In this week’s episode, we offer some tips and tricks for writers dealing with bad reviews. We also look at how Facebook and Amazon ads performed in July 2023.
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Progress
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 163 of the Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is August 4th, 2023, and today we’re going to discuss how to handle bad reviews. Before we get into that, let’s have some updates on my current writing projects. I am making good progress on editing Dragonskull: Crown of the Gods, and if absolutely everything goes well, hopefully the book should be out by the time episode 164 of this podcast comes out, so I’m hoping we’ll be finished sometime in the coming week after August 4th.
I have also written a bonus short story that I will give away for free in ebook form to newsletter subscribers when the book comes out. It is called The Final Shield and that will set up some of the stuff that I have in my next epic fantasy series because while this is the last Dragonskull, it will not be the last book…epic fantasy series I write in the realm of Andomhaim. I think there are many more stories to be told there, so The Final Shield will set up some of the conflicts that will take place in the new series, so look forward to reading that when that comes out.
We are about halfway through listening to…proof-listening to Dragon Skull: Curse of the Orcs, so hopefully that will be coming out in audiobook in a few weeks, if all goes well. And then once Dragon Skull: Crown of the Gods is done, it’ll be time to write the final Silent Order book, Silent Order: Pulse Hand and I’m hoping to have that out sometime in September if everything goes well.
00:01:35 Ad Results for July 2023
Before we get into our main topics and some reader questions, let’s see how my ads did for July 2023. First up, let’s look at the Facebook ads. As usual, this is what I got back for every dollar I spent on the ads. For Frostborn, including the audiobooks, with every dollar I spent on ads, they got back $7.82. For Ghosts, including the audiobooks, with everything I spent…with every dollar I spent, I got back…$4.17. For Cloak Games and Cloak Mage, for every dollar I spent I got back $4.57, which doesn’t include the audiobooks. And for Silent Order, for every dollar I spent, I got back $4.88. And since there are no audiobooks for Silent Order, that obviously does not include audiobooks. Unfortunately, Cloak Games and Cloak Mage never really sells enough audiobooks to really move the needle. But other than that, everything was going well in Facebook ads this month. This is also the only reliable way I have found to promote audiobooks: advertise the ebooks, and if you sell enough ebook copies, eventually the needle will move on some audiobooks.
For Amazon ads, the only thing I’m advertising right now is Dragon Skull: Sword of the Squire. Remember, that for an Amazon ad to work, it needs to generate a sale for every 6-8 clicks on the ad. For Dragonskull, for every dollar I spent, I got $4.00 back and I had a sale for every 0.74 clicks. So that was performing well. Now, if you’ve been listening to the show, you might remember that in past months, the Dragonskull Amazon ads made more, but the reason it generated less per dollar spent was because the book was on sale for $0.99 for Bookbub, so Sword of the Squire made less, but overall the Dragonskull series as a series made more money, so it was a pretty good month for advertising.
00:03:20 Reader Questions and Comments
Before we get to our main topic, we have a couple of questions from readers this week. Our first question is from Ken, who says: I’m listening to Dragonskull Book #3 on Chirp. Will the rest of the series be available soon on this platform to listen to? As I mentioned earlier in the show, #4 is about halfway done and should be out in next few weeks and after that, we do we do plan to continue putting out more Dragonskull books as long as the budget and everyone’s health holds up. So hopefully sometime next year we should have all nine up on the Chirp store for you to listen to.
Our next question comes from Doug who says: Is there character art available (other than book covers), like concept art? Also for the races, monsters, landmarks, castras, and so on? Unfortunately not. I do quite a bit of Photoshops for both book covers and for Facebook ads, but I’ve never really commissioned any official art. The book covers and Facebook ads are meant to evoke the feel of epic fantasy, so that when the reader looks at the book cover or the ad, they know immediately, that it’s for epic fantasy. So I’ve never really commissioned independent art to use for the book. But thanks for reading.
00:04:31 Introduction to Today’s Topic: Handling Bad Reviews
Now on to our other main topic of the week, which I’m afraid is a topic that comes up pretty often in the writing online community space. It’s how to deal with bad reviews. It’s time for that doleful yearly tradition, or though, honestly, that tends to happen every few months: New author freaks out about a bad review and then the Internet falls on his/her head. The latest freak out, the one that inspired this episode, involves BookTok, a subset of the TikTok video social media app which, in my opinion, just combined the least desirable features of YouTube and Twitter and somehow make them worse. Anyway, to sum up, a BookTok person gave a new author a mostly favorable review, but complained that the ending was predictable. The author took this personally and shot back, which resulted in the traditional Internet rage pile up and the author’s book contract cancelled. Granted, at least this time the author didn’t drive to the critic’s house and attack the critic with a wine bottle. That actually happened once. Or otherwise show up in critic’s house or workplace. If you are a writer, there is one rule and one rule only you must follow with bad reviews: Never ever, ever respond to reviews.
In other words, you just got to suck it up and move on. I know what I’m talking about, I’m afraid. I have been doing this for about 12 1/2 years now and I’ve gotten every kind of bad review under the sun. Here are just a few of the negative opinions that people have either 1: written in bad reviews or 2: taken upon themselves to e-mail to me personally or send via Facebook Messenger:
The book is badly written. The book is an insult to the English language. I hate the main character. The main character had no flaws. The main character had too many flaws to be believable. The main character was too self-loathing. The main character really should have been more self-loathing. My wife is an English teacher and she was laughing at how bad this book was. This book was Christian propaganda. This book was anti-Christian propaganda. There was too much profanity, there was not enough profanity. The book was too long. The book was too short. Things that happened in previous books were referenced in this one.
Somehow the author insidiously wrote this book to deliberately insult me on a personal level. I am annoyed that the main character was not near to his children. I am recently divorced and I hate this book because the main character reminds me of my ex who was the literal embodiment of the devil and the ultimate source of all evil in the cosmos. The main character’s romantic choices were wrong. I emailed the author detailed criticisms with this book and he never responded. Clearly, he hates his readers. Too much violence, not enough violence and of course, others related to that vein.
There is also for a while a guy writing like 3,000 word reviews on his blog about how much he hated my books. He stopped eventually and I hope he found a girlfriend. So for all the stuff listed above, I only very rarely responded, and only when it was something simple and factually inaccurate that I could easily and quickly point out, like someone complaining that the book wasn’t available on Google Play when it really was, that kind of thing.
Overall though, I avoid responding on the Internet to anything even remotely negative. And to be fair, after 12 years of publishing, I don’t feel the need to respond. I don’t feel much of anything at bad reviews other than a moment of vague annoyance, like when you see someone driving inattentively. Like when you’re a new writer, bad reviews really do sting. But I haven’t been a new writer for a long, long time now. Silent Order: Thunder Hand was book #142 and after 142 books, I can’t even remember what I actually wrote half the time, let alone the opinions people might have had about it. By the time I get to book four or five in a series, I have to spend a lot of time searching the previous books with Control+F to remember important details. I am always grateful when someone enjoys the book and indifferent when someone does not. But for the new writers who haven’t yet written so much they can’t remember everything they’ve written, here are some tips and tricks to help you deal with bad reviews.
00:08:21
Tip 0: Pen Name
If you’re just starting out, maybe you should write under a pen name. Like if you haven’t published anything yet, then you’re just starting out, that might be something to consider. I didn’t obviously, but I’m told for people who do, it’s useful element of psychological compartmentalization (that’s hard to say!), but anyway, all the bad reviews are for pen name, not you and that way you can shrug them off more easily. Now to the rest of the tips.
00:08:50
Tip #1: You aren’t Obliged to Have an Opinion
Number one: you aren’t obliged to have an opinion about a bad review. Social media creates the illusion that you have to have an opinion about everything. This is especially true on Twitter, where everyone has a hot take about the latest events of the day, like there’s a news event of some kind whether serious like the war in Ukraine, or trivial, like a celebrity says something dumb, and many social media users feel the need to express an opinion about it. For what is most of that, if not indulging in the vice of gossip? It’s talking about people you’ve never met and with whom you have no relationship. That learned reflex from social media, I think, transfers to some writers who have meltdowns over reviews. Someone posted a bad review of my book. I need to share my opinion about that bad review on social media. But you don’t. In fact, I think training yourself not to share every opinion you have on social media is a skill many people would find beneficial. Just because someone didn’t like your book doesn’t mean you’re obligated to respond to a bad review. Indeed, you aren’t even required to have an opinion about their opinion. To quote the Book of Proverbs, even a fool, when he holdeth his peace is counted wise and he that shattered his lips is esteemed a man of understanding.
00:10:03
Tip #2: Don’t Respond to Negative Emails
Tip #2: Don’t respond to negative emails. Generally, I try to respond to all reader emails unless it’s negative and I don’t want to engage. Sometimes you get emails or Facebook messages from someone and you can tell they’re just spoiling for a fight, especially if you get an angry e-mail complaining about the book on Monday, don’t respond, and they get an even angrier e-mail on Wednesday complaining that you still haven’t responded. Arguing with people over the Internet is almost nearly always an enormous waste of time. If it’s a concrete problem that’s within my power to fix, like corrupted file, reader can’t find the book and so forth, then I’ll respond. Otherwise, it’s just not worth the energy and getting into an argument over the Internet is always more of a time and energy sink than you might anticipate.
00:10:51
Tip #3: Don’t Engage in Reader-Oriented Spaces
Tip #3: Don’t engage in reader-oriented spaces. Generally, I think it’s best for writers to stay out of reader- oriented spaces, especially if the writer’s work is being reviewed or otherwise discussed in that space. Now, what do I mean by reader-oriented spaces? I mean a place like Goodreads, a site that’s devoted to book reviews, or a YouTube book reviewer’s comments section, or the feed of a BookTok video creator. Those areas of the Internet are devoted to readers discussing books, and it’s never a good idea for an author to inject themselves into the conversation there. It’s especially a bad idea if the writer’s book is the one actually being discussed, because that sort of discussion can spiral out of control very quickly. So if you’re a writer, it’s best to avoid Goodreads and Booktube and BookTok. If you really must engage there, it’s probably wisest to create an account under a different name and never ever mention your books.
00:11:43
Tip #4: Read the Other Reviews
Tip #4: read the other reviews. If a bad review really gets under your skin, it might be worthwhile to read the other reviews the person in question has posted. This is easy on Amazon or Goodreads. You just click on the viewer’s name and you’ll see their profile page along with all of the other stuff they’ve reviewed. Often you’ll discover that the reviewer just hates everything. Or you’ll see that the reviewer dislikes something you strongly like or likes something you don’t, which gives you an easy way to discard their opinion. On a more serious note, you’ll sometimes see that the reviewer is in chronic pain, and bad reviews are a way of lashing out. A while back, a study found that many of the high volume Internet reviewers are homebound and frequently dealing with high levels of chronic pain. Like if you click on their reviewers profile on Amazon and see that they’re also reviewing adult diapers, compression socks, orthopedic shoes, and back braces (sometimes with excruciating detail), they’ve probably got a lot of other problems to deal with, which shows once again that it’s best not to engage with bad reviews because you never can tell what someone else might be going through.
00:12:43
Tip # 5: Delete and Block as Necessary
Tip #5 delete or block as necessary. Bad reviews are one thing. But if someone makes a nuisance of themselves on your social media pages or keeps emailing you, go ahead and block them. I haven’t done that done…this all that often, but I have done it. It’s not something I’ll do right away. Sometimes online writing lacks nuance and you can completely misinterpret what someone was saying, or there are technical difficulties. Once I have a Facebook comment along the lines of, I hope your head gets chopped off. 5 minutes later, the second-half of the comment came through: because it makes up for what you did to that character lol lol, great book. Looking forward to the sequel. So that can sometimes happen. But if someone is consistently unpleasant, I’ll just block them. Accepting that bad reviews exist is a necessary state of mind for a writer. Tolerating bad comments on your own social media and website is not. The block button is there for a reason.
00:13:32
#6: Plod Onward
Number six: plod onward. The best writing advice is to keep writing. If you do that long enough, eventually you will build a much thicker skin to criticism. You will learn not to take any bad reviews personally and move onward. There are few substitutes in life for sheer plodding persistence. Hopefully, if you are a new writer, these tips will help you learn to handle bad reviews without a public Internet meltdown.
So that’s it for this week. Thanks for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave your review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
