how i deal with bad reviews

plus book giveaways in the US and Canada!

It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.

I can’t believe I managed to publish this newsletter twice a month for the entire calendar year of 2023. I had equally big ambitions—maybe bigger?—for the newsletter this year. For example, to promote my new book, I was going to form a mini Hitchcock film club, where once a month we dissected one of Hitch’s films, on this here Substack, for the six months leading up to the book’s publication.

I 👏 was 👏 dream 👏 ing. 👏

Instead, my summer has been slammed with both the standard (writing a new book, visiting family out of state) and the major (a big move coming up in August!), so I hope you’ll continue to forgive my tardiness/general absence around these parts. I am a little bit better at being online over on Instagram, so if you don’t follow me there, here’s your formal invitation.

We are now ten weeks out from THE HITCHCOCK HOTEL’s publication date, which means marketing and publicity are starting to pick up. I’m taking on extracurricular writing assignments to promote the book, scheduling interviews and events, and sharing lots of giveaways with readers. (More on that at the bottom!)

For obvious reasons, we authors tend to share our good publication news and hope the less-good stuff gets buried in the far corners of the Internet, but I thought it might be interesting to talk today about one of those less-good things.

Bad reviews

While I generally stay away from Goodreads and Amazon reviews, I will read my trade reviews—good, bad, or ugly. I like to know what critics are saying about my work before it circulates throughout the publishing industry. The first review recently came out for THE HITCHCOCK HOTEL, and it was… not nice.

No matter how many books or [insert your art product here] you put out into the world, no matter how many bad reviews you’ve received for previous projects, it still hurts—a lot!—when you get that first lousy critique on a new project. The people pleaser in me wants to make every reader happy, and the first bad review is proof that, once again, I have failed. (Note: you will never make everyone happy with your art; this is not something to which you should aspire. I’m working on it.)

Here’s how I deal, in the hope that maybe it helps you deal too.

1. Cry. Most of us have failed or gotten underwhelming performance reviews at some point in our working lives. Now imagine if that crappy review was posted online for literally anyone with a Wi-Fi connection to see (parents, colleagues, potential future employers, exes, etc.), and will remain there for, I don’t know, the rest of your life or until your company of employment implodes—whichever comes sooner. What follows is shame, defeat, and remorse. Those are heavy feelings! I let them out.

2. Get back to work. This is not for the faint of heart, nor something I always achieve. After a bad review, my confidence in my writing abilities is usually shot for a little while. I usually need to lick my wounds. On a good day, though, I channel my anger and embarrassment onto the page, determined to prove the critic(s) wrong.

3. Help with someone else’s work. Beta read a fellow writer’s WIP. Blurb a friend’s new book. If I’m too down on myself to work on my own project, I like to lose myself in someone else’s. I’m not nearly as judgmental of—or, and this is important, emotionally attached to—my peers’ writing, which takes the pressure/focus/self-pity off of me. Bonus: you get the positive feeling of being helpful. Now we’re counteracting the negative feelings with some good ones.

4. Exercise. Feeling incapable as a writer? Go feel capable elsewhere. For me, exercise takes the steam out of big emotions and helps settle (read: exhaust) my nerves.

5. Shower. Listen, I never said this list was going to be revolutionary. At the risk of being overly literal, wash it off. Start fresh.

6. Read bad reviews of great books. I’m not proud of this one, but I am being honest. Award-winning books have shitty reviews. Bestselling books have shitty reviews. If I’m really struggling, I’ll look up the current top books in my genre on Goodreads and read some of the stinkers. They don’t make me feel good about my own writing, but they do make me feel less bad, if that makes sense. Everyone gets bad reviews—that’s the nature of the job. It helps to remind ourselves we’re not alone in our mortification.

7. Match every loss with a win. I never manage this on the same day I get a bad review, but the next day or the day after, I can do it. No book publication has ALL good news or ALL bad news. When bad news keeps nagging at you, snap back at it with some good news. That review was terrible. Yes, but my publisher is sending me on a book tour, so they must believe in the story. The good news can be as small as someone tagging me in an Instagram post, saying they’ve added the book to their TBR.

8. Remember that art is subjective. Here are excerpts from two trade reviews for my last book, This Might Hurt: “…the genre-savvy will see the twists coming from miles away…” AND “…will leave readers guessing until the very end.” What one critic thought was dead obvious, another never saw coming. I’ve kept these quotes in a note on my phone ever since to remind myself that art is subjective.

9. Keep writing. Similar to #2, but I mean this in a longer-term sense. Get better at my craft. Focus on the part of my career I can control (writing), and let go of the part I can’t (publishing). Refuse to quit. Prove the reviewer wrong.

10. Wait for time to pass. The day I read a bad review, I can recite the insults verbatim. A handful of days later, I can only remember a word or two. The shame, the defeat, and the remorse will fade with time, as all bad news does. While the moment of impact still hurts as much as it did with my first-ever bad review, I’ve noticed my recovery time shortening the longer I’ve been an author. That in itself is a win.

Free books!

Onto a happier update. My publishers are running a couple of giveaways for THE HITCHCOCK HOTEL right now. Check them out below:

• US: My publisher is hosting a sweepstakes! Five US readers will win an early copy of the hardcover edition. (Aviary of fifty crows not included.) Enter here between now and 7/19.

• Canada: We didn’t forget about you up north! 25 Canadian readers can also win an early copy of HH via a Goodreads giveaway that my publisher is sponsoring. (Again, absolutely no crows.) Enter here between now and 7/19.

Good luck!

Best novel I’ve read lately

Last but not least, I have a reading recommendation for you.

I am not easily scared by books—movies are another story—but this one t-e-r-r-i-f-i-e-d me. It has such an interesting structure; at no point was I confident where the story was going. Sierra has written an absolute masterclass in pacing and tension. Cannot recommend it highly enough if you’re looking for your next thriller.

Okay, that’s all for now. More soon(ish).

May your week be filled with glowing adoration—