My short story (Fairies Don’t Flirt) has migrated to Barnes and Noble (Nook) and Diesel. This was not unexpected, but I didn’t put a lot of work into to, because my percentage of free is nothing. So I really wasn’t paying a lot of attention; it happened without my notice.
I was doing a random check of my name, the titles of my stories, etc. which I do every so often for general purposes when I found my story at BnN. “Cool” I thought at first.
Then I scrolled down to the ratings. Average rating: 1. There must be some mistake, I thought. (For reference: On Smashwords the same story was rated 5. It’s still being downloaded, 169 times so far.) But there wasn’t. I read the review. The writer used the word “stupid”—twice. He indicated the story was only good for reading to a three year old. He (I know I’m assuming “he”) indicated it was a waste of his time. It was signed “anonymous”.
I’ve had bad reviews before, so I know to suppress the desire to fight. It can’t be personal; whoever this is doesn’t know me. (I know that’s an assumption too.) It’s interesting how I usually get really good reviews or really bad. (Only once have I had a mediocre rating—and I couldn’t disagree.) I guess you either get me or you don’t.
But, I have to ask; why the anger? Was he really going to use that three minutes of his life for something important? If all my reviews were bad I’d figure I still had a lot to learn and shouldn’t be cluttering the internet with my stuff. If all the reviews were good, I suppose I’d start thinking I’m some kind of expert. I’ll fall back on one of my rules of writing: *Write better. I doubt I’ll win over Mr. Anonymous, he seems to have made up his mind.
On the other hand, I’m going back to read the Smashwords review again.
PS- If anyone reading this blog has actually read “Fairies Don’t Flirt”, and would rate it higher than 1, and has some connection with B&N…
Well, it never hurts to ask.
Hey Stephen,
I don’t know why folks rate something lower than three stars. I figure silence or no rating pretty much says that folks don’t like something.
Personally, I only rate stuff that I think deserves three stars or higher. Anything lower is just being vindictive. Suffice to say, Mr/Mrs Anonymous really didn’t like the story. I guessing it may be because they were expecting something different. A blurb letting folks know what do expect might be helpful so that you don’t get reviews like that.
Keep in mind, though, you may still get those. I just reviewed and interviewed two of Mike Shevdon’s books. I thought they were great. When I got ready to post my reviews, I was shocked to see someone had given on of his books a one-star review because of the ‘bad’ language used. I was like, did they read the same book? I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember Mr. Shevdon using any bad words, but, apparently, he did. Once. That’s all it took for that reviewer to hate the book.
I know your stuff doesn’t have bad language, but what I’m saying is that some folks tolerance for [insert whatever it is they hate] can be very low.
Don’t worry about it!