Should writers read reviews at all?
It’s funny. The advice writers get from other writers is to never, ever read reviews. Nothing good can come off it. Either you get a big head if they’re good, or you turn into a blubbering mess and never write again if they’re bad. Yet all writers do it. Sometimes compulsively.
I’m not exception—I love reading reviews! I use less than stellar reviews as an opportunity to improve my writing. Sometimes a writer gets silly one-star reviews that have nothing to do with their book. Best thing is to take a deep breath and move on.
Which reviews are helpful?
Three-star reviews are great. Those are usually written thoughtfully and are full of suggestions on how to fix errors.
I actually make a point of asking my advance copy readers to send me an email if they feel I deserve less than three stars. Thankfully, that hasn’t happened very often. The odd time it did, I was able to fix the problem and re-upload a corrected copy of the book. Because even professional editors miss errors at times!
I feel very humbled when I read that I’ve touched somebody with a story I created. That a reader couldn’t stop reading because they wanted to know what happened next.
For one of my novels, I received some feedback that the two main characters didn’t spend enough time with each other. I realized that, actually, I hadn’t written a romance, but a fantasy adventure novel. It allowed me to change my marketing to be more focused. And I made sure my heroes got some more facetime together in the third book.
How did it affect my first novel?
When I wrote my first book Spirit Hunger, I was super excited to find out how readers liked it.
I listen to my readers: if they prefer stories set in the US instead of Germany, or vice versa, I’ll certainly take that into consideration. If they don’t like the characters, I’ll change them up in the next book.
Either way I won’t stop checking out my reviews. It’s like scratching an itch—I know they’re there, therefore they need to be read!