8 Comments

  1. Good advice, Lori. Thanks for reminding us that if everyone had the same likes and dislikes, only one type of book would ever be written, and the world would be an incredibly dull place in which to live.

    I try to think of opinions as being on a bell curve. For any topic of discussion, book, movie, TV show, whatever, a small percentage of people will love it, a small percentage will hate it, and the rest will occupy the middle ground. If you write to please the haters, you are wasting time on too small of a group. Plus, people tend to be more vocal about what they hate than what they like.

  2. Wonderful advice, Lori. Thanks for the great tools for handling such an emotional issue. Taking a look at bad reviews of (what I think are) great books and vice-versa is a real eye-opener!

  3. Great tips, Lori! You can’t please all the people all the time. Best to just write the best book you can, and let the reviews fall where they may. Reminds me of an old favorite quotation: “Your opinion of me is none of my business.” 😉

  4. Thanks, guys! I agree with all of you, on the bell curve and love the “your opinion of me” bit. 🙂
    I think it would be fun to do some kind of Venn diagram of books. If you took 100 people, even 100 people who all read the same type of books, and had them break books into great, okay, stink…how many books would always show in any one of those categories?
    Not many, I’m guessing.
    It is actually kind of amazing how varied opinions are of books, but then for some reason we still expect everyone to love/hate the same things.

  5. Great advice, Lori! Opinions are really just that. everyone has them and critics can be especially…critical? Condemning is more like it. Anyway, it doesn’t matter really what anyone else thinks, even if they are an editor. Every famous author was rejected…multiple times. Criticism doesn’t deter me, it gives me clarity and determination to push through.

  6. All very good points. Opinions are just that. Who cares–as long as all the reviews aren’t bad!

    At times I have actually used poor reviews to decide to buy a book. Sometimes readers don’t read the book blurb before buying the book, then complain that: “This is a Christian book. There’s too much praying in it.” or “This is a book about vampires. I hate vampires.”

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