# My first "positive" one star review!!



## J.E.Johnson (Aug 5, 2009)

Hello everyone!  I finally got my first one star review . . . I must admit, I was nervous about reading it, but the reader was very honest and the review itself was very short.  Basically, they stated that the book was more appropriate for the young teen reader (which happens to be my intended audience), and, in their opinion, not suited for the adult audience.  Just glad it wasn't a 'banana boy' review this time  .  So, the moral of the story:  one star reviews aren't necessarily bad reviews!  
-Jenna


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## Debra Purdy Kong (Apr 1, 2009)

You're so right, Jenna. And any review, good or bad, is just one person's opinion. I doubt you'll ever get anyone to agree about any book, but that's what makes life interesting.

Debra


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## J Dean (Feb 9, 2009)

Congrats on the review!  But what's a "banana boy"?


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## sierra09 (Jun 20, 2009)

He's a 'reviewer' on Amazon who left a very negative 1-star review for another KB author's book without even having a clue to what the book was about and it was, at the time, the only review the book had. My brain's dead today so I even forget the book.  

Jenna, I agree with Debra. While it's hard to remember at times but each review is just that of one person.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

My understanding is "banana boy" pretty much ONLY leaves useless 1 star reviews. . . . . . .which is good because it means no one really takes him seriously.  Still annoying though for the author he decides to dis.


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## Carol Hanrahan (Mar 31, 2009)

You must think of that one star review as a sort of "right of passage".  
A statistical glitch, if you will!


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## Anju  (Nov 8, 2008)

sierra09 said:


> He's a 'reviewer' on Amazon who left a very negative 1-star review for another KB author's book without even having a clue to what the book was about and it was, at the time, the only review the book had. My brain's dead today so I even forget the book.
> 
> Jenna, I agree with Debra. While it's hard to remember at times but each review is just that of one person.


Declination and Right Ascension By David Derrico - think I spelled everything correctly - IMHO rather good stories.


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## David Derrico (Nov 18, 2009)

Anju No. 469 said:


> Declination and Right Ascension By David Derrico - think I spelled everything correctly - IMHO rather good stories.


Thanks very much for vouching for me, Anju, I do so appreciate it (and you did spell everything correctly!). I did get a random 1-star review that sounded very similar to this one, although I don't think from the same person (unless it was an alias... it's his only review). The thing is, my books most certainly are NOT juvenile or written at a children's or young adult level, although that's what his very short review said (I doubt he read them).

I am trying to stay zen and calm and not think about it, especially since I've received some nice positive reviews and notes since then. I'm sure yours will come too. Like Carol said, this is probably just statistical noise.


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## J.E.Johnson (Aug 5, 2009)

Yes, I was lucky with this one star review: since I am of the mind to read both the five star and one star reviews when trying to choose a new book/author, I am glad to have this one.  Plus, since it is my only one star review so far, I'm guessing people will look at it, and even if they're looking for a more "grown up" fantasy novel, someone might get on there and say, 'Hmmmmmm, I think this is too young for me, but my daughter/son, niece/nephew might like it . . . '  So once again, thank you for this one star review!  May all indie authors receive such good luck  .
-Jenna


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## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

J.E.Johnson said:


> So once again, thank you for this one star review! May all indie authors receive such good luck .
> -Jenna


Just so we're clear, are you wishing a one-star review on me? I mean, I'm all for learning from my mistakes and everything, but that still seems slightly cruel 

David Dalglish


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## J.E.Johnson (Aug 5, 2009)

David: Only if that one star review will aid you in some way.  If you read mine, you'll see that the reviewer never said that they liked or disliked the book, they just say that they were expecting a more mature story, but got a young teen story instead.  So, I'm not wishing any one star review on you, just a positive one  .
-Jenna


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## Archer (Apr 25, 2009)

If you want to read a few 'unhelpful' one-stars, read mine!  

What I don't get is why this person felt the need to a. read the entire book when it was obviously not what she had been expecting/looking for, and b. review it with one star only because it was not to her taste. If she thought it was a decent book, but aimed at a younger audience (both of which are true, btw,) then it seems odd to lower the book's average rating that much. In a case where a book has only a few reviews, a single one has a lot of impact. 

A more logical, considerate course might have been to either quit reading ('oh...this is a YA book. I don't want to read a YA book, therefore I will stop reading this one now), or to modify one's mindset to accept reading a YA book and judge it as such.

On the bright side, ALL the best sellers have at least one 'schtinker' to their credit.  I've gotten to the point where I almost get suspicious if ALL reviews are glowing! That first one-star is certainly a shock (as I said...wait til you read MINE! Go to the DTB pages to find them. Brrrrr!), especially after a pretty good run of 4's and 5's. In your case, it could have been a LOT worse.


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## GinnyB (Dec 19, 2009)

Gosh, it must be so hard to be new authors and then have to win the approval of sooooo many readers! I applaud all the authors here. Keep writing and I'll keep reading! 

I guess the one thing I look for in a book is to be "taken away". Does the book put me in the action? Can I feel what the character fees? Or do I see what the character sees?

At the moment, I'm reading Sierra 09's book on S.E.A.L. Team Omega. The book immediately took me away and put me where the characters are. 

Anyway, just keep up the writing - you are all gutsy in my opinion!


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## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

Gutsy might be appropriate. I remember the terror I felt when I finally clicked that "publish" button in the Amazon DTP. What if no one buys it? What if I get terrible reviews? What if I'm just being a delusional clod? You know, common things like that.

To be honest, I'm absolutely dreading my first one-star review. Maybe one of you all should write it so I manage to survive to live another day.  

David Dalglish


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## Carol Hanrahan (Mar 31, 2009)

Half-Orc said:


> G
> 
> To be honest, I'm absolutely dreading my first one-star review. Maybe one of you all should write it so I manage to survive to live another day.
> 
> David Dalglish


Oh yeah... We could all collaborate, do a review like they do they "Mad Libs" game.

I thought this book was _insert adjective_. It really _insert verb_. If you like stories about _insert noun_, then you should _insert verb_. Overall, this book _insert strong verb_!


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## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

A review for Baling.
------------------

I thought this book was fantastic! It really hooked me! If you like stories about baling, then you should read. Overall, this book rocked!

Sounds more like a 5 star than a 1 star. One sec.

Another review for Baling.
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I thought this book was terrible. It really bored me. If you like stories about baling, look elsewhere. Overall, this book stunk.

There we go.

David Dalglish


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## David Derrico (Nov 18, 2009)

OK, Archer, I was intrigued and had enough morbid curiosity to check out your 1-star reviews. I must say I'm glad I did, because it makes me feel better about my own. Those reviews are clearly trolls, aliases, someone trying to knock you down a peg, and one in particular is mostly copied-and-pasted from one book to the next.

It's really pretty appalling that people seek to sabotage authors this way, as if it's not tough enough getting your book out there and trying to make a few sales.

The more I look at reviews like that, the more I realize that no fair and reasonable person would be writing those reviews. I haven't read your book, but I don't think you could have gotten the sales or the numbers of reviews you got if it were a 1-star book. Hell, I can tell you write better than that just from your _posts_. Similarly, I KNOW my books are not 1-star, I've read enough books to know roughly where they stand. Are they perfect? Of course not. But anyone ranking them 1-star is just doing so out of spite and trying to harm you.

I essentially see it as vandalism, or graffiti on our Amazon pages. I check my page every day terrified that someone decided to do a drive-by and bash me with unfounded 1-star reviews, or tag my book with something hurtful. The more I learn about the Amazon review system and how ripe it is for abuse (to be fair, there are fake 5-star, as well as 1-star reviews), the more I see how worthless it really is.


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## Archer (Apr 25, 2009)

Wy, thank you, Davidd, obveeusly, I can rite, bettr than THAY say I, can!

(English is my second language, right?)


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## J.E.Johnson (Aug 5, 2009)

Hey Archer, 
    I checked out those reviews as well, and although I'm not done with 'Elfhunter' yet (I'm about 2/3 of the way through, I promise!!!) I know that those reviews are inaccurate.  I could understand if someone didn't like your books, but to say the book has 'no characters, plot or settings a reader can care about' is simply ridiculous.  Personally, the language and vocabulary is far too advanced for anyone under ten (as one review suggests), and poorly written?  What an utterly silly remark!
-Jenna


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## David Derrico (Nov 18, 2009)

One thing that popped out and became crystal clear to me when reading Archer's fake 1-star reviews: there is a clear pattern to them. They take a bit of information _that is included in the book's description_ and use it to make it sound like they read the book. ("Oooh, it's about elves named X and Y, I must have read it!") Then, they say the following two things: (a) the book was "cliche" and (b) the characters were (pick one or more) two-dimensional, undeveloped, or didn't inspire me to care about them in any way.

When you think about it, you could plug in that fake review to any book ever written, even without reading it. Hey, let's call it "cliche" without describing why, that can't really be disproven, especially since you could argue that everything's been done before. And, you know what? Every book has _characters_! So let's call them crappy or unrealistic or boring. There we go! Instant 1-star review.

It's really no different than kids who egg cars. They either don't realize the damage they cause (in the egg case, $1,000 since the egg etched into the paint while I was out of town), or they just don't care. This sort of crap is the same mentality, and can be just as harmful to an author.


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## J.E.Johnson (Aug 5, 2009)

David,
    I'm now wondering if my one star review is fake . . . the reviewer has reviewed two other books, and what they wrote in for both was nearly identical.  But maybe that's just because they were looking for those elements in the books they read (so those are the ones that stood out).  I hope it's not fake; I really do want to know what people think!
-Jenna


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## Archer (Apr 25, 2009)

Well, guys, I'm glad my experience could provide some insight. 

I am well aware that some folks won't like Elfhunter. Some won't like Oescienne, some won't like Declination, some won't like (your book here). It's okay if reviews are honest, but critical. We have put our work out there--we have to take whatever readers decide to hurl at us, unfortunately. I appreciate honest, well-intentioned criticism (in a review, that means criticism intended to aid readers in making good choices). I have learned a lot from critical reviews--I did a major revision to remove excessive foreshadowing because that criticism appeared in several early reviews--like, three or four of them. They can help us if we pay attention to them. However...

...criticism of one (or even a few) readers should NOT force you to alter the way you write every time it happens. Learn from it, yes...but be true to your own vision at the same time. For every reader who 'doesn't get it', hopefully there will be several who do. 

I've decided that the NEXT fantasy world I create will involve intelligent maggots living in a HS cafeteria on one of the moons of Jupiter. THAT should help us all avoid the word 'cliche'.   ('Her glistening segments literally bristled with indignation as she realized that the Dark Overlord Lysol had all but exterminated the fair denizens of Cuttingboard.')  Intrigued? I thought so.


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## David &#039;Half-Orc&#039; Dalglish (Feb 1, 2010)

"While the premise seems interesting, the characters were all flat, brainless insects so helpless that they had to rely on others to aid them repeatedly. That, and the dark lord never scared me. Not enough depth, just a stupid cylinder that can spray things. OoOOoOoooh."

You heard it here first.

David Dalglish


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## Archer (Apr 25, 2009)

Half-Orc said:


> "While the premise seems interesting, the characters were all flat, brainless insects so helpless that they had to rely on others to aid them repeatedly. That, and the dark lord never scared me. Not enough depth, just a stupid cylinder that can spray things. OoOOoOoooh."
> 
> You heard it here first.
> 
> David Dalglish


Snork! Snicker!


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## J.E.Johnson (Aug 5, 2009)

Heeheeheee


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## Brenda Carroll (May 21, 2009)

I, too, had a positively atrocious one-star review on one of my books. However, it was a bit odd because it was on Book II of the series, the King of Terrors, and the reviewer talked about the characters in the first book (who are, incidentally, the same characters as in the second book  ). I had to wonder why, if he was unimpressed with the first book, why did he buy and read the second book?  _Merci, boucoupe, my little French friend_. (He was from France,or so he said.)


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## David Derrico (Nov 18, 2009)

Brendan Carroll said:


> I, too, had a positively atrocious one-star review on one of my books. However, it was a bit odd because it was on Book II of the series, the King of Terrors, and the reviewer talked about the characters in the first book (who are, incidentally, the same characters as in the second book  ). I had to wonder why, if he was unimpressed with the first book, why did he buy and read the second book?  _Merci, boucoupe, my little French friend_. (He was from France,or so he said.)


I find that, when all is said and done, you can strip away those outlier reviews because the very best barometer of whether people are actually enjoying my work is the proportion of readers of _Right Ascension_ who then go ahead and buy the sequel, _Declination_. And I was *very* pleased to see that the percentage of _Declination_ sales has been going up; the sales seem to trail _Right Ascension's_ sales by a month or so. I'm now getting several sales of the second book alone (without a simultaneous sale of the first) ... which leads me to conclude that I must be doing something right for all those people.

It also encourages me to hurry up and finish my next book!


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## Carolyn Kephart (Feb 23, 2009)

J.E.Johnson said:


> David,
> I'm now wondering if my one star review is fake . . . the reviewer has reviewed two other books, and what they wrote in for both was nearly identical.
> -Jenna


You might want to relay that information to Amazon. I know I would.

In sympathy,

CK


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## J.E.Johnson (Aug 5, 2009)

Thanks CK - I might do that, but like I said before, the review isn't really that bad and it may in fact be useful to some people (if they ARE looking for a book for a younger age group).  I shall wait and see what comes of it  .
-Jenna


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## Author Eyes (Nov 26, 2009)

I too, received a one-star review. (I know, right)?? 

I didn't worry about it, because you have to consider the source. If you read the other reviews by this person, they are all negative. Apparently, this person has nothing better to do than troll through books and leave a trail of droppings...


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## Archer (Apr 25, 2009)

Author Eyes said:


> I too, received a one-star review. (I know, right)??
> 
> I didn't worry about it, because you have to consider the source. If you read the other reviews by this person, they are all negative. Apparently, this person has nothing better to do than troll through books and leave a trail of droppings...


Wanted: Very Large Shovel!
(blecch!)


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## J.E.Johnson (Aug 5, 2009)

Only problem is, for me, my reviewer reviewed two other books and gave them both five stars . . . . But like everyone is saying, and I completely agree, not everyone is going to like our books and one person's one star review is another person's five star review.  
-Jenna


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## Winter9 (Jan 19, 2010)

Poor Archer. Those reviews were discusting! Hate when people do that, it's like they do it for "fun" or something. Luckily, you have all the other reviews to support you. No-one can take those seriously if they read the others.


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