I know that most of you don’t need me to tell you this. But if there are any newbies out there reading this, you may not realize the backlash that could occur from anything you say on the internet.

Back when I was ignorant of a lot of things pertaining to indie publishing (or any publishing), someone left a bad review on one of my books. This was before I acquired a thick skin about this kind of thing. Some of the things that were said were a little snarky, so it kind of rubbed me the wrong way. One of my friends jumped to my defense and replied to the review, and she said some things that I wish she hadn’t, but that started the ball rolling. Then I put in my two cents worth. I thought I was just being honest and I didn’t really realize at the time that I shouldn’t respond to bad reviews AT ALL. I thought I was pretty calm about the whole thing and the reviewer was pretty nice in her response, but it still was a bad, bad thing for me to do. Reviews are for the readers, not for authors to get defensive and respond to. Not everyone is going to like your book. Anyway, the only reason this is coming up now is because there was a response today on the comments from that review. A year later! And the person who wrote the comment felt like I was out of line, although I didn’t agree with a lot of what she said about my response. And it took all the willpower I possessed not to respond to that comment. But I took the high road and didn’t. This is just one instance of how what you say on the internet stays on the internet. I did have one review that I responded to a little more recently (although not too recently, lol) and it was because I was attacked personally. It wasn’t a true review. My author friends told me I shouldn’t even have responded to that one. I asked Amazon to take that review down and they did immediately.

So please, when you see something said about your book you don’t like, take a deep breath and forget it. I know you want to respond. It will drive you crazy not to. But don’t do it! It looks unprofessional and whiny when you respond to negative remarks. There are some reviewers who write bad reviews because they enjoy it. That’s just going to happen. And some people will simply not like your book and feel like they have to tell everyone. If you can’t handle anything negative said about your book, take Zoe Winters’ advice and don’t read your reviews. Try to stay cool and professional on the internet. Because what you say on the internet stays on the internet!

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