A Word On Bad Reviews

Nowadays, any turd can go online and ruin someone’s life/business/family.

But in the book reviewing industry, there has long been a level of depravity that is unparalleled when it comes to hateful snarkiness.

too bad for the talent the author obviously possesses.

This was a line from a bad review House Crazy Sarah received about one of her books. And that was the nice part of the review 🙁

One of the most painful things about being a writer is that you have to deal with bad reviews. Even Stephen King and J.K. Rowling get bad reviews. It is inevitable.

When you are a Highly Sensitive Introvert (as most writers are), you have to mentally prepare yourself for the oncoming malice of reviewers. And here’s the thing: you can’t do a damn thing about it. You have to silently take your medicine. Nod and smile politely. Carry on as usual while your heart has been viciously ripped from your chest cavity.

There’s politics involved, of course, and a pecking order to the book review system.

This is how it works: Most new writers get bad reviews starting out (except for those lucky dopes who rose to stardom instantaneously – but that is really only .001% of the writing crowd, so don’t get your hopes up). Most writers struggle through it and write again and make a teensy amount of money from their mixed-reviewed books. To make ends meet, these same writers take on work as book reviewers. They have become jaded and bitter by this time so they are overly critical of the new writers coming up behind them. There are hurt egos involved and some sick sense of revenge for the humiliation that they have suffered at the hands of reviewers. But these writers, being writers, still have manuscripts that they wish to see published so they can’t trash everyone. No, they have to write really nice reviews for the books released by powerful large conglomerate publishers – the big guys, so that these wealthy publishers might take notice and do them a favor in the near future. It is an ugly, unending cycle.

House Crazy Sarah will give you another golden nugget from a bad review of one of her books:

Whenever I hear the name Jodi Picoult, I think, “good premise, lame book.” It’s not a compliment then when I say that Sarah Felix Burns’ Song Over Quiet Lake is very Picoultian.

Ouch.

That doozy resulted in about three straight days of House Crazy Sarah hiding in bed and wishing to be dead. Alas, this is not what we writers sign up for.

That’s why House Crazy Sarah said to hell with traditional publishing. To hell with that whole nasty system! She is going to write what she wants on her own little blog and nobody is going to review it, but if they do, she can just say: FUCK YOU!

Because in traditional publishing you can’t talk back. But House Crazy Sarah is the webmaster /webmistress /writer /curator /creator /and sole proprietor of her site so she can say whatever the hell she feels like as long as she doesn’t hurt anyone’s feelings because she’s not into hurting other peoples’ feelings but it’s so hard not to say something that someone might get all butt-hurt about, that maybe she shouldn’t even write a blog at all.

Nah.

How else can she get revenge on those assholes who gave her bad reviews?