Tuesday, April 9, 2013

The Mystery of the Missing Review

I don't know why, but I lost a review on Her Turn. I used to have 2 reviews, now I only have one, which is a shame because a review is a review. It doesn't matter if it was good or not (not to me). This one wasn't bad; it gave me 3 stars and brought down my overall rating to 3.5 stars. (I have 4 now that the review is gone.)

I don't mean to be an ego freak, but both I like hearing what people have to say about my fiction, even if they don't like it. On Literotica, they can get pretty damning. I made the mistake of posting my story about a Female Led Relationship in the "Loving Wives" category and found that out quickly. The Loving Wives category is more about wives having sex with other people, not about putting their husbands in dog collars and taking control. Some of the more vivid criticisms called me "sick" and asked that I stay away from their pets / children, which was odd because there was nothing about animals or children in the story. It was also odd, because here was someone most likely pleasuring themselves to online erotica about wives behaving in very slutty ways, damning someone else for writing erotica they didn't agree with (or perhaps that disturbed them). I also noticed some of the same negative reviewers commented on several parts of the story, including the end.

Why would you continue to read something that disgusted you so much?

A Glowing Reviewer (get it?)
On Fictionmania, I've never received a negative review. It tended to be mostly positive, if not glowing. I only wrote a story on Literotica because the plot didn't contain any TG elements. It was the reviews on Fictionmania, however, that made me decide to place some stories in the E-Book market.

I'll say this: I don't need the money, but there is something nice about watching how many copies are being sold, and the moment I get a review, I prepare for the worst, but I'm usually pleasantly surprised.

Before I buy a book on Kindle, I read the reviews. Hell, before I buy anything on Amazon, I read the reviews. Reviews make me want to buy a certain product and steer clear of others. I've posted my own reviews on various products under different names (my pseudonym and my real name) with this in mind. Still, I know that at least for E-books, reviews aren't everything. Some of my favorites have never had a single review. Take "The Hotel" for instance. Not a single review, until I posted one.

For E-books, Fictionmania, etc. I doubt I will ever post a negative review (unless the author has done something egregious). But reviews matter. If you're ever inclined to post one, not necessarily on my work, but on fiction that rocked your boat, rang your clock, lit you up inside, tell the author and the audience that it did.

(For the record, I love pets and children and I'm very good with them and can't conceive of hurting either. My little perversion doesn't change the quality of my soul. If anything, it makes me more sympathetic to everyone's strange internal desires. And it's not perverted either: it's human sexuality. It don't get more diverse and perverse than that.)

ttt

4 comments:

Author said...

I've published at Amazon and I've found the reviews to be a problem. I had around 20 4-star and 5-star reviews on five of my books, so I had a solid track record and a large audience. Then I put out two new books and one guy came along and almost immediately hit those books with 1-star reviews and the sales stopped cold on those. The other books sell wonderfully, but not those two.

What's worse, I know he never read them. His reviews didn't have the "verified purchase" mark, plus he said nothing about the stories themselves just a generic sentence about how this story was full of mistakes and typos and could have been written by a high school student.

I clicked on his name to see his other reviews and he'd left about twenty nearly identical reviews on other books. Basically, he's a troll who makes himself feel good by attacking authors. Unfortunately, it killed the sales of those two books nevertheless.

So let me ask your audience that if they do like books, they absolutely should leave reviews so that people like this guy can't hurt your favorite authors.

TomTame said...

I know, I know. I've seen that kind of thing, too. I can only console myself and hope I'm lucky to avoid most of that. I suppose if someone just seemed to be attacking an author there might be a complaint process or a "report" feature available through Amazon. I haven't explore that option.

On the other hand, you know popular authors probably contend with critics the same way. Some books reviewers and critics just hate something and it hurts sales.

You didn't leave a contact

Ann Michelle said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ann Michelle said...

Tom, Rather than leaving a comment on this topic, I'd be happy to talk to you by e-mail.

annmichelle@ymail.com