Being a cry-baby will not sell books.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been sent links to various negative review articles by other reviewers where the authors being reviewed popped a vein in reaction to it. This is a rare occurence at Odyssey Reviews, mostly because of our policy of not posting reviews for anything that earns only 2 medallions or lower. I'm sure if we panned the bad books in our posted reviews, we'd get more negative reactions from some authors. I usually just tell the author in the kindest way that their book was not readable. I did however have one author react like such a big baby to the review; I changed some of the ways we do things around here at Odyssey Reviews, starting by disabling comments and writing this rather harsh post:

Author Notice

The hard truth is this; if you write to publish, you are exposing yourself to opinion. Period. If you don’t like negative opinions, then you should either make sure that you write like Austen, Steinbeck, Twain, Shelley, Dickenson, Whitman, Keats (None of whom were immune to criticism and negative reviews, by the way), or don’t write at all. My point is... Criticism Happens people! You are giving your work to the public and they are going to read it. Some may love it, some may despise it; it is par for the course; and authors, if you are not prepared to take criticism, you shouldn’t be publishing your work! It’s as simple as that.

It does absolutely NOTHING for your credibility to send lengthy, whining emails to your reviewers listing all the wonderful things other readers said or trying to sway the opinion of your reviewer by imposing other views on them. It’s not going to happen; you can’t MAKE someone like your stuff. I can assure all authors that reviewers are not purposefully sitting about, wringing their hands and smacking their lips; delighting in the notion of tearing your book to shreds for no good reason. If a reviewer is making a criticism, it’s 99.99999999% likely they have been given a reason to. Some reviewers might be more finicky than others, granted, but they are not setting out to make you cry. They are setting out to give an objective, but still personal view of a book.

Posting lengthy diatribe-comments on blog-reviews, or writing novella-length blog posts in rebuttal, arguing with the reviewer’s final opinion makes you look like a huge, snotty-nosed, blubbering baby and the readers who come along will be doubly-convinced not to buy your book. I personally have been known to buy a book in spite of some harsh reviews.

Let’s face it, if everyone listened to negative reviews, would Stephanie Meyer be a successful as she is? I don’t think so. People are still downloading Jessica Black's 'Friday' song in spite of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of well-deserved negative reviews.

If the author has sold the package to me correctly, then even with a few negative words about it, I will still take that extra step and decide for myself. Amanda Hocking’s troll books are a perfect example of that. I read a number of bad reviews before I got them. But buy them I did. I downloaded all three books and found them worthy of 4 medallions. But if one of those bad reviews had a personal response from Amanda Hocking in the comments, decrying the review and proclaiming that the reviewer is victimizing her by forming and declaring unjust opinions about her work, and following her comments with nine more comments which are pastes from other reviews that were positive... Yeah... I’d arch my brow and shake my head and NOT buy anything by her ever again.

By acting that way, the author is blatantly telling their potential readers that they don’t trust them to decide for themselves and what’s worse; they are telling the reader that if they don’t like the book and they think it was bad, then the reader is wrong, wrong, wrong... Not exactly the best weay to show respect one's readers, is it?

If someone gives your book a negative review, to coin a perfectly apt internet acronym... STFU. Let your book stand up for itself. One or two negative reviews isn't going to be its end. If it gets nothing but negative reviews... then maybe that is destiny telling you that you should take up some other form of creative art.

Odyssey Reviewers... Our Lessons Learned

Once again, Odyssey Reviews is posting a 'harshicle'. Having read a good measure of self-published books for this review site, Odyssey reviewers have learned that there are several common mistakes that a self-published author makes when generating their product. These mistakes will affect your sales, your reviews and your marketability as an author. The more we read, the more compelled we are to note these issues. Gird your loins, authors--and read on. These may seem harsh, but they are helpful tips.

When submitting your book for review:

~ Your query summary should be as compelling as the copy on the cover. Don’t fill it up with character names and silly, irrelevant details that give the whole story away or hang out of context like dangling, freak-limbs. Hack them off.

~ Edited query: If you cannot submit a query that is somewhat free of grammatical errors, it’s likely we won’t want to read the book itself.

~ Please try to form a coherent sentence. Disjointed summaries don’t bode well for the book they’re pitching.

~ Follow the basic guidelines for submissions. We didn’t put the submission guidelines up there as suggestions. No attachments please. Ever.

When you’re hoping to sell your book:

~ Too Much Title
* No matter how much work you put into your book, your title can be an instant turn-on, or turn-off. Having a title that is an epic novel in and of itself is not a good choice. Generally, if you require punctuation in your title, your book either be self-help or probably be re-titled with something catchy and strong.

~ Ridiculous-sounding title that makes no sense...
* Bad idea. What might make 100% sense to you may sound like blather to someone else. Run your title by objective people before you settle on it.

~ Bad Cover Copy
* Not unlike your review submission summary, this is what is supposed to sell your book to the reader. If it’s badly written, you’re in trouble. Refer to this post for more details.

~ Bad Cover Art
* I’m sure it’s charming that you have a child or a friend who can do some basic graphic ‘art’ on Photoshop who you'd love to credit; or you have a low-resolution picture of something—you need to put a lot more thought into your cover than just throwing it together. Your cover is your ‘shop window’—it’s what’s supposed to draw your eye. If it looks pixilated, is a Photoshop hack-job, drawn by a second-rate artist or whatever, it will detract from your book more than you can possibly know. Don’t make it too busy, or too over-thought. It needs to make some sense in context of the book too.

There are examples of both really great, and really bad book covers on this review site. Browse away. I’m sure the design alone affects how many people will click the link through to Amazon from here. See these posts for more tips on cover design: Cover Art Article, Interview with a Cover-Art Designer.

~ Lack of editing
* Editing is an old song here at Odyssey Reviews. We are anti-unedited books here. Our belief is that since POD books are more expensive than standard commercial publications that authors owe it to their readers to insure that what they’re paying more for is a professional, well-presented package. MSWord is a fairly helpful tool for spelling, however it misses a lot. You need to come up with creative ways to clean up your manuscript before you publish. Here is a post with some suggestions. We also interviewed an editor who gave some very helpful tips.

~ Lastly, be realistic and objective about your own work—because if you don’t… the reviewers will.
* Ask yourself this: Are your friends and family just being nice? Is my book really any good? It could be like American Idol; where the singer sounds like a cross between a dying cat and a police siren, but their well-meaning family hurts them more than helps them with their encouragement and kindness. You need to know that there is a strong possibility your book just isn’t very good. It could be entertaining to you, but could be impossible to get through for another. Can you look at your book from a marketing perspective? Can you picture people resonating to it?

Be prepared. Reviews can be harsh. Sometimes we will receive a book and it’s so bad, we cannot review it. We’re not haters here at Odyssey; but we are realistic—and we are honest in our reviews, BUT we will not post a review with a less than a 2 medallion rating because we don’t want to be evil. Your book could be that unreadable, that is a distinct possibility. Sometimes, if authors send us a book, and don't see a review, it's probably because the book rated very low. No amount of money paid to marketing companies is going to make it good. It’s painful and harsh when you get bad reviews—but instead of taking it personally, you should take it as a reason to improve as a writer, and reevaluate your style and your voice.

Some people write entirely for themselves; and discover the hard way that other people can’t always sync with their imagination. We recommend all authors considering self-publishing to do a few test-reads with complete strangers; preferably people who know what they’re doing, and allow the readers to give you a strong, objective review. Take classes. Join a writer’s group. Subject yourself to growth—don’t ever assume that just because you wrote a story from the beginning to the end, that you are instantly qualified to publish your book. You owe your book-buyers a little more consideration than that—especially since you’re asking them to pay a lot more for your book than normal books cost.

Read this post to be aware of what's in store when you submit a query to this or any other review site.