No 4 Guest Blogger & Bad Book Reviews - Francine Howarth

Today's guest needs little introduction, so I give you Francine Howarth, writer of Regency romance. Today she is sharing her take on bad reviews. Have you had one or two? If you're as yet unpublished, gird up your loins, because not all reviews are good! But Francine says they can work in your favour...

Hi RFWers and followers!

Well you can relax, the last thing I’m going to do is promote myself or my writing. Nor is this meant as a sympathy vote post. Hell, you must all know where my serious-writer blog is located and, that updates on latest releases are posted as and when along with book trailers.  If you don’t, it’s here. ;)

Here at RFWers we’ve had guest bloggers who’ve talked about “how-to write romance, how-they write and what inspired them”.  So, I thought I’d talk about something a lot of writers think won’t happen to them and when it does it comes as a shock. Now the sad fact of life is, that as soon as your book goes public it’s open to scrutiny from readers who are neither family, friends, fellow groupie writers nor critique partners. You are now fair game to raw critique and social graces of some reviewers leaves a lot to be desired.

Fear of a bad book review is something all published authors learn to live with, yet nonetheless dread them. In fact, some authors within our blogosphere have received the odd one or two since their books hit Amazon, and the bad reviews knocked them for six. Yeah, it’s not nice if a bad review pops up, but the best way is to ignore it and never respond by comment to the reviewer. If you do you fall into the trap of making that reviewer feel even more self-important, and said person will feed off the attention granted them.

Now let’s assess outcome of a bad review.

Can a bad review of a book be detrimental to sales of said book, more especially if the reviewer declares your book to be crap? The answer to that is NO. A bad review is likely to draw more attention to your book than dozens of good reviews. So don’t panic and don’t fret if a bad review surfaces. Books reviewed by professional reviewers, as in Sunday Newspaper supplements and magazines, will consist of overall summary and no spoilers. It’s rare in today’s newspaper or magazine review columns to see a bad review, yet in the 1960s and long before scathing reviews of books were quite common and some critics were infamous and dreaded by all authors.

With the coming of Amazon, Smashwords and Goodreads etc., has come the every “wo/man and their dog/cat” who thinks themselves a book reviewer. But, where a “professional book reviewer” now has a publisher remit of “just give a summary, no spoilers for God’s sake and don’t kick up a storm of protest to vile reviews” your average Amazon reviewer seems to have no concept of what a spoiler is (reveal of plot inclusive ending), and most reviews blow the gaff either as glowing or vile reviews.   

But a BAD review can up your book sales. Strange as it may seem, people are curious creatures and BAD draws out the GOOD in most of us and what do we do when a bad book review pops up, we want to know for ourselves how BAD it is and more often than not the book is stunning for all the right reasons, in that it likely make us stop and think! I would imagine Sara Craven (Mills & Boon) author who dares to push boundaries has adopted elephant hide, because poor Sara has had more than her fair share of stick from Amazon reviewers. First off she was slammed for having a rape scene, and for having a heroine whom fell in love with the rapist. And, ever since that book it seems some reviewers purposely go out of their way to criticise her and ridicule her plots. Yeah, it’s a tough call to carry on writing when knowing malicious anonymous persons are lying in wait for your next book.

Luckily I have elephant hide, and I laughed like crazy when my latest “Scandalous Whispers” received the following review:

  “The hero and heroine are apart because of her mother's desire for Christina to marry a mean rake earl. Why Christina doesn't tell her silly mother she wants to marry Robert instead of the creepy earl and tell what the creep tries to do to get her alone and force his intentions on her is ridiculous! I love romance stories but this one just really misses the mark”.

Now bear in mind this reviewer titled the review thus: “Insipid”.

Did this review upset me? No.

Why not? Answer: I don’t do “Insipid”.  

As RFWers you all know that to say I write “Insipid stories” would be like saying I have a penchant for wearing pink, have fluffy pom-pom slippers and have a rose-tinted view on romance and adore stereotypical characters and mushy plots. As if – when in real life I love the waft of horse sweat, and don’t take kindly to horse shit from swanky dudes. The latter, fortunately, characterisation or caricature if you prefer, is moi, who loves a bit of romancing whilst able to smell a rat at fifty-paces. On the other hand, my character Christina is a young lady of the Regency era, and well brought up young ladies at that time were swayed by parental influence and often faced with arranged marriages.

Damn it all a 21^st century chick-lit female is more than likely to knee a jerk / rake in his jewels and deflate all the tyres on his Porsche if he came on too strong. While a Regency Miss is far more likely to conceal immoral advances from a rake she despises for fear her parents think the worst and, get her wed to him quick sharp. After all, parental intention will be to prevent any scandal and save her from consequences out of wedlock despite protests that her chastity remains in tact. BTW: the latter is not my plot, there’s more to it than that simple equation. That said, there are 21st century women who can be pushy executives and high-flying businesswomen, yet become putty or simmering wrecks if a guy breaks through their defensive shield  and embeds a twisting screw! Same can be said of dude counterparts when temptation leads and things don't go his way!

Let’s be honest, here. Stand a 21^st century young lady alongside one from the early 1800s little comparison can be drawn between them, beyond that of pent up emotions, raging hormones and young love exposed along with despair when things go badly wrong. So, what I’m saying is that the above review is written by a 21^st century female who has little or no knowledge of life in Jane Austen’s era or, chooses to ignore it.  And, the strange aspect to the above review is that the heroine doesn’t even know if the hero is interested in her when the rake makes immoral advances, so why in hell should she tell her mother she loves Robert? I’m fairly sure this reviewer hasn’t even read the book, and has set up her review on the basis of info from the blurb alone and from reading the sample pages.

So let’s take a look at the differences in social behaviour 21^st century Vs 1800s. Most young ladies born to gentry in the 1800s had little chance to rebel, their allowances ad dowry were subject to parental hand out, and if a young lady chose to run away she would have forfeited her allowance and her dowry. Young ladies of rank in the 1800s were very much under the control of parental persuasions, and I doubt many ran away for how were they to raise funds? That aspect I shall leave to your imaginations. And yes, some great storylines could come out of this kind of situation, but most would no doubt - in real-life 1800 mode - end in tragedy unlike the rosy-glow endings of your average historical romance novel. On the other hand a 21^st century young women has every opportunity for independent living, and to make something of herself no matter her background. Success boils down to good manners, self-confidence and go-getting what it is you want from life. Sitting on your arse criticising others because they’re getting on with success is pitiful.          

So, chins up, and if you ever get a bad review, look on it as your having arrived on the book scene. Because hey, (a shout-out) someone other than a friend has gone out of their way to post up a shit review, which in itself says more about the reviewer than it does about your book. ;)

And so I say to my wonderful anonymous book reviewer (just in case you’re reading this): thanks for stopping by to post up your review. You did me a great service! Because, in essence, I was stuck for something to write about for this guest post and you provided the inspiration for a sufficiently long post to bore the pants off RFWers! :)

Have a lovely day

Francine X

Thanks Francine. Now let's hear what you think. Drop us a comment - do you agree with Francine's take on bad reviews? Do you have a story to share?

Don't forget our Dec 2 Writing Challenge - see sidebar/challenge page for details!

Denise (L'Aussie)