When you publish your first book, and you’re ecstatic about your achievement, you will always face those who don’t love your book as much as you do. They are not haters; they are only ordinary readers who expected something and were disappointed to find not what they were looking for in our work. That is okay because, by the end of the day, we all have different tastes. Fiction writing is purely subjective.
You will always be bombarded with negative reviews about your recent novel. Authors are compassionate people, and sometimes negative comments can bring them down instead of pushing them further. So what should you do if you faced something like this, and you will?
Count to ten
The first thing you need to know as a writer is never to respond to negative comments. They might frustrate you, and sometimes your fingers will itch because you want to grab your phone and text something nasty to that person. Take a deep breath and count to ten, then you understand that never responding might be the best decision.
Look at the bright side
We all feel down when we read a terrible review about our work, yet we need to keep something in mind, that it’s not that bad. Consider the reader’s point of view and take constructive criticism from them. Grab what makes sense and consider avoiding that mistake in your next novel. As much as we hate to admit it, sometimes these reviews influence us to create something better.
I built a career on negative reviews. I didn’t get a good review ever until Fran Lebowitz gave me a good review in interview. That was the first good review I got in ten years.
John Waters
Never give up
One time a negative criticism kept me up at night, and I couldn’t write a single letter after for an entire week. I stopped connecting with my characters; they just felt strangers to me. I realized that I had to stop what I was doing, and I opened a new blank page, and I started writing something else. I embraced the negative criticism with open arms; I learned from it, and I created something magnificent later on.
So never give up, don’t let bad reviews stop you, but push you forward.