Do you ever break your own rule and then sit there wearing the dunce cap, wishing that there was someone else you could blame, but knowing there isn’t? Well, to be fair, I actually had half this post written since last week, so it's nothing new, but let’s just say I’ve been inspired to finish it up.
Image by Gerd Altmann
One Way to Avoid the Dreaded One-Star Review
Don’t give books away for free. It’s counterproductive and it will backfire every time.
Probably some of you are sitting there thinking, “is she really going to talk about this AGAIN?” Yes. I am. Until you all stop doing it.
The Magnificent Backfire
It was partially inspired by something that happened to an author I know who writes absolutely remarkable historical fiction. Her name is Rozsa Gaston, and she’s just released Margaret of Austria. I was looking at her Goodreads reviews for this latest book after leaving one myself, and they’re all great, as well they should be. Except for a small handful.
The source of the tiny handful dragging the rating down a bit? Freebies.
One of them was the person who won the Goodreads giveaway. Wow. That person left a one-star review, citing that he/she hated the genre. Yes, I have that same question: why did you enter the giveaway if you don’t even like the genre? Just because it was free? How sad.
The other two people had different reasons for their low reviews, most of them petty and ridiculous. In a way, they sounded like writer wannabes critiquing things that were over their heads.
Yes–Even ARCs
All I know is this: freebies=bad reviews. Even the ARCs that most publishers insist upon usually backfire, NetGalley included. In fact, I’ve seen more negative reviews sourced from NetGalley across more genres than I care to think about. It’s why I won’t do ARCs at all. Watching that pattern for ten years before my books were published cured me of the desire to EVER do ARCs, despite most trad publishers swearing by them.
I have a hunch it may be that the freebie recipients think they are not doing their “job” and “earning” the free book unless they find something wrong with it. I don’t know. I’m not God. I just know that it backfires more often than not.
I DO Understand
I do understand that readers, overall, act like you’re asking them to render and torture themselves anally when you request a review. Still, don’t stoop to freebies. Authors who are desperate for reviews ( which is pretty much all of us who are not currently on the New York Times bestseller list ) should still never fall prey to handing out books for free in exchange for reviews. It just doesn’t end well. Ever.
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