I received my first truly awful review. It’s over at Barnes and Noble. One star. Critical of story, voice, believability, the whole shebang. It seemed pretty obvious that whoever this person was (who naturally hid behind Anonymous) not at all familiar with the paranormal genre and didn’t actually want to read a story geared that way. Since it was caused by magic, no his amnesia wasn’t typical. And yeah, he didnt’ know he was so I dared to have him LOOK IN A MIRROR in the first chapter. Oh noes! I wasn’t writing a Clancy novel, so no, the military stuff wasn’t authentic. That wasn’t the point of the story. To each their own. I knew not everyone would like it. If any of my fabu peeps feel the urge to pop over to Barnes and Noble and copy your Amazon review, feel free.
However, the overwhelming response has been positive as indicated by the fact that I have seen an almost 650% increase in sales over last month. I’ve sold over 500 copies total. Not at all shabby for a no-name novella in 3 months. My high ranking for the week was 525, and I actually cracked the top 10 on the Fantasy, Futuristic, and Ghost category, both Kindle and Books in general.
It’s pretty exciting to be rubbing metaphoric elbows with J. R. Ward.
It’s been a less than stellar writing week. I spent the early part catching up on sleep, and I’m not sure my brain has quite finished recovering. I was aiming for 3500 words for the week and I’ll be doing good to eek out 2k. But I’ll still exceed last month’s total for words produced, so that’s still forward momentum. With the way this year’s been going, that’s all I can ask for. Continual forward motion and improvement.
10 thoughts on “Sunday Summary”
500 copies in only three months?
Wow, I think that speaks for itself, congratulations Kait!
🙂
Deniz
— win a copy of Joanna Bourne’s The Forbidden Rose at http://www.thegirdleofmelian.blogspot.com —
Left my review on B&N! Keep your chin up; you still have many happy fans.
You are super!
I’m so sorry about the bad review. But this is the advice I was given: If someone gives you a bad review, it’s only because he wasn’t your audience. Let it go.
If it makes you feel any better, one of the videos I posted this morning on my blog deals with bad reviews. Very funny and true to life.
Absolutely true. It was really obvious from the review that this person didn’t at all grasp the concept of paranormal–well, anything.
The first time I got a 2 star review on goodreads.com, I was devastated. I didn’t even want to write anymore. I got over it. So don’t you DARE feel the way I did. Your writing is good, your story is interesting. Everyone isn’t going to like every author. As you said, some people don’t get paranormal. Think of all your good reviews. Even Stephen King gets bad reviews, and to me he’s the greatest.
LOL, no worries on that front. I have a fairly titanic ego. It can survive one disgruntled reviewer.
I wish you would teach me how to have an ego like that! LOL
It must be inborne because my mother tried her hardest to break me of it since it’s not very lady-like.
Those are great numbers! But, hey, numbers, review, or anything else can’t compare to having your book right next to Ward’s vampires. That’s a picture for a frame on the wall! Okay, so sales are important, but you have to have your happy dances where they’re inspired. 😉