Yes, authors, you CAN respond to a negative review!

It's common wisdom out there that authors shouldn't respond to negative reviews. Well, that depends. The wrong response can certainly lead to a lot of authorly regret.  

What kind of response is an author likely to regret? I've noticed pretty much any online response, but especially any kind of scathing, angry or "corrective of wrong thoughts" or "just trying to be helpful" rebuttals; even certain types of clarifications can lead to a kerfluffle spiral of authorly regret. 


Really, a review is simply a report of one person's subjective experience of a book. It's good for authors that there are reviewers out there taking the time to report honestly about their experiences. But a pesky thing about other people's experiences is that you can't change them! If it were possible to change other people's experiences, I guarantee you, my husband and I would be going out to see a lot more romantic comedy movies.

One idea, when tempted to respond online to a negative review, is to first do a little thought experiment. Imagine waking up tomorrow morning and discovering thousands of hits on your website...and it's ALL people coming to see who the author is who wrote that [insert adjective here, and it's not the one you were hoping for] response. And everybody is tweeting and facebooking it and hyping it. Imagine the horror in the pit of your stomach. 

But look, that doesn't mean you can't respond! 

For example, you could do an interpretive dance as your response.

Go ahead, open the curtains. Let the neighbors see!  

This one depicted above is called: "AUTHOR SO UNHAPPY!"

Another awesome and regret-free response: craft your reaction in macaroni art! This particular piece, from my own collection, is called "THE GNASHING TEETH OF THE WRITER MISUNDERSTOOD!"

Spend the afternoon imagining that you are having angry, sweaty, hot sex with that character that Russell Crowe played in the movie Gladiator! OMG! Rawr!

Another awesome way to respond to a negative review: Gratitude - for giving YOU the most perfect excuse ever to eat a truckload of chocolate! Yee ha!

Spend the afternoon imagining angry, sweaty, hot sex with the mysterious and babelicious "Seven of Nine"character from Star Trek: Voyager.

Hey, why read are you reading reviews anyway? Your thing is the write the books. Make a resolution to not read reviews, good or bad. Let this experience give you the gift of time. 

Have a stiff drink, put some Billie Holiday on the hi-fi, draw the curtains. Or something like that. You're a f*@king writer, man! It is your right to WALLOW awesomely and creatively and with great pathos! Step away from the computer and really get into it! 

Write a crazy-ass response in Morse Code! And tap it out on the window. Repeatedly! But wait, not too hard! 

  

Spend some quality time with your cat or dog. Dude, your pet thinks you are the most brilliant writer in the world. What's that? You think your pet is stupid? Guess what- if there was a total Road-Warrior-style collapse of society, your pet would have a way better shot of surviving than you. You pet has skillz. Your pet knows the score! And YOU are your pet's literary hero!

Think of a book that you have really loved, and go write a review for it, telling how much the book meant to you. Or go write a nice review for an under-appreciated book that you genuinely enjoyed. This is actually a very therapeutic way to respond to a negative review.

Best of all, remember those good reviews you have gotten? Or, the readers who have enjoyed your work and told you so? If everybody only had nice things to say about your writing, those good reviews and comments wouldn't mean anything whatsoever.  

So, in a way, negative reviews are important and valuable, because they make the good reviews mean something. You will be okay! Just keep writing.