Reviews, authors, and entitlement

The dreaded 1-star

Now that I’m getting more and more entrenched in the publishing world - both indie and trad - I see this topic repeated over and over. By all means, nothing new, but it’s worth to talk about.

1 star reviews, or bad reviews in general.

The posts are all over in social media, and if you follow writing spaces since longer than yesterday, you’ll have seen the argument.

It goes a like this:

1. Authors go through a lot of work in order to publish.

2. Bad reviews discourage readers from buying the work of an author.

so,

3. Bad reviews are disrespectuful of an author’s craft, and should never be written.

Self disclosure: this is from the Goodreads page of one of my books.

Extreme much? The conclusion certainly is.

Premises 1. and 2. are mostly true. Most authors struggle, and bad reviews are bad for business. Yet, today you find me arguing from my soapbox because I believe the conclusion is unreasonable.

If you really agree with point 3, this post is for you. I gently invite you to reconsider.

The attention market, or the value of time

There’s a problem with reading, they’ll tell you. And the problem is that people don’t read as they used to.

Maybe 60 years ago books had a stronger place in the entertainment industry. They didn’t have to compete with videogames, instant-access movies, anime, on demand tv-series, podcasts, and social media.

But even back then reading a book meant spending a certain resource: time. There’s only so much time you get (as a general rule) and only a fraction of it can be used for leisure activities.

While it might be tempting to consider people that don’t read as lazy, the fundamental truth is that the average person is living an increasingly difficult life, and everyone should feel free to relax in the way they prefer.

Those people that do choose to read are engaging in a double gamble: they gamble that the book is going to be worth the cover price, but they also gamble it’s going to be worth their time.

“But the author has spent is precious time as well,” you’ll say, “doing such a thankless job”. And I do get you, but that’s not for the reader to understand.

While I believe most people to have creative urges one way or another, nobody is forced to write, yet alone to publish.

What can we expect as authors

In short: nothing.

Nothing is owed to us.

Sure: we might want to discuss an ideal society where everyone is free to pursue art. I’d like that. But even in that utopian place, we would not be owed someone else’s attention.

Back to the real world, with more and more books being written and struggling to be noticed on the market everyday, being read is already a huge privilege.

Readers, in turn, need to rely on reccomendations and reviews to avoid buying blind (or worse, being tricked by marketing tactics and flashy covers).

In this context reviews are an invaluable tool.

And here we get to the 1 star reviews. Even though review-bombing is a thing and some reviews might be unwarranted, we can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Have you ever read a book whose contents are just vile? Or maybe a book with glaring mistakes, no editing, and trite ideas? If you haven’t, I’m going to suggest that you haven’t yet.

So what if they hurt?

Nobody likes getting criticism. Even more if that criticism seems to be out of place, unasked for, or plainly mean.

Most readers are not professional editors, people say. They’re not qualified to give criticism on a book.

That’s true. But this way of framing the issue is flawed. People could as well turn this argument against you: you’re not a professional, you didn’t study enough, you’re not qualified… and so on. It all so easily devolves in a slew of unpleasant accusations and assumptions that have nothing to do with the people involved.

The only things this leads to is elitism, one way or another.

So, let’s reframe it: publishing puts you in a public square. Everyone is entitled to have an opinion, and a reader that got your work (even if they DNF’d after 20 pages) is already someone that gave you a chance. Readers are also allowed to be wrong, or partial, or just to have different tastes.

And reviews are meant to be for them.

An utilitaristic approach

Maybe you’re still not convinced. Maybe you believe you have been mistreated, or review bombed, and you deserved better.

It’s still convenient for you not to resent reviewers - at least not publicly. As archetypes, the misunderstood author and the struggling writer both have a sort of byronic quality. But they’re not great marketing tools.

True enough, a certain kind of posturing is effective on social media… but overdoing is really easy.

You might still be wanting to curse 1-star reviewers from the comfort of your house, or when sharing a beer with like-minded authors. But again, it’s in your best interest to keep this kind of behaviour private.

Entitlement, as it turns out, reeks.

A reader that doesn’t know you won’t be inclined to pick up your book if all you do is moan about critical reviews. People will be much less likely to give your opinions a chance if, well, you respect others’.