The Good. The Bad. The Downright Nasty!

 

There will soon be 62 books published written by Carolyn Brown or Abby Gray (my pen name on the first four)  so you’d think I would be used to the whole process, right?

But here I am chewing my fingernails (thank goodness they don’t have calories or fat grams), waiting eleven more days until my first woman’s fiction book hits the book stores. I’ve got a virtual launch party all ready and the blog dates are set. The cover is awesome. Everything has been completed. Nothing left to chance. So what on earth do I have to worry about?

REVIEWS!!

I remember my first review very well. 

The review was one of those downright nasty, folks! I still shudder just thinking about it. The machete the reviewer used to cut up the story and the author who wrote it was covered plumb up in red sticky stuff and it didn’t smell like cherries or strawberries. No editor was ever going to buy another book from me. I was doomed to be a has-been when I'd barely gotten a good runnin' start at being an author.

I called the funeral director who was a friend of mine, told him to go on and order that gorgeous red casket with gold plated handles. I told him that I was getting pretty close to being ready to crawl up in it, cross my hands over my…chest…and stop breathing.

Two weeks later, a very reputable reviewer gave the same book a good review. I called the funeral director and canceled the order for the red casket and my editor called to offer a contract on the next three books in the series.

And I’d learned a lesson.

Reviews were the opinion of one person, not the whole world.

Since then I’ve danced jigs over the good…starred reviews, RITA nomination, NYT and USA lists, books of the week, the month and the whole nine yards.

I’ve chewed my nails over the bad…one star, two star, no star.

I’ve worried about the nasty…minus six stars, bless their hearts!

I figured out that some folks were going to like my books.

Some weren’t.

Simple as that.

I needed to grow a thicker skin and learn not to wear my heart on my sleeve.

These past couple of weeks I get up every morning, look in the mirror and give myself that same pep talk. I even throw in that old adage about not pleasing all of the people all of the time.

And then I eat chocolate.

Chocolate sales were up 28% in 2012 and topped $17.3 billion in sales. And about 32 million books, across all genres and formats, were sold in 2012. That’s a heck of a lot of reviews, folks! A lot of chewing nails. A lot of happy dances. A lot of eyeballing that red casket.

A lot of chocolate!

Chocolate helps us celebrate the good reviews.

Chocolate helps us endure the bad reviews.

Chocolate keeps us away from red caskets when there are downright nasty reviews.

It’s a wonder drug!

We really should at least be recognized with our picture on the advertising or maybe a picture of the cover art of our upcoming book. We deserve recognition because with those stats, I’m sure authors buy more chocolate than any other group of folks out there.

Tell me, as authors do you worry about reviews? As readers do you base your whole reading experience on reviews? Am I the only one out here keeping the chocolate companies in business?