One Satisfying Strategy for Dealing with a Bad Book Review

Your book is coming out soon! Advanced Reader's Copies have been sent to reviewers! Any day you could get that very first review! 

And then you get it.

And it isn't, shall we say, quite the review you were hoping for.

Maybe it's scathing (I've gotten a few of those). 

Maybe it's lukewarm, damning the book, as Alexander Pope noted, with faint praise (I've gotten plenty of those).

Maybe it's full of praise but not quite enough praise to satisfy an author still yearning for undying fame (the story of my writing life).

What should you do?

My new hobby is to go on the book review website Goodreads and see what readers have to say about the greatest classics in the history of literature. I can't stop doing it.

War and Peace has a rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars. One reader called it "not quite as readable as some other BIG books I have read but still pretty good." Another reader, giving it three stars, called it "okay-ish."

Middlemarch has a rating of 3.98. "At times a slog, but not too bad in the end." "I just COULD NOT get into this book." "Some books are just meant to be read as part of a college class. This was one of those books."

Well, all right, maybe it's understandable that books of the past might command a less enthusiastic reception in the present. But when I look up books by my favorite contemporary authors, like Anne Tyler or Ann Patchett, there still are plenty of detractors.

My favorite novel by Pulitzer-Prize-winning Anne Tyler is Ladder of Years: Goodreads rating of 3.72. "The only book I ever bought on a business trip, then threw in the trash." "I did not relate well to the main character. . . so I dragged through the plot." "I thought maybe this book would be different from Tyler's others. I guess I'm just not into her." 

Ann Patchett's riveting best-seller Bel Canto gets 3.92 of 5. One reader gave it a tie for her prize for Most Disappointing Book of the Year. Another wrote, "I finish every book I start, yet I did not finish this one!"

I could give a thousand more examples - this is indeed my new hobby - but the lesson here is clear. Sara Lee may have used the advertising slogan "Everybody doesn't like something, but nobody doesn't like Sara Lee," but when it comes to books, there is no book on earth that somebody doesn't love.

Including books by me.

Including books by you.

But I think it's also true there is no book that is not loved by at least somebody. One book I read over and over again in childhood, The Magic Ring by Neta Lohnes Frazier, published in 1959, is all but forgotten now, with only four ratings (average 3.25) and three reviews (all positive enough) on Goodreads. But the child I once was loved it so!

Somewhere out there is a child who loves a book of yours this way. 

And a child who loves a book of mine this way, too. 

 

How Much Should Authors Beg for Reviews?

In his delightful autobiography, Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope reports his pledge that he would "have no dealings with any critic on my own behalf, I would neither ask for nor deplore criticism, nor would I ever thank a critic for praise, or quarrel with him, even in my own heart, for censure." In his view, solicited praise of any kind "must be an injustice to the public, for whose instruction .  . . such notices are intended." Even a "mild suggestion" that one would welcome a review can too easily descend into "crawling at the critic's feet" - compromising the integrity of the review process itself. 

What would Anthony Trollope, who died in 1882, have to say about the dogged efforts today's authors make to secure attention from prominent bloggers or rack up an impressive total of glowing reviews on internet sites like Amazon and Goodreads? 

This is the question I'm pondering as I decide how best to promote my new book child, The Lost Language, which I love with the doting affection older parents lavish on their late-life children.

Cozying up to prominent children's literature bloggers does seem very similar to cozying up to reviewers at the key journals for children's books, a tainting of reviewing integrity of the kind Trollope decries. But reader reviews are just . . . reader reviews. Some authors (not me!) receive thousands of them. And most authors nowadays make some effort to coax friends to post a few reviews early on to start a trend of adulation, in the same way that playwrights and directors might plant a few audibly appreciative chums in the audience on opening night. 

All I want is for everyone in the world to read my book and love it! And I want everyone in the world to shout its praises from the cyber-rooftops! I want to remind everyone I know that the single nicest thing one can do for an author - even more so than buying their latest book - is to go online and post how wonderful the book is. The review doesn't have to be long or elaborate, it just has to be gushing. Oh, please gush about my book! And please accompany that gushing with a rating of it as five stars on Amazon and Goodreads! 

Does this count as "crawling at the critic's feet"? Well, I guess it kind of sort of does. Maybe it's more like begging than crawling, the way my little dog just STARES at me until I go and get him his doggie treat. I'm staring at you, universe! I'm staring at you with huge pleading eyes and panting tongue hanging out! 

I've been doing a lot of gushing myself during the past year for friends' recent books. I've set myself the goal of spending a few minutes to dash off a review on Amazon and Goodreads as soon as I finish reading a friend's book. For a while I was posting a review every single week. Does this compromise the integrity of the review process in the way Trollope feared? Well, I can say truthfully that I do this only for books I really truly love. I don't lie in my reviews. But part of my love for a book undeniably has to do with my love for its author. I'm also someone who just finds it easy to love things. Still, if I say I loved it, then I really truly did. And I've been making a special effort to declare that love publicly. 

So, friends, if you love a book, really, truly love it, consider taking the time to review it online. The author will leap up with an ecstatically wagging tail and slobber all over you the next time she sees you.

I think - at least for now - this is the extent of my begging and crawling for reviews!

Waiting (and Waiting and Waiting) for Reviews

Much of a writer's life involves waiting. Much of ALL human life, I suppose, involves waiting. As Dr. Seuss wrote in Oh, The Places You'll Go, we can spend countless hours of our precious time here on this earth in this way:

Waiting for a train to go or a bus to come,/ or a plane to go or the mail to come,/ or the rain to go or the phone to ring,/ or the snow to snow or waiting around for a Yes or No/or waiting for their hair to grow./Everyone is just waiting. 

After first waiting to hear if my agent liked my new book, The Lost Language, and then waiting to hear if my editor liked it, and then waiting to hear her responses to round after round of revisions made for her suggestions, the book is well along in production. I have a final cover, which I adore and am sharing every chance I get (see below!). And I have electronic ARCs (Advanced Reader Copies), which are now being sent out for early reviews, for which I am NOW beginning to wait. 

Let me tell you: It is terrifying to wait for those first reviews. 

I doubt it's possible for me to have any reviews for at least another month, and maybe two. But then they will come, if I'm lucky (with so many thousands of books published each year, many don't achieve the honor of any reviews at all). The chief review organs for children's book are Kirkus, School Library Journal, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, and Horn Book. What these reviewers have to say about my book will make a huge difference to its success - or lack thereof. The BEST kind of review is a starred review (where here, it's not that the book gets x number of stars on some scale, but that the review itself has one big, beautiful star next to it.) 

I've had starred reviews on various books throughout the course of my career, but not very many. But I've never before written a book as good as this one. Some of my author friends get HEAPS of starred reviews: three, four, or even five for one single book. Sometimes, in a mildly irritating way, they will write Facebook posts that begin: "Pinch me! My book has just gotten its FIFTH starred review!" 

What if that irritating person this time is . . . ME? 

I remember hearing stories about Broadway actors huddling at Sardi's in the early morning hours after opening night, waiting for those newspaper reviews that would hit the streets at dawn: the reviews that would determine whether their show closed immediately or ran through hundreds of performances. At least those theater reviews came right away, and the anxious actors were together as they waited, presumably drinking some cheering or consoling adult beverages. I don't know when my reviews will come. Not yet. But soon? Or soonish?

Now, everyone knows that the wisest course of action for any writer while waiting to hear from agents, editors, or reviewers is simply to get busy writing the next book. Forget the first book! Pretend it never existed! Pour your whole heart into the new work-in-progress!

This is not easy to do. 

Dr. Seuss reassures us:

Somehow you'll escape/ all that waiting and staying./ You'll find the bright places/ where Boom Bands are playing.

But note that he doesn't give any guidance for HOW you will do this.

My own plan - well, not MY plan, exactly, but the universe's plan for me - is to stuff my summer so full of a whirlwind of fully vaccinated gaiety that I will have little time to sit hunched over my email waiting for reviews to trickle in. My two little granddaughters are coming for a week each month. My younger son and his girlfriend are coming from Chicago for three whole weeks. Multiple friends are coming through Boulder on cross-country road/train trips. I'm going on a girlfriend getaway of my own to Santa Fe next week and to a mini-reunion with five friends from my freshman-year college dorm to Newport, Rhode Island, in August. 

My whole life will be a bright place where Boom Bands are playing!

Or at least that's the plan. 

As I wait, and wait, and wait for those first crucial reviews....

 

The Danger (and Delight?) of Getting Your Hopes Up

This week I did a cover reveal for my forthcoming verse novel for middle-grade readers, The Lost Language, about two sixth-grade best friends who are trying to save an endangered language and in the process to save their own endangered friendship. The cover, by Kathrin Honesta, is absolutely gorgeous and received a torrent of Facebook love. 

I think this is the best book I've ever written. So does my writing group.  So does my agent. So does my editor. So do all the friends who have read it in manuscript form. And now I have this terrific cover, too. Things are looking good for this book! 

But you know what this means, don't you?

It means I am STARTING TO GET MY HOPES UP.

And hopes can be dangerous. Hopes can be DASHED. Actually, to be more precise, hopes can be CRUELLY DASHED. Hopes can be DOOMED TO DISAPPOINTMENT.

I've had hopes for books before, dreams that this time I'd have my "breakout book," the one that would move me from "midlist" to wider recognition from the world. This has never happened for the previous 61 books. Why would it happen now? After all, as they say, "the best predictor of the future is the past." 

On the other hand, they also say, "If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten," and this book is NOT what I've always done. It's my first novel in verse, which allowed me to find my best and truest voice. And it has an intriguing, never-done-before-by-anyone-else premise: the crusade by two kids to save an endangered language (spoiler alert: also a hope that will be cruelly dashed and doomed to disappointment).

I gave a guest sermon once at church that was all about hope and its dangers. Buddhist writer Pema Chodron has written that we need "to begin to get the knack of hopelessness." The Christian's "addiction to hope," according to Chodron, is only a guarantee of continued suffering. Chodron recommends getting decorative magnets that say "Abandon Hope" and sticking them onto our refrigerator doors. In support of her view, there is empirical social science research that hope actually makes people feel worse: happiness levels increase when unemployed people finally decide to give up the job search and call themselves "retired," even when sick people receive a terminal diagnosis and can abandon a futile and heartbreaking chase after a cure. 

But there is also social science research on the beneficial effects of hope, or at least of optimism, its close cousin. Psychologist Martin Seligman's study on optimism versus pessimism in one large insurance company showed that optimists achieved much greater career success, outselling pessimists by anywhere from 30 to 60 percent. It turns out that the old song is correct: The ant with high apple-pie-in-the-sky-hopes is much more likely to topple the rubber tree plant than the ant who doesn't even try because he already knows he's going to fail. 

As for me, I love that pleasurable feeling that the universe might - just might! - be sending something wonderful my way. It's lovely to put myself to sleep at night imagining in delicious detail what it would feel like collect a slew of starred reviews for this book or to get that early morning, late January phone call that my book has won the Newbery Medal. I can savor months of happy daydreams before cold, hard reality bonks me on the head. And the bonk will be a bonk whether I let myself luxuriate in hope now or not. 

In my favorite philosophy article ever, "The Will to Believe," by Williams James, he writes in defense of letting ourselves err on the side of hope rather than fear. He focuses on hope for the existence of God, but his arguments apply to other kinds of hope as well. Yes, if we hope, we risk disappointment, and this fear may cause us to guard our hearts against allowing ourselves to hope. The refusal to hope protects us from the fear of disappointment, but the fear of disappointment, James points out, equally denies us the pleasures of hope. We do not want to be duped, but James writes, “Dupery for dupery, what proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear?”

So I'm going to let myself hope that The Lost Language will be an enduring classic of children's literature, beloved of readers for generations to come! It may well be a dud instead. Given the number of books published each year versus the number of books that achieve immortality, the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of dud-dom. But how lovely it is to tarry for a while in the landscape of hope. 

I'm hoping hard right now for my sweet little book.