{"id":1634,"date":"2022-05-04T09:09:54","date_gmt":"2022-05-04T13:09:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/?p=1634"},"modified":"2022-05-04T09:09:54","modified_gmt":"2022-05-04T13:09:54","slug":"bad-book-reviews-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/bad-book-reviews-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Book Reviews, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_1635\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1635\" style=\"width: 465px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/colosseum-g568296570_640.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1635\" src=\"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/colosseum-g568296570_640.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"465\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/colosseum-g568296570_640.png 465w, http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/colosseum-g568296570_640-300x258.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 465px) 100vw, 465px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1635\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I thought I&#8217;d said <a href=\"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/on-bad-book-reviews-and-the-authors-big-mistake\/\">all I felt like saying on the subject of bad reviews<\/a> a few months ago, but this topic is evergreen\u00a0on writing Twitter. And I&#8217;ve seen one more aspect of it I felt needed to be addressed.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the idea that writers can learn from bad book reviews. (This is apparently how some of the people who tag authors in bad book reviews justify it.)<\/p>\n<p>OK, no. I have workshops and beta readers for that.<\/p>\n<p>Besides, the few negative reviews I&#8217;ve allowed myself to read for <em>Tidepool<\/em> were all over the map in terms of what didn&#8217;t work for those reviewers. Let&#8217;s say one reviewer loved my characters but thought the story itself was dull and derivative. Let&#8217;s say another one loved the plot but disliked most of my characters. What am I meant to learn from that? The only lesson to take away is &#8220;You can&#8217;t please everyone.&#8221; And I already knew that.<\/p>\n<p>I still stand by the Absolute Write Water Cooler attitude that reviews are for readers, not for writers. I don&#8217;t read them unless a\u00a0reviewer draws my attention to theirs, but I appreciate that they exist. Even the bad ones. I&#8217;m with a small publisher; every review helps. (It&#8217;s indifference that really stings.)<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s it. Really. Until the next time this topic comes up and I think of something else to say.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I thought I&#8217;d said all I felt like saying on the subject of bad reviews a few months ago, but&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110,101,113,61,4],"tags":[38,17,39,5],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1636,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1634\/revisions\/1636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}