You hear about review bombing all the time now. The most recent account that went viral were the reviews for the new live-action Snow White movie from Disney. However, I’m not posting a blog about billionaire corporations getting review bombed—they’ll bounce back. What I want to talk about are the review bombs I’m finding on writing sites like Inkitt and Wattpad. It’s already hard to have your stories seen when you’re an indie author, but it’s almost impossible if you have mostly 1-star reviews.
Now, I’m not saying that some of those reviews aren’t warranted. Not everyone is going to like what you write because we all have our preferences. What I am saying, is that I’ve seen some 1-star reviews lately with no content, or if they do have anything written under them, it’s a sentence that’s doesn’t relate to the story at all.
I recently reported a 1-star review on an author’s book on Inkitt. It was the only review which made her story nosedive to a 1-star, but all it said was “I don’t give reviews.” Huh? If you don’t give reviews, then why did you give them a 1-star in every category just to tell us that? It was extremely unfair to the author. I don’t like injustice, so I took it upon myself to add her book to my Reviewing Reading List on my Inkitt page and I’ll be giving her an honest review with feedback. I’ve started reading the story and let me tell you, it’s not a 1-star by any means.
I wouldn’t want a person or people doing this to my stories and I would hope anyone who saw this happening would report it like I did for this author. There are going to be these types of people wherever you go, but it’s like it’s trending. I’m sure I’ll come across more on the platform, but all I can do is be supportive and try to even the odds so to speak. One 5-star won’t pull up a 1-star review too high, but if we could all support those authors and review them together, imagine what we could accomplish.
Reviews help indie authors. It helps them with visibility, with readership, and with improving upon their work. Feedback can be valuable if you choose to put a little effort into it. It’s okay to have constructive (and, sometimes negative critiques), but when reviewing something you should always ask yourself, “How is this going to help the author and the reader?” If your feedback doesn’t offer solutions or even hint at what could be done better, then maybe you should work on your review a little more. Pointing out what you like and dislike about a book is great, but offer something a little more. You have to be like a child and keep asking yourself why after every sentence.
I know some people will see this blog post and be like, “Lauren, that’s a lot of work and I don’t have the time.” To that I simply say, wait until you have the time. Like I said, you don’t have to leave only 3-star and up on books. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and I’ve left 1 and 2-star reviews before, but I explained why I felt those stories deserved it. Even if it’s a few sentences, it helps the author be a better writer and understand why a reader may feel that way. Sometimes we write scenes thinking they’re solid and find out later how many plot holes we made because a reader pointed it out.
Take a look at my blog post on how to write good reviews for authors. It has a lot of helpful information in it on how to write reviews that are constructive. Also, check out the author’s Inkitt page that I mentioned above. No one deserves to have one unfair review drag them down.
Author Lauren Eason 