthy of publishing and wattpad where I can post free samples of my work. If people like it, then they can click on a link to take them to my book's kindle page. .

Out of all these though, what worked best for me was having a sale on my book. For a week, I put the price down from $2.99 to $0.99. In that week, I sold about 40 copies with barely any promotion (8 times as many as I sold before). After I put the price back up, I've started selling a lot more. I would definitely reconmend it. It's pretty much like letting your customers promote your book for you.

So yeah, sorry for the essay. But If it was advice you were looking for, I hope I've helped!