Responding to negative feedback

Rose, that's so unprofessional that I'm dumbfounded. It paints the author in a very bad light.

Anne Rice? (Seems like there was a thread on Rice vs. Amazon Reviewers at AW once...)

My feeling is this: those people paid money for the book. It's their money, their time -- they should be able to interpret the book as they want in a review.

However. Some folks, I've noticed, do get hellaciously cruel on those reviews. Not sure why you would take the time to write a review that's essentially a variation of the "This book sucks" theme. God knows I've gotten some of those, and they aren't fun to read. But I personally wouldn't dare respond, ever.

Was it Anne Rice? She's the only author I've ever heard of doing that.

It's considered bad form to respond to reviewers, especially in a negative fashion. Although, I did have one author respond to a review I did on my blog. However, it was a positive review and the author contacted me just to let me know they were glad I liked the book. It was strictly a private, individual-to-individual communication.

Let 'em throw stones. When you bend to pick up even the smallest rock in retaliation, you've stooped to their level.

There's a bit of conversation going on about this on the Amazon boards. There are allegations that not only have authors harassed reviewers for mediocre review ratings, but also that they actively petition Amazon to remove 3 star and below reviews in order to maintain a higher average rating for their works.

http://www.amazon.com/tag/romance/forum?%5Fencoding=UTF8&cdForum=FxM42D5QN2YZ1D&cdThread=Tx1GBYID02K3VTS

If this is really happening, it is not cool IMO.

Amazon is having the perpetual conundrum of the middleman: you have to try and make everyone happy on both sides, and sometimes you can't do that.

Inevitably, they'll side with the folks who have the most money, and ask the other side to please bend over. That's how this problem always gets solved.

I haven't run across an author responding to a specific review or comment, but I have seen authors making comments on Amazon. In every single instance, it felt tacky and unprofessional - they might as well have said "Hey! Look at me! I'm a total noob!"

Authors should just ignore all bad criticism. Otherwise, the naysayers gain power.

I would quickly lose the respect of anyone who felt the need to respond to reviews of their books. Let the work defend itself - either its good enough that the positive reviews will outweigh the negative, or it isn't and the reviewers are right.

Readers are entitled to their opinion. Some may relish a viciousness that goes beyond good taste but I've never felt the need to retaliate. I'm happy if I get a good review and if they pan my book so what. My MOTHER on the other hand.... Well, lets just say she gets a tad bent out of shape if she reads a negative review of my novel. Gotta love moms.
Linnea

san_remo_ave said:

There's a bit of conversation going on about this on the Amazon boards. There are allegations that not only have authors harassed reviewers for mediocre review ratings, but also that they actively petition Amazon to remove 3 star and below reviews in order to maintain a higher average rating for their works.

http://www.amazon.com/tag/romance/forum?%5Fencoding=UTF8&cdForum=FxM42D5QN2YZ1D&cdThread=Tx1GBYID02K3VTS

If this is really happening, it is not cool IMO.

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Here's a blog referencing the amazon link you posted, with a link to the author's response to the review.

Birol said:

It's considered bad form to respond to reviewers, especially in a negative fashion.

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I wondered about that. If you have another book coming out, thanking them for a good review of your first could be construed as a mild attempt to nudge them into feeling they should be kind to the next one as well.

But I have sent personal emails thanking a couple of reviewers who I thought gave thoughtful, as well as generally positive reviews to my book, basically just saying I was glad they enjoyed it.

I would never respond to a negative review, even the most vicious, not in public or private.

I had an author respond to a review of their book that I'd put on my blog. My review was generally positive but had a couple of small negative comments. The author actually thanked me for taking the time to write it and said it was nice to read a thoughtful review. It's made me go out and buy some more of their work.

In terms of responding to negative reviews, I can understand why an author would be upset about it and want to respond, but I don't think it's appropriate to do it in public. If an author absolutely has to say something, it should be done by email or letter because otherwise it just makes them look completely unprofessional and certainly wouldn't make me want to buy their books.

MM

I don't think it's unprofessional for an author to thank someone for a review. Replying to every Amazon reviewer to thank them would look odd, but it isn't that uncommon to see an author thank someone for posting a review to a blog. It makes me more inclined to buy/read future work, rather than less so.

The negative stuff is just scary... especially hiring a PI to find out someone's name, address and family members, because they posted an average rating review. As well as being unprofessional, that's a bunny boiler level of scary.

It's probably never a good idea to respond to negative feedback in the manner you described. And i don't know of many authors that even dare to bother with it. But to be fair, I suppose sometimes an author may have had the last straw yanked or just feel the need to defend themselves. In that case, one would hope they could do it in an appropriate, proffessional manner. People will think what they want. Authors must relaize they can't please all the people all the time. For every bad review, there will be two more people whop absolutely loved it.

You know, if someone took the time to step-by-step go through my novel and tear it apart piecewise in a brutal fashion, I think I'd actually thank them for the insight.

That's one case in which I'd respond to a negative review. I appreciate that sort of feedback. Isn't that what we seek when we're in the criticism phase? Just because something got printed doesn't mean it's perfect.

But, as with all responses to professional reviews, I think I'd keep the communication private.

Messed up; but after all, big-name authors are human, just like the rest of us; so if they lose their cool every so often, hey, it happens. Maybe they were just having a bad day, or were stressin' on low sales figures or something. Or maybe they just needed a

rosepressey said:

Has anyone ever noticed an author responding to negative feedback left for them on Amazon? Today I came across an author that left comments for a reviewer. The comments were snide and a bit creepy. Creepy enough that I decided to never read another book by that author. I won’t say who the author was because if she happened to see this post she probably would stalk me or hunt me down. (Yes, the comments the author left were that bad. I was actually a little scared.)

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Has Anne Rice been commenting on her reviewers again!?



If I ever get published, I'm going to make it my business not to read reviews.

megan_d said:

Was it Anne Rice? She's the only author I've ever heard of doing that.

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OOPS! lol. I should have read on...

KTC said:

OOPS! lol. I should have read on...

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That's okay KTC, you were simply interrogating the text from the wrong perspective.




Does anybody get that?

Worst feedback I ever got

I submitted a mystery manuscript quite a long time ago, so long I don't remember much about the story. But boy do I remember the feedback from one agent. And I quote.

"I think it's best you write this one off to experience and move on."

No pun intended I'm sure. What did I do? I moved on. Don't waste your time and energy responding to negative feedback. Just learn what you can from it and move on.