After Saturday’s lively discussion some interesting points were brought up in the comment thread that I’d like to address while talking about some of the wider talking points surrounding one star reviews.  It’s in no particular order but I think it is important to address some of these today:

1.  Giving a one star review does not mean you’re being rude or disrespecting the effort the author put into a book.

Unless you’re author-bashing I see no reason why a one star review can be considered rude as long as it’s your honest opinion and aren’t utterly reveling in taking down the book.  When I do a book review I generally try to follow a format where I point out what I liked/disliked and why (generally) using examples from the book itself.  That’s not rude by any stretch of the imagination.  It’s called having an opinion and articulating it.

As for one star reviews not giving credit for the author’s effort, that’s a bit of a problem.  You see, I don’t care how much time or effort you put into your novel.  I don’t care if you took five years or five months as long as the end product is the same quality.  Reviews are subjective but I generally try to be as objective as possible which means that I’m going to examine the book itself and its merits, not the author’s personal life, how they wrote the book or whether it was traditionally or self-published.  I judge the book on its own merits. 

Separate from my reviewing, I do have a lot of respect for authors who put their work out there.  I’m a blogger that not only writes reviews but opinion articles like this and when you put your hard work out into the world it can sometimes feel like you’re stripping in public and asking complete strangers to rate your naked body.  I get it.  But—and this is a big one—authors need to develop thicker skins.  They shouldn’t be expected to tolerate author bashing or people who tear apart books for fun but if you’re getting offended at someone offering their opinion and backing it up with their reasons, you need to get a thicker skin.  You’re going to get constructive criticism or just plain criticism no matter how rude you think it is so it’s best to grow up a bit and accept that yes, everyone gets criticism.  Which leads into my next point:

2.  Constructive criticism is part of being an author and getting reviews.

There are some who argue that if a blogger doesn’t like a book they should just give it three stars and say the book wasn’t for them.  To me, that’s not only an insult to my intelligence as part of the book consuming public, that’s flat out lying.  I have explained my rating system in the past and my reasons for using five out of a possible five stars so I think authors are warned about what they’re getting into when they submit to me.  However, the problem is that it’s not just me who uses this system: three stars is generally seen as a blogger saying “well, this wasn’t the best book I’ve ever read but there were some good elements and an almost equal number of bad elements.”  It’s still a generally positive review and I will give a three star review if I read a book that meets that criteria.  But a one star novel is not the same as a book that just ‘wasn’t for me’; it has a lot of problems and generally only has one redeeming feature.  Anyone suggesting reviewers just give books three stars if they don’t like them is encouraging dishonesty in book reviewing, plain and simple.

That sort of leads into my main point: if a review is full of criticism, the star ratings don’t soften the blow.  As an author, you are going to get criticism so you need to deal with it like a mature, adult human being.  Part of this is learning how to distinguish good criticism from bad criticism.  By ‘bad criticism’ and ‘good criticism’ I don’t mean ‘criticism you don’t like’ and ‘criticism you do like’.  I mean, that, generally it’s pretty easy to tell good, constructive criticism from criticism that would hurt the integrity of your novel.

For example, good criticism is criticism that is offered along with reasons for that criticism, i.e. “I didn’t like the plot of this novel because it basically follows Harry Potter‘s storyline and thus is very predictable.”  Bad criticism is just “I hated the main character” or “this author sucks”.  If you as an author learn to tell these apart—and I know it’s not always so simple as the examples above—then you’re well on your way to improving.  No one’s first novel is absolutely perfect and people need to start thinking of criticism as just that rather than assigning the word such a negative connotation.  If the criticism is valid, then it’s something to keep in your mind when you’re writing your next novel.  If the criticism isn’t helpful, just ignore it.  When feelings are involved I know it’s not always so simple but both authors and bloggers need to keep the fact that criticism isn’t inherently negative in their minds.

3.  In general, one star reviews don’t really seem to hurt authors.

Unfortunately, there is no research out there that says [x] percent of readers will not buy a book if they see a one star review.  However, from anecdotal experience and the posts of other bloggers I think I can pretty safely say that in general one star reviews will not harm your books’ sales.    Here’s why:

When most people go to buy a book or check it out on Goodreads, they’ll look at the cover first.  Good, professionally designed cover?  Check.  Then they’ll probably check out the blurb to see if it’s interesting.  Is the blurb interesting and do its contents appeal to them?  Check.  That’s where a lot of people stop but if they go on to the final stage of looking at the reviews they’ll probably look at both the positive and negative reviews.  If most of the negative reviews say “this book sucks amazon didn’t deliver it to me in 2 days” then they’re probably going to discount them.  Or, to use a less extreme example, if a negative review says essentially “this book is about mermaids and I don’t like mermaids so I’m giving it one star” they’re still going to buy the book if they liked mermaids.  They may even be a little more enthusiastic about buying the book because although not every reviewer likes mermaids in fiction, they absolutely love them.  It all depends on individual tastes, not necessarily the quality of your book.  (On a side note, if you have mostly one star reviews, you can start worrying about the quality of your book.)

What this means is that you’re better off spending time and money on your cover and your blurb than you are worrying about a one star review you got from a book blogger.  If a person is already lured in by your awesome cover and their interest is piqued by your blurb, they’re not really going to care what a one star review is saying if there are ten 4 or 5 star reviews for every one star review.

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These are essentially my thoughts on one star reviews.  They’re not disrespectful to authors as long as they’re offering up reasons for their criticism, authors need to grow thick skins and accept that they will get criticism and finally, recognize that a couple of one star reviews are not going to hurt their career.  It’s tough when a book you’ve worked on for months, usually years, gets a bad rating but that’s just a part of being an author and putting your book—your product—out there into the world.  If you can’t accept that yes, you will get criticism, you’re better off not publishing at all.