How I Recently Handled a 1-Star Book Review

Today is a Hit Splits episode for Author Audience.

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message, create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

I recently got a pretty bad one star review and I wanted to talk to you about it. In this edition of Hits Blog, I'm going to start doing hit split segments on my podcast as well as Periscope. I'll be repurposing the content that I share here onto my podcast. And I was realizing the other day that I have so many things I want to talk to you about that don't always fit into a nice neat podcast schedule. You know, I have to say the episode number and there's background music at the end and there's all this production that goes into a podcast. So. So I've decided, hey, I don't have to do my podcast exactly like everyone else. I can do it the way I want. And so I'm going to have these hit split segments that I just share stories or strategies or inspiration and the things that are happening in real time. But today I wanted to talk about this one star review I got. I was part of a promotion this last week. Some of you may have bought my book as a result of that promotion. It was March to a best seller 3 and my book Marketing youg Book on Amazon, 21 Things yous Can Do For Free to Gain More Exposure and sales was on sale for 99 cents. Got hundreds of downloads and sales. During that time it reached number one in all of its categories. It was a great promotion. But you know, anytime you do a big promotion like that, whether it's a free promotion or it's a group promotion like that, you have the potential of attracting people that are not your typical target audience and they may just, you know, download the book or think, you know, think that they're interested in it and maybe not even fully read the description or understand what it is. Well, I got a really bad one star review after that promotion and when I first I was looking at the rankings a lot during the promotion and so, so I went back and I looked at the rankings and all of a sudden there it was staring back at me. Ah, you know, it's like insert horror music here. It's an author's.

Nightmare of just getting all these one star reviews. And yet the honest truth is if we're putting ourself out there, if we're getting our message to more people, if we're out there putting our message to the world. We will get bad reviews, we will get one star reviews, we will have people that don't like us and it's okay. But my initial reaction, I've been publishing since 2008. I published dozens and dozens of books and I've had a lot of one star reviews. But my, my reaction this time was still not the best. My first reaction was panic. Have you guys ever felt that way where you just, you see a bad review, whether it's online for a local business, on Amazon for a product or a book or something on social media where someone is saying something bad about you? My first response was panic. I was in the middle of this big promotion, my rankings were high and I thought, oh my goodness, my sales are just going to tank. But you know, everyone has their own opinions and everyone's opinions are their own. And it's okay if somebody doesn't like my book, if it really is. But my first reaction was panic. And oh my goodness, this is gonna tank my sales. They're gonna see. The most recent review is this one star review. And he's just saying it's worthless and it has no information and blah, blah, blah. I have hundreds. I have over 100 like really good 4 and 5 star reviews. And that one 1 star review just sent me into a panic. The second stage I went into was I begin to personalize it. Have you guys ever done that? When you've received criticism, whether it's a bad review or somebody sends you an email or it's something on social media, somebody comments on your post and you start to personalize it, like I'm a bad person or I'm not as good of an author as maybe I thought, or maybe my information isn't helpful or. Have you ever had that happen? You start personalizing it and instead of just seeing it as their opinion and they're able to have their own opinion, you start personalizing it. And I started to do that. I've had many, many people tell me how that book has helped them. It's for beginners, it's for those that are just getting started as an author. It's not necessarily for an advanced author. And if you read my description, you'll see that it walks you through the steps of using the free tools that AMAZ gives us. Author central, kdp, some of those things. And there's screenshots, there's a video tutorial at the end. It has a lot of value to the right person. That person that posted the one star review was not my target audience for that book. He was looking for more advanced techniques and he didn't find them in that book and was disappointed. But I began to personalize it. The next step was I began to plan an attack and I got defensive and I was thinking, okay, what would I say to him or how would I respond? I'm saying him. It was the person posted anonymously, but him or her. And I just started planning that attack of how I would defend my book. And it's obviously for the new author and they're looking for advanced things. Have you ever done that before? You immediately go to the defensive and thinking, how can I defend myself or my work or my family? Maybe somebody's saying something about your child or your husband or your wife or your family member. But then I finally got to that point of prayer and being able to pray for that person that wrote that, but also just to pray and leave it in, in God's hands and say, you know what, this is one of the many, many works that I have out there. I'm getting tweets and YouTube comments and emails all the time of authors that are being helped. I choose to focus on that. And if there's something that I can do to improve, you know, I can, I can improve that. But for now, I'm just going to surrender this to you, Lord. And then the fifth stage was to persist, you know, just to keep taking the next step. Don't let it derail you. Don't let it stop you from doing what God has called you to do. Because many times these types of things, whether it's a one star review or it's a personal attack online, or it's something that's coming against you, it's easy to want to back away from that because I don't want to have to deal with that. I don't want to have to read that. I don't want to have to, you know, take that in. I don't want to be criticized. And so let me just back away. But instead, I encourage you just to go into this as an author realizing not everyone is going to like your work. Stephen King has one star reviews. You know, the best of the best of the best authors have one star reviews. We all get them. If you don't have them, it actually looks kind of strange. And it's like, did this person buy their reviews? Or, you know, there's something funny going on here because there's no one star or two star reviews. It looks kind of strange. And so realize and accept that you will get these reviews and it happens to me, it happens to you. It happens to the best of the best of the best of the best. It's such an easy thing to get caught up in the public reviews or the public comments or the things that people are saying when like I said, I have over a hundred, I don't even, I didn't look before this, but I have, you know, dozens and dozens of five star reviews for that very same book and all I could focus on was the negative.

So how do you deal with book reviews? What options or what things do you do when you see a one star book review?

We're human and there's times that we're still going to go through those stages. I was thinking it's kind of like the stages of grief. Have you ever studied that where it's like there's a cycle and you have denial, denial and anger. And I had all the words to start with P but it was like panic, personalize, plan of attack, pray, and then persist. And it's like this cycle and it's okay. Give yourself the freedom to feel those feelings that come because sometimes you will feel sad or you will feel angry or you will feel upset and it's okay. Feel the feelings and feel what you're feeling but then work through it and process it so that it doesn't stop you. Because so many times what will stop us in our work is what's right between our ears. Those thoughts that we have every day and they can lead so easily to self sabotage and cause us to want to quit or give up. So I encourage you guys to.

To keep, keep on keeping on and tweet me Ellyhits. I'm Ellyhits on Periscope, Twitter and just about any social media. Tweet me and let me know what is it? How do you deal with those one star reviews? You know, how is it that this might have helped you in just processing that? I'd love to hear it.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelly's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.