Wednesday, May 5, 2021

#IWSG Readers Responses Can Be Funny

ISWG

Shout-out to Alex and the awesome co-hosts for today: Erika Beebe, PJ Colando, Tonja Drecker, Sadira Stone, and Cathrina Constantine!




MAY 5 question -


Has any of your readers ever responded to your writing in a way that you didn't expect? If so, did it surprise you?



It's gone now. But, once upon a time on Goodreads, someone reviewed "Preparing to Write Settings That Feel Like Characters" and said it did not educate them on how to write a setting or outline a book. 

๐Ÿ˜ณ๐Ÿ˜’๐Ÿ˜

Well... that's true. 
It also doesn't teach you how to clean a fish, change the oil in your car, or do advanced calculus. 
๐Ÿ˜†

I mean... was I surprised that someone didn't actually read the title of the book? Well, I guess I didn't expect it. But some people just want to complain. 
Anyway, the review vanished. Maybe someone at Goodreads took it down? Maybe the reviewer realized the book wasn't called "how to write settings and outline books" so they took it down themselves? I don't know. 
I didn't take the review personally. I mean, if you can't even get through reading the title, how useful could anything I wrote actually be to you? 



The A to Z Challenge is done for 2021. The survey is still open for a few days -- 112 people answered so far. 
I'm sending caring thoughts to co-host John Holton because storms and tornados are ripping through his hometown right now. Hope you're staying safe, John! 

19 comments:

  1. You do have to wonder about people like that.

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    1. Yup. Can't even take it personally because, I mean, "waiter, I ordered a ๐ŸŒฎ taco, why is this a ๐ŸŒญ hotdog?" "Because the place is called Dogs,Dogs,Dogs and everything is actually a hotdog."

      Like... welcome to Earth? ๐ŸŒŽ

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  2. That's hilarious!
    I am glad the review is gone. When I read some of my reviews, I wonder if they actually read the book too! I don't care for Goodreads, because of the trolls. They go around giving 1 stars for no specific reason. Who has the time for that nonsense and why? Once I looked into my 1 star troll and on that day this person gave over 60 books a 1 star rating. So strange.

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    1. That's an angry person who is just going around knocking others because they've got issues and aren't dealing.
      I like Goodreads because they don't require a minimum spending amount to leave reviews. (It's $50 a year on Amazon to qualify to leave reviews. And Smashwords only allows reviews if you got the book from their site.) BookBub is also good, but there aren't as many books on the site.

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  3. That was a weird review. Glad it got taken down.

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    1. I am too.
      Though maybe it would have deterred other people who were looking for something totally different from what I wrote.
      I know it isn't something a lot of authors do. That's why I went straight to self-publishing. It's a small niche. I never expected to sell more than 50 copies. I wrote it because I know how to do it and saw there were agents looking for it, so I figured I'd share the knowledge.

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  4. Some people are just weird. It's like when someone asked me decades ago what I wanted to be when I grow up, and while I was answering I could see their mind drifting -- so when they commented on it, they made some random comment about something I didn't even say (I said I wanted to be a veterinarian with my own practice and they heard I wanted my own veterinarian). People hear and read just what they want to, I guess...

    Ronel visiting for IWSG day Whirlwind Publishing

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    1. I wonder how many animals you'd have to take in to justify having your own veterinarian on staff full-time. Like, obviously a zoo would have that. But I can't imagine a private citizen needing such a thing, even if you're a 1% crazy rich person. That's funny.

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  5. I'm waiting for one of those really weird reviews by someone who obviously didn't even read the book. It feels like you need a few of them to really call yourself a successful writer.

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    1. In my book on how to write reviews, I mentioned the worst one I've heard about (sadly, the tweet is gone). Someone left a review on Amazon about how bad a book was because it wasn't a package of Jimmy Dean sausages. It was like... what?

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  6. Well I found that book very useful and left a much better review ๐Ÿ˜ธ

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  7. ๐Ÿคฃ๐Ÿ˜„๐Ÿ˜†๐Ÿคฃ
    OMG. Here, you get a beer for that one. (Sam Adams or A-Treat root beer, your choice.)
    ๐Ÿป

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  8. Reviews like that make you scratch your head. One of my books on Amazon has a review that screams don't read this book it's in Comic Sans - and that's ALL it says. But it's not! Neither print nor eBook. I've fought with Amazon over the years but they refuse to pull it.

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  9. Odd reviews give that extra zest. I guess?

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  10. I agree with Tonja. Reviews that make you go, "Huh?". Love it. Happy IWSG!

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  11. That review must have made you laugh, or roll your eyes. Happy IWSG.
    BTW - I loved all that you outlined in that book. I hope I gave you a review. I must go back and check. But rest assured I wasn't the one who wrote that bit of rudeness.

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  12. LOL I think they only read the first half of the title.
    I once had a review which said the baddie gave in too easily, so they gave me a (relatively) low rating. I did think of commenting that they didnt know what I knew about the baddie....but I think I restrained myself. In fact, he didnt give in, he came up with the same solution as the goodies! I'd forgotten about that.
    But I do keep worrrying about whether my settings are characters at the moment.

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  13. How strange. It doesn't sound like they understood the book at all. I'm glad it got taken down, one way or another.

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