Tag: bad reviews

Without AI, I would probably not be writing

I recently got another anti-AI one-star review that I want to pull apart, because it’s pertinent to what I want to say. I actually came up with the title for this post before I received the one-star review, so I’m not just fisking this one for the sake of fisking. With that said, though, there is definitely a lot to pull apart.

I was prepared to rate this as 2 stars. It is repetitive with no real character depth or development and a sincere lack of dynamic or engaging writing. 

Two stars… so magnanimous! In all seriousness, though, it’s worth pointing out that in spite of all the book’s flaws, she did read it all the way through. That’s important for later.

Then I read the “author” note at the end of the book that was defending their use of generative AI in their writing process…. not only that but also seemingly insulting other writers who are anti-AI claiming that readers dont seem to care about it.

You know what’s insulting to any author, whether or not they are “anti-AI”? Putting scare quotes around the word “author” when referring to them Though I suspect that she did that on purpose, fully intending to insult me, whereas I did not intentionally insult anyone. For the record, this is the passage from the author’s note that she claims is “insulting” to authors by saying that “readers dont [sic] seem to care about [AI writing]”:

Besides which, after sharing The Riches of Xulthar with lots of readers, I’ve found that most of the rage and vitriol against AI-assisted writing is on the writer side of things, not the reader side.

The other thing is that I was not trying to “defend” my pro-AI stance through the author’s note, just explaining my writing process and sharing the story behind the story like I do in the author’s notes I write in the back of all my books. That’s not me being “defensive,” that just me sharing my story.

But there is something profoundly narcissistic about the way this reader is framing her review. Because I stated something about readers that contradicts her anti-AI worldview, I must be intentionally “insulting” her (or the anti-AI authors she’s white knighting for, which amounts to the same thing). Because I wrote about how I used AI to help write the book, I must be “defending” myself against her anti-AI views. This kind of narcissism can only really come from someone who lives in an echo chamber and is not used to having their worldview challenged.

Well Joe, you are wrong. This book was lifeless and dull and the use of AI showed. Everything was one dimensinal and flat. Word choises were even static. We (readers) get it… FMC had auburn hair. There are other words besides auburn to describe it….

I’m not going to deny, there is some legitimate criticism here. Rescuer’s Reward was one of my earlier AI-assisted books, when I was still experimenting a lot and learning how to incorporate AI into my creative process while still preserving my voice and writing multi-“dimensinal” [sic] characters and stories. So it doesn’t surprise me all that much that I missed the mark with this particular reader for this particular book. Lesson learned. Thanks for the feedback and the useful data point.

With all of that said, though… I can’t help but notice that she read the whole book.

I have yet to hear a compelling AI argument in the reralm of artistic expression and this “book” just exemplified everything yet again. No heart. No depth. Not good.

This is the crux of the issue, and the reason I wanted to frame this post as a line-by-line response to this review. Is there “a compelling AI argument in the reralm [sic] of artistic expression”? Or is any author who uses AI committing an unforgivable transgression against their art?

Here’s the thing: most of the other authors I know gave up writing a long time ago. We all started out with bright-eyed dreams about telling great stories and creating great art, but the hard truth is that it’s almost impossible to make it as an author.

There are many reasons for this: people don’t read very much in today’s culture (I personally blame the public school system for that), and the publishing industry has always been brutally rapacious and exploitive of writers (just read The Untold Story of Books by Michael Castleman—it’s a really fantastic history of the written word).

But the writing itself is also very hard. There’s a reason why even many succesful writers are like this guy, single and living in what amounts to a glorified shack. Most of my writing friends quit when they got married and starting having kids. I sincerely hope that they’re just on a 20+ year hiatus, and plan to get back to writing again someday, because some of the stuff they wrote was really, really good (I’m looking at you, Nathan Major!) But sadly, that won’t make up for the stuff they would have written, but never did.

My wife and I just had our third child. Writing with small children is very difficult, especially when your wife has a full-time job. I love them all to death, though. If I had to choose between being a single writer, or putting my writing on hold for 20+ years and having to restart my whole writing career from zero, just to be able to raise a family, I wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to make that choice. But it would put a huge burden of guilt on my wife, because my writing was one of the key things that drew her to me back when we were dating. And while our marriage is probably strong enough to survive that, I can’t deny that it would be an incredible strain.

Without AI, I probably would be facing this choice right now. Even though I had managed to streamline my writing process in the last few years, I’ve never been an especially fast writer. Without AI, it took me about a year to write each novel—and that’s before all the demands on my time and energy that come with having small children.

But AI has enabled me to continue to pursue my career and my art, even through this period of life. Not only does this help me to be a better husband and father (which is ultimately the most important thing), but it also means that my readers don’t have to wonder about the things I would have written, but never did. I can write those books now. I can give those stories to the world.

I’m not talking about AI slop. I’m talking about incorporating AI into the creative process deeply enough that it enhances, rather than replaces, my human creativity. We don’t have to be afraid of AI. It makes so many things possible—including running a profitable indie author business while raising (and soon homeschooling) 3+ small children. But it takes a lot of practice to get to that point. And generative AI is still so new that I don’t think there’s anyone who’s truly mastered the art of AI-assisted writing.

My Sea Mage Cycle books are mostly for practice. They’re meant to be fun, light reading. If it gives my readers a satisfying respite from all the doom and gloom in the world these days, I consider that book a success. The experience of writing each of them has helped me to be a better AI-assisted writer. And while the earlier ones may read like AI slop, that won’t be the case for long.

Fisking 1-star reviews bashing AI

They say that authors should never respond to one-star reviews. That’s generally good advice, and for most of my career, I’ve studiously kept it. However, I’ve recently begun to get a new kind of one-star review that baffles me—reviews that essentially say: “the book was good, but it was written with AI so I hate it.”

Here’s an example:

This book is written with AI. Incredibly disappointing as a reader to give a book/author a chance and then to get to the end of the book only for the “author” to then announce the AI card. If I could give zero stars, I would for this alone. I also didn’t appreciate that this use of AI was not announced until the ending Author’s Note. If “authors” are going to cut corners and put their name to computer-generated mush, they should be willing to put that information on the front cover. The book struggled to find its pace, and some parts read as though they were written for a child’s short story competition while others felt as though the writer was snorting crushed up DVDs of Pirates of the Caribbean as they wrote.

Let’s break it down:

This book is written with AI. Incredibly disappointing as a reader to give a book/author a chance and then to get to the end of the book only for the “author” to then announce the AI card.

Yes… but I can’t help but notice that you got to the end of it. In other words, you finished the book. Also, from the way you tell it, it seems that you didn’t realize the book was written with AI until you got to the very end. So based on your own behavior, it doesn’t seem that quality was the issue.

I also didn’t appreciate that this use of AI was not announced until the ending Author’s Note. If “authors” are going to cut corners and put their name to computer-generated mush, they should be willing to put that information on the front cover.

Okay… but if my book was just “computer-generated mush,” why did you finish it? And why were you surprised when you learned that it was written with AI-assistance?

I can understand the objection to books that were written solely with AI, with little to no human input. But that’s not how I write my AI-assisted books. Instead, I outline them thoroughly beforehand, write and refine a series of meticulously detailed prompts (usually using Sudowrite), and generate multiple drafts, combining the best parts of them to make a passable AI draft. And then I rewrite the whole thing in my own words, using the AI draft as a loose guide with no copy-pasting.

Why would I go through so much trouble? Because of how the AI drafting stage gives me a bird’s eye view of the book, allowing me to identify and fix major story issues before they metastasize and give me writer’s block. Before AI, that’s where 80% of my writer’s block came from, and it often derailed my projects for months, so that it took me well over a year to write a full-length novel. But with AI, I’m no longer so focused on the page that I lose sight of the forest for the trees. So even though generating and revising a solid AI draft adds a couple more steps to the process, it’s worth it for the time and trouble that it saves.

That’s the way I use generative AI in my writing process. But there are many other ways—and I hate to break it to you, but most authors use AI in one way or another. If an author uses Grammarly to fix their spelling and grammar, should they disclose that on the cover? If they use MS Word? What if they used a chatbot to brainstorm story ideas, but went on to write it entirely themselves? Should that also be disclosed?

The book struggled to find its pace, and some parts read as though they were written for a child’s short story competition while others felt as though the writer was snorting crushed up DVDs of Pirates of the Caribbean as they wrote.

Yes… but again, I can’t help but notice that you finished the book. And after you finished it, you were surprised to learn that it was written with AI. So with all due respect, I’m going to call BS on your objections here. I think you only decided you hated the book after you learned it was written with AI, and you came up with these objections after the fact. Whatever.

I think a lot of the people who object to AI are really just scared and angry. They claim to have principled, ethical objections to the technology, but few of them follow through to implement that principled stance into every area of their lives. After all, if you use Grammarly, Google Docs, or MS Word, you are using generative AI just as surely as I am using ChatGPT and Sudowrite. For most people, the ethical objections are just a smokescreen for their general fear of change. They’re fine with embracing the convenience the technology offers them in their own personal lives, but they insist that everyone else—including me—live according to their principles, no matter how inconvenient or difficult it may be.

As an example of that, check out this one-star review:

The arts! Whether visual, performance, or literary—my haloed experience has been the act of creating and sharing a connection to the profound or sublime. Why, then, would any artist—musician, dancer, sculptor, painter, or author—offload (abdicate) the act of creation to AI? Process versus product. Mr. Vasicek included an afterword for this volume, describing his workflow and the efficiency of collaboration with AI: a 6,624-word day! another volume completed! Mr. Vasicek obviously owns the skills to weave rich character development and scenes. Perhaps Mr. Vasicek’s AI collaboration explains why these characters, the plot, the narrative—and subsequently, the entire story— are so flat and undeveloped. Although his lead male shows some undeveloped promise, the mother’s too-oft used “dear” and “my love,” and the daughter’s clutching at her mother’s apron are cringe-inducing. Perhaps Mr. Vasicek might eschew AI-assisted writing, seeking a future of quality over quantity.

Let’s break it down:

The arts! Whether visual, performance, or literary—my haloed experience has been the act of creating and sharing a connection to the profound or sublime. Why, then, would any artist—musician, dancer, sculptor, painter, or author—offload (abdicate) the act of creation to AI?

Because for some of us, writing is more than a “haloed experience”—it’s an actual job. It’s what we do for a living. And if you want to do your best work, you need to use the best tools. We used to build houses with plaster and lath and wrought-iron nails, using hand tools and locally-sourced lumber. But today, you’d be a fool not to use power tools and materials sourced from a building supply store, or your local Home Depot. If that makes your building experience less profound or sublime, so be it.

Process versus product. Mr. Vasicek included an afterword for this volume, describing his workflow and the efficiency of collaboration with AI: a 6,624-word day! another volume completed!

I’m not gonna lie: there is a certain degree of tension between art-as-product and art-for-art’s-sake. But the two are not mutually exclusive. A house can still be a beautiful work of art, without taking as long as a cathedral to build it. Likewise, a book can still be a beautiful work of art, without taking as long as Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

Again, you’re trying to pidgeon-hole me into your “haloed” idea of what a “true artist” should be. Which would make it absolutely impossible for me to make a living at this craft. If all of us writers followed that path, there are a lot of wonderful books that would never get written. And I doubt that the overall quality of the books that do get written would rise.

Mr. Vasicek obviously owns the skills to weave rich character development and scenes.

Now we get to the interesting part. I checked this reviewer’s history, and this was the only review they’ve written for any of my books. Therefore, I can only assume that this is the only book of mine that they’ve read. But if that’s the case, how do they know that I have “the skills to weave rich character development and scenes”? If the book I wrote with AI was pure trash, why would they say that I obviously have some skill?

Once again, we’ve got a case of “I enjoyed this book, but it’s written with AI so I hate it.” In other words, it’s not the book itself that you hate, so much as the way I wrote it. You object to the idea of authors using AI, not to what they actually write with AI.

Perhaps Mr. Vasicek’s AI collaboration explains why these characters, the plot, the narrative—and subsequently, the entire story— are so flat and undeveloped. Although his lead male shows some undeveloped promise, the mother’s too-oft used “dear” and “my love,” and the daughter’s clutching at her mother’s apron are cringe-inducing.

Finally, some specific and legitimate criticism. And while I do think there’s a degree of retroactively looking for faults after enjoying the book, I’m totally willing to own that these criticisms are valid. This particular book (The Widow’s Child) was one of my first AI-assisted books, and I was still learning to use these AI tools as I was writing it. I did the best I could at the time, but if I were to write it today, I could probably do a lot better, smoothing out the annoying AI-isms that you’ve pointed out here.

But the book is currently sitting at 4.4 stars on Amazon (4.1 on Goodreads). And the other readers do not share your objections. Here is another review, pulled from the same book:

Since waiting a year or more to read the next book in a sequel is hard on my stress levels, I’m liking this AI. It means talented authors like Joe Vasicek can churn out an outline faster. Then he can bring in his talented ideas, such as the content of this heart-stopping adventure of The Widow’s Child, to fill out the nitty gritty in record time.

Clearly, it’s not the case that all (or even most) readers feel the same way about AI as you do.

Perhaps Mr. Vasicek might eschew AI-assisted writing, seeking a future of quality over quantity.

Why can’t we have both? Why can’t we have quantity with quality? Why can’t AI make us more creative, instead of replacing our human creativity?

This is all giving me flashbacks to the big debate between tradition vs. indie publishing, back in the early 2010s. Back then, the debate was between purists who said that indie publishing would destroy literature by flooding the market with crappy books. Indies argued that removing the industry middlemen would create a more dynamic market that would give readers more choices and allow more writers to make a living. Both were right to some degree, and both were also wrong about some things. In the end, we reached a middle ground where “hybrid publishing” became the norm.

The same kind of debate is happening right now between human-only purists and AI-assisted writers. The biggest difference is dead internet theory. In the early 2010s, the ratio of bots to humans on the internet was still low enough to allow for a lively debate. Today, there’s so much bot-driven outrage on the internet that most of us are just quietly doing our own thing and avoiding the debate.

That same bot- and algorithm-driven outrage is driving a lot of peole to be irrationally angry or afraid of AI. With that said, I can understand why so many people are upset. And I do think there are a lot of valid criticisms about this new technology, including its environmental impact, copyright considerations, how the models were trained, and the societal impact it’s already starting to have. But if we don’t have an honest and good-faith debate about these issues, we can’t solve any of them. And we can’t have a good-faith debate if one side is coming at it from a place of irrational anger or fear.

In any case, I find it super annoying when readers who clearly found some value or enjoyment in my books turn around and give it a one-star review merely because they don’t like how I used AI. And at the risk of going viral and soliciting more one-star anti-AI reviews, I think its worth voicing my views on the subject and opening that debate. So what are your thoughts on the subject? How do you feel about using AI as a tool to help write books? Can we have quantity with quality? Can AI help us to be more creative, not just more productive? What has been your experience?

Why I won’t be publishing “The New Covenant” as a free short story single

For short stories, I typically self-publish them first as free ebooks, until I have enough of them to bundle together in a collection. I’ve found that this is a great way to give new readers a taste of my writing and engage my already existing fans. It also helps to market the collections, which is great.

Last week, I was going to publish “The New Covenant,” a post-apocalyptic short story about a theocratic republic in the post-collapse United States that is holding a public execution of four abortionists. The main character is the bishop/mayor tasked with conducting the public execution. While the story doesn’t come down morally or politically on one side or another, he is a sympathetic character, and the execution does indeed take place.

As you can imagine, this is a very politically charged story, perhaps even more than “The Promise of King Washington” which starts out with vultures flying over hundreds of gallows lining the Capitol Mall in Washington DC. Politics has really become a minefield these days, and aside from the authors like Larry Correia who have picked a side and made that a major part of their author brand, it’s very difficult to write about politics or current events without turning everyone off.

Before the war in Ukraine, I used to be able to do that. During the 2020 election, I would share my thoughts in my newsletter, and get emails from fans that said “I totally agree with you, and that’s why I’m voting for Biden!” right alongside other emails that said “I’m so glad you get it! Trump-Pence 2020!” My basic approach was to engage in regular self-reflection, sincerely listen to opposing points of view, avoid outright partisanship, and assume that the person I was writing for was a good, honest person who disagreed with me. And until the war in Ukraine, that seemed to work.

But since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, something has really changed. About a month ago, I wrote an email with some of my then-current thoughts on the conflict, as well as some of my predictions for what will come next, and while I got a few friendly emails, I also noticed a lot of drive-by one-stars and upvotes for one-star reviews on Amazon. I suspect that that newsletter turned off some people, and a small fraction of them decided to take it out on me by one-starring a bunch of my books.

It may also have been something I mentioned on this blog. I haven’t publicly shared my reflections on the Ukraine war, but I have been pretty open about the fact that I’m reading through all of the Hugo and Nebula award-winning books this year, and have reflected rather candidly on that. Since this blog is public, it’s much more likely to attract attention from potential outrage mobs than my email newsletter, and ever since the Sad Puppies, fandom has been downright toxic with outrage mobs of every stripe. So the one-star bombers may have come from there.

Of course, it may also be that the quality of my stories is declining. But I don’t think it’s primarily that, because this is a new pattern of behavior that I haven’t seen before.

My general feeling is that the war in Ukraine has been pouring gasoline on every internet flame war, and that as bad as the partisan divide was in 2021, it’s getting much worse. Which means that it is rapidly becoming impossible to talk about politics or current events without taking a side, making the approach that I’ve taken up to this point untenable. A future historical narrative is being constructed before our eyes, and the stakes are nothing less than the fate of the world.

Of course, that also means that it’s never been more important to bridge the partisan divide. But that isn’t something I can do just by posting my musings and reflections. Every battle needs to be chosen deliberately and with care, and in most cases, the winning move is probably going to be not to play.

I am not ashamed of “The New Covenant.” I think it is one of the timelier and more thoughtful things I have written. But it’s also very political, and not a very good introduction to the rest of my books. I do still plan to publish it, but as part of my fourth short story collection, Beyond World’s End, and not as a free single. And moving forward, I’m going to be more careful about which short story singles I do publish. I’m not going to self-censor what I write, but I am going to be more careful about what I publish.

Things I learned in 2014 (Part 1)

Last week, Kris Rusch wrote an interesting blog post reflecting on 2014 and things she observed that indie writers learned, so I thought I’d do something similar and reflect on some of the things that I learned last year about the business and the craft. Here goes!

Readers of SF&F want longer books.

I did a lengthy blog post about this earlier, but the basic gist of it is that readers in my genre want longer, more immersive books. There’s a place for the short stuff, especially for high concept sci-fi, but most readers of speculative fiction want worlds they can get lost in with characters that become their best friends. It’s practically impossible to do that in a story that takes less than an hour to read, so to satisfy those readers, you’ve got to write long.

You can’t have a healthy career with only one income stream.

Between 80% to 90% of my income in 2014 came from Amazon. Times were good in the spring and summer, but then Amazon launched their ebook subscription service (Kindle Unlimited). None of my books were enrolled in KU, but because of the way that Amazon skews the rankings to favor KU books, my Amazon royalties took a huge hit.

I knew back in 2011 when I started that I needed to cultivate multiple income streams if I wanted to have a steady career, but I’d gotten complacent. Since my Amazon earnings were paying all the bills, I figured I was doing all right. But you can’t measure the healthiness of a career in just the revenue it’s bringing in right now; you’ve got to look at contingencies for the future, including the worst case scenario.When most of your revenue comes from a single client, that makes your career far too brittle.

So looking to the future, I can’t say that I have a healthy, steady career until I’m earning at least as much from all my other income streams as I am from Amazon.

I’ve been relying far too much on Amazon’s algorithms.

Related to the last point, I learned that I’ve been relying far too much on Amazon to sell my books. In fact, I can say that the Amazon algorithms were the linchpin of my marketing strategy (inasmuch as I actually had one, heh).

Amazon has the best book recommendation engine in the industry by far. It’s done a lot for my career, connecting my books with many readers who have gone on to become fans. But what the algos give, the algos can take away. To build a career with staying power, you have to constantly work to find new readers in a variety of different ways.

I’ve always believed that cream rises to the top. That said, if you’re starting at the bottom of the ocean, you’ve got a long, long way to rise. Up until now, I’ve been operating under the belief that readers will find me without me making much of an effort to find them. I learned this year that you’ve got to meet in the middle. You don’t have to hand sell every book (thank goodness!), but you do have to make an effort to make your books visible somehow.

A well-articulated negative review does more to sell books than a blasé positive one.

This one surprised me. When I published Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers: Book I), it garnered a fairly painful two-star review on Amazon about a week or two after launch. The review had some positive things in it, but it also had some negative things that were pretty spot on. Being the angsty writer that I am, I thought my chances had tanked. Instead, sales of the book immediately shot up, and stayed fairly high for about a month.

Readers aren’t stupid. They understand that not everyone has the same tastes in books, and parse their reviews accordingly. A negative review that is articulate and well-reasoned will lend a lot more credibility and cultivate a lot more interest than a string of positive reviews that lack any real substance. It sounds counterproductive, but it’s often the negative reviews that sell the book.

Sometimes you actually can get the best results by doing it yourself.

When I redid the covers for the first three Gaia Nova novels, I decided at first to hire a cover designer. For various reasons, though, that didn’t work out, so I decided to do them myself. I’d done the typography myself on the old ones, and let’s just say they left something to be desired.

The reason I wanted to hire the work out was because I didn’t think I’d get the best work if I did it myself. I figured that if I hired someone who was an expert in it, it would turn out so much better. Instead, when I did it myself, I discovered that my own skills had improved to the point where I could produce really good work myself.

It is possible, especially in self-publishing, to become so skilled at every aspect of the production process that you can do it all yourself and still produce a quality book. The learning curve is so sheer that it’s practically a cliff, but you can do it. And even if the work that you produced at the start of your career wasn’t all that good, you can improve to the point where your work is on par with that of professional designers.

The trouble is, it takes so much time and effort to get to that point that you may be better off hiring the work out. It takes a certain type of personality to DIY everything and produce a quality product without feeling overstretched. I’m pretty sure that’s my personality type, though of course I still have a lot to learn. But just because it’s DIY doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to be of an inferior quality.

There are other things I learned in 2014 about the craft and business of writing, but this post is starting to get long so I think I’ll table it for the next post. Take care!

Thoughts on writers, reviewers, and stalkers

catfishnoThe bookish side of the English-speaking internet exploded last week with an article in The Guardian about an author who stalked a Goodreads reviewer, showing up unannounced on the reviewer’s doorstep and going to great lengths to expose the reviewer’s identity. The crazy part–or crazier, I guess, since the whole thing is batshit crazy–is that the Guardian article was written by the author/reviewer herself.

It gets crazier, though. This same author, in another article published a little over a year ago, confessed/bragged to stalking someone else who she perceived as crossing her, this time assaulting her victim both physically and verbally. According to Jezebel, even after she was brought into court and censured for her brazen act of assault, she continued to stalk this person online, to the point where the police intervened a second time.

I normally do my best to stay away from drama like this. However, with the issues that this case raises and the way that it’s rocking the book world right now, I feel that I ought to add my own thoughts to the public discussion that’s happening right now.

First, I think that this author’s actions were completely inexcusable. Period. No book review, however critical, justifies hunting the reviewer down and showing up unannounced on her doorstep. Furthermore, when you read the original review that sparked the whole incident (and the subsequent Goodreads discussion thread), you realize that the author’s characterization of the reviewer is simply untrue. Was the reviewer “bullying” the author? Because she seems perfectly civil (if perhaps a bit enthusiastic) on that thread–much more civil than the author’s fans, in fact.

If there’s any bullying that happened in this case, clearly the worst offender is the author. She not only crossed the line of civility, but she also demonstrated herself to be both dangerous and unpredictable. And after all of that, to write about it in the Guardian–that is crossing a whole new line altogether.

It’s frustrating for me, because bad actors like this completely undermine the review space for all of us. Reviews–honest ones, critical ones–are an important part of a healthy book culture. They are helpful to readers in deciding whether or not to read a book, and they are helpful to authors in guiding our books to the readers who will enjoy them the most.

At the same time, reviews for readers and not for authors. When authors argue with reviewers, it undermines the review space for everyone. Arguing with a reader is not going to change their opinion of a book, and being public about it makes other reviewers think twice about posting anything less than a diabetically saccharine review.

And then you have a case like this, where one batshit-crazy nutcase goes over the deep end so spectacularly that she tarnishes the review space for everyone.

I have to be honest–this story pisses me off, not only as a reader and a reviewer, but as an author as well. Have I received negative reviews? Certainly. Does it sting when I get them? Of course it does–and the ones that sting the most are the ones that bring up good points. Do I engage with negative reviews? Only when I feel that there’s a point that needs clarification, and then only in the most non-intrusive and non-confrontational way possible.

Whenever I hear about reviewers bullying authors, it almost always turns out upon closer examination that the author is behaving just as badly, if not much worse. For that reason, I have very little sympathy for authors in these cases, especially when reviewers everywhere are made to feel unsafe. This narcissistic literary pettiness helps no one, at the ones who get burned the most are almost always the reviewers.

So that’s my $.02. Now time to do something productive with my time and energy–like, y’know, actually write or something. Take care.

“It was too short.”

This, by far, is the number one criticism I seem to get in my negative book reviews. I never quite know what to think of it. On the one hand, a reader wouldn’t say something like that unless they thought it was good, since if they hated the book completely they would say something like “it was blessedly short” (and yes, I have gotten reviews like that). On the other hand, some of them really get worked up about it, to the point where I doubt they’ll ever read anything I write ever again.

Just to be clear, I’m not opposed to negative reviews, and I’m not responding to any of my reviews in particular. As a matter of principle, I believe that reviews are for readers and not for writers. I don’t generally respond to reader reviews except in very rare cases, and never to tell the reviewer that they’re wrong.

With that out of the way, what does “too short” actually mean? I can’t speak for all readers, but for me, when a book is too short it usually means that something in the story itself felt unsatisfying. In other words, something felt undeveloped, or rushed, or cut short without ever coming to a conclusion (or, in the case of cliffhangers, at least to a natural stopping point). In other words, “too short” isn’t a function of words or of pages, but of the story itself.

I’ve read short books that felt like they fit their length perfectly. A Short Stay in Hell comes immediately to mind. That book is a thin novella, barely more than a hundred pages in print, and yet it comes together so masterfully that I honestly don’t know what else could be added to make it longer. I would love to have more time to explore that particular world, but as it is, the story comes together perfectly within its own length.

That said, there are other books that I felt were too short even though they did fit their own length. That Leviathan Whom Thou Hast Made is an example of an award-winning book–clearly well written, clearly well constructed–that left me unsatisfied because it felt too short. Here, though, it was less a problem with the story itself and more just that I wanted more time to explore the alien culture of the swales. I would love to read a full-length novel set in the same universe, if for nothing else than for the fascinating world-building.

This makes me wonder: are there certain forms of fiction that tend to get more ire from readers just because of the constraints of the form? Do some readers hate novelettes just because they’re novelettes, or serials just because they’re serials? Judging from my own reviews, that seems to be the case. Even if I wrote the best novelette in the world, they would hate it because it’s not a novel.

So what am I supposed to do when readers tell me that my books are too short? Should I set a minimum word count and not publish anything unless it goes over that word count? I really don’t think so, because that sounds a lot like padding. Instead, the only solution that I can see is to focus on telling the best story and to not even worry about the length until it’s finished (and even then, only to know whether to label it a novel or a novella).

In the case of series, sometimes it can be difficult to tell whether to bring a certain thread to a conclusion or to leave it unresolved as part of the overall series arc. Certainly, each individual story needs to have an arc of its own, even if it ends on a cliffhanger. I’m still learning as I go, especially when it comes to writing series. But it’s certainly a lot of fun for me, and I hope it’s fun for you too as a reader.

In short, there’s not much I can do other than keep telling stories as best as I know how, and learn what I can from each story in order to tell better ones in the future. If “too short” means that something was unsatisfying, I’ll do my best to learn from it. But I’m not going to pad my novellas into novels just to hit a certain page count. The story itself should determine its own length.

R is for Reviews

Reviews are for readers, not for writers. That’s my cardinal rule.

I know that some readers love interacting with authors on their books’ review pages, and I know that some indies try to make it a point to respond to every review, but I’ve seen that sort of thing blow up so many times that I strictly avoid it. Just this past week, a spat between an author and a one-star reviewer turned so ugly, the author calculates that he lost $23,000 over it. Whether or not that’s true is anyone’s guess, but the author’s response to the reviewer certainly hasn’t made anything better.

Reviews are an inevitable fact of life when you’re an indie writer. If you value your sanity at all, you have to learn not to attach any emotional value to them. Sure, the positive reviews feel great and can really boost your ego, but the negative ones can really throw you into a funk if you let them. The sooner you can learn to shrug your shoulders and shake it off, the better.

But aside from the emotional dimension, so reviews have a practical effect on sales of your books? Probably, though I suspect that the number of reviews matters a lot more than the average star rating. Plenty of readers report buying a book after reading the negative reviews, and plenty of others say that they just ignore the star rating altogether. Also, having lots of generic five-stars can hurt more than they help if they all sound vapid or fake.

Reviews are for readers, not for writers. That means that I stay out of the review sections as much as I can. On some very rare occasions, I’ve popped in to clarify an obvious mistake, but I never stick around or engage longer than I have to.

For example, here’s one of my one-stars on Star Wanderers: Outworlder (Part I):

Boring in the extreme. No new ideas – just shooting up aliens. Big deal. I could have gotten the same watching my kid play his video games.

The book actually has nothing to do with aliens (or space battles, for that matter), so in order to clarify, I responded with the following:

Hi, I’m Joe Vasicek, author of the STAR WANDERERS books. I don’t normally respond to Amazon reviews, but I thought I should point out that you may have reviewed the wrong book in error. There aren’t any aliens or futuristic gun battles in this particular book. Perhaps you found it boring for other reasons, or perhaps you meant to attach this review to another of my books. I’m not opposed to negative reviews, but I thought I should point that out in case there’s been some sort of mistake.

Either way, thanks for giving one of my books a try!

The reviewer was actually quite nice and responded with an apology, saying that he would check out the book again and remove the review if it turned out to be a mistake. He hasn’t removed the review yet, probably because it’s slipped his mind, but I’m not going to push it. There’s really no way that I can graciously do so, and besides, the review probably isn’t going to do much harm anyway.

Every once in a while, I’ll receive a negative review that does bring up enough good points to make me wince. When that happens, I try to remember that reviews are subjective and that just because one person thought the book was horrible doesn’t mean that everyone will. No two readers are alike, just like no two books–thank goodness for that! And if the review stings because there’s an element of truth in it, at least I can take lesson to the next book.

I do read all my reviews, but that’s because I’ve got a thick skin and I’ve learned how to deal with it. I wouldn’t recommend that to everyone, since some authors really do get worked up over the negative ones. Personally, I’d get more worked up not knowing what people are saying about my books than knowing that they’re saying something bad.

As to whether I solicit reviews, I can’t entirely say that I don’t do it, because at the end of every book I include an author’s note where I encourage readers to leave an honest review if they liked it. But I never, NEVER pay for reviews, or participate in review exchanges, or do anything like that to game the system. Reviews are for readers, not writers–gaming the system is one of the worst possible ways to violate that. Besides, readers aren’t stupid–they can tell what’s real from what’s fake.

Reviews are for readers, not for writers. At the core of that rule is the principle that readers should have a safe-zone where they can talk about books without having to worry about any sort of blowback from the author. Towards that end, even positive, gracious engagement with reviewers can turn around and bite you. There really is no way to win this game–or rather, the only way to win is not to play.

My mom gave my book three stars

Some people complain about how indie authors hit up their friends and family to give them five-star reviews…well, last week I gave the Createspace proof for Genesis Earth to my Mom, and today I noticed that she posted a three-star review for the book on Goodreads. 😛

It’s a cute one, though.  This is what she said:

Sci-fi is not my genre, but the author is my own son! I read it in 2 days (fast, for me); after page 100, I did not want to put the book down. Had to see what would develop–see the story. I’m hosting the author at home for a few weeks, so it has been fun to discuss his characters, etc. in person. I look forward to more discussion.

I posted this on the Kindle Boards just for laughs, and the guys over there agreed that it’s pretty hilarious.  A few of them suggested I rate her cooking!  But don’t worry, Mom, I’d give it at least a 3.5. 😉

In all seriousness, my Mom’s actually been really supportive of my writing, and I really appreciate that.  She is a tough (if loving) critic, though, so I’m sure she’ll keep me on my toes.

The most hilarious thing about this is that her catchphrase growing up was “suffer!”

My first 1 star review

Well, I went through a significant rite of passage over the weekend: I got my first one star review on Amazon. 

The review was for “From the Ice Incarnate,” which doesn’t really surprise me because it’s currently my lowest rated story.  The biggest complaint seems to be that it feels more like a vignette than a complete story, which is a fair criticism.  I’ve tried to make it clear in the description that this is an excerpt from a larger work, so hopefully it doesn’t feel like a bait and switch.

I wish everyone loved all of my stories, but of course that’s not possible.  And although it’s easy to dismiss readers who complain about free ebooks, any book takes an investment of time and emotional energy; no matter what the price, the writer has a responsibility to deliver the best story they can write.

This is the reality of the new system: readers are the new gatekeepers, and rankings are one of the major ways that they give feedback.  It’s a lot more public than a rejection letter, but ultimately I think this is a much better way for stories to grow into their natural audience. 

Every writer gets one star reviews from time to time; writing is so subjective that it’s inevitable.  My object isn’t to please everybody, but to do my best and to be constantly learning. 

In the meantime, I’ll keep writing.

Breaking the Top 10, and a big thank you

As I’m writing this, “Memoirs of a Snowflake” holds the #8 spot in the Kindle Store for the general short story category — #150 overall.  Almost 1,000 people have downloaded it since it went free over the weekend, and it’s already garnered some fantastic reviews!

All this positive attention makes me want to thank all those who have taken the time to post reviews of my work, so I thought I’d do that here.

Specifically, I’d like to thank L. Christensen for the early 5-star review of Genesis Earth, and her very favorable reviews of my other work.  Full disclosure: L. Christensen is one of my first readers; however, I did not solicit any of her reviews–she posted them on her own.  Also, I’d like to thank Katie Armstrong for the other 5-star review of Genesis Earth–I have no idea who you are (well, a vague idea maybe), but thank you!

Another reviewer who’s been very kind is EA Younker over at goodreads.  She’s posted some glowing 5-star reviews for “Memoirs of a Snowflake” and “Decision LZ1527” on that site, as well as a more critical but still encouraging 3-star review for “From the Ice Incarnate.” Thanks for taking the time to read my work!  I’m glad you enjoyed it.

Over on Smashwords, Ernest Winchester posted a nice 5-star review of “Decision LZ1527,” only a couple hours after I uploaded it.  More recently, Michelle Glorioso and Annie B posted some extremely gratifying reviews of “Memoirs of a Snowflake.” Thanks so much!

Of course, not all the reviews have been glowingly positive. “From the Ice Incarnate” has garnered some criticism from readers who feel that it was missing something, either sufficient character depth or a satisfying ending.  I appreciate the feedback; short stories aren’t my forte, so I’ll be sure to keep that in mind as I work on my short form.  Also, Genesis Earth has garnered a couple of critical yet well-reasoned reviews, most notably from the review site Science Fiction Addiction.  Once again, thanks for taking the time to respond so thoughtfully.  And thanks to all the other generally positive reviews which I haven’t mentioned specifically here.

So far, Bringing Stella Home hasn’t gotten any reviews, so if you’ve read it and enjoyed it, I would appreciate it very much if you would take the time to do that.  In the meantime, thanks for all your support!