Bad Book Reviews: How to Deal with Negative Book Reviews

About this video

Dale Roberts reassures self-publishing newcomers who hesitate for fear of negative book reviews: everyone gets them, and if you haven’t, he jokes, you’re doing something wrong. To lighten the mood he reads absurd low-star Amazon reviews of famous books. The Catcher in the Rye draws an anonymous review saying ’not for me I hate to read’ and another with nothing meaningful to say. The Hobbit gets a confused ‘I returned this item / I returned the book’ review and a garbled ‘pieces of crap’ comment. Charlotte’s Web gets an incoherent complaint. A reviewer of Stephen King’s The Stand gives the Kindle edition one star while actually ranting about the early 1990s TV miniseries adaptation and a defective, pixelated DVD — despite a verified purchase and seeming to praise the book. Game of Thrones draws reviewers who admit they haven’t read the book yet and fault the author anyway. Finally, The Martian by Andy Weir — whom Dale notes self-published the book before it became a film starring Matt Damon — gets a review titled ‘great on every level’ praising the story as amazing, yet awarded one star, as if the reviewer misunderstood the rating system. Dale’s closing advice: next time a negative review upsets you, take a deep breath, know you’re headed in the right direction, take it in stride, and make the best of it.

Key takeaways

• Every author gets negative book reviews, including classic literature — Dale argues not having any means you’re doing something wrong.
• Many low-star reviews are incoherent, lack punctuation, or admit the reviewer hates reading or hasn’t read the book at all.
• Some one-star reviews are misplaced: one Stand review attacked the TV miniseries and a defective DVD, not the Kindle book it was posted on.
• Star ratings can contradict the text: a glowing ‘great on every level’ review of The Martian still gave it one star.
• Dale’s coping advice is to take negative reviews in stride, breathe, and treat them as a sign you’re headed in the right direction.

Episode details: published September 6, 2017 · 6:30 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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