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Thursday, February 2, 2012

Woohoo! My short story collection got a one-star review!

My short story collection The Night the Nazis Came to Dinner, and other dark tales has received a one-star review on Amazon UK! Under the title "Can't believe I paid for this" the reviewer said:

"The four stories are not badly written. However, I reached the same conclusion on each -"So what". I didn't find any of them interesting; one I found difficult to understand.The first story about the Nazis, the reason I bought the book, offered all sorts of ideas in my mind but the story was flat and too short. The title was the best bit of the story. The other stories also promise more than they deliver.

"The stories are not badly written.

"I cannot think of one reason why I would recommend anyone to read these stories. They must have some redeeming features so let's hope somebody else reviews them and finds something I missed completely"

So, um, why am I celebrating a bad review? Because I totally don't care. After twelve years as a professional writer and the same number of books published, I finally looked at a bad review, shrugged, and got back to work. It's one guy's opinion and he has a right to it, even if he doesn't express very clearly what he didn't like about the stories. So he felt cheated out of 77 pence. So what? It won't kill my career, it doesn't mean I'm a bad writer, and it probably won't even hurt my sales.

As writers we need to stop worrying about what other people think. Oh yes, easier said than done, and some people can still get under my skin, but if we're to survive in this literary jungle we have to learn to slough off rejection and negativity and keep on writing. So thanks, anonymous reviewer, you just marked a milestone in my writing career!

In other news my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness is still on sale for $2.99 and will remain so until the day after Valentine's Day, because I love my readers.

2 comments:

  1. Good for you!
    In my opinion, if an author doesn't collect at least some bad reviews, he/she isn't being widely enough read.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That made me laugh! He obviously wasn't your target reader. I have a couple one star reviews on Amazon, but they are both just dumb rather than interesting like this one.

    ReplyDelete

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