Should authors care about reader feedback?

Authors care too much about what unimportant people think

Do you care about the reviews on your books?

Do you obsess over one-star reviews on Goodreads? Are you losing sleep because somebody didn't like your book?

Before I get into this post, if you've got a minute, listen to this bit from shock-jock Howard Stern:

https://soundcloud.com/royfm/howard-stern-this-is-how-to

Love Howard or hate him, doesn't matter your feelings about the man himself.

Listen to the attitude.

He knows that his value as a creator is not about responding to what his fans think.

He didn't build the brand of Howard Stern by asking his listeners what he should do better.

He did it by being Howard Stern.

HOWARD: The way that I was an innovator was to IGNORE the feedback.

If you make things and send them out into the world, you must understand this.

Get it tattooed somewhere if that will help you. But remember this.

You are not in the game of responding to feedback from the audience.

Reader reviews are like the rules in a game

Imagine you're off on a relaxing vacation.

You meet a group of friendly strangers who invite you to play a game of Monopoly.

After a few moves, you make a couple of bad deals and you're on the hook for a lot of money.

Are you on the hook for your bad investment in the Short Line railroad?

No way. It's just a game.

A group of people got together and agreed to obey these rules until somebody won or flipped over the board.

What would you think of somebody that treated the game as if it were a real part of his life? Everybody else picked up and moved on, but this guy's still acting like you owe him rent on Park Place.

You'd think he was pulling your leg, or a total nutcase.

The game's rules only matter as long as you're playing.

When you stop, nobody cares.

Feedback from your readers is no different.

It only matters if you're playing the game.

What game are you playing as a writer?

Are you a writer because you need everyone everywhere to like your work?

I won't speak for anyone else, but I write for me.

If you like my work, great. If you don't care for it, it wasn't for you. No problem.

I'm not playing the game of "everybody please like me".

My game is "I write what I want to write"

Don't get me wrong. A good review is always a boost to the ego. A bad review can sting, even if it's one of those one-star reviews from a person who couldn't make ice in Antarctica.

But you must remember one thing...

Your response is your responsibility

If you aren't playing Monopoly, then it doesn't matter if you landed on "Go to Jail".

The police aren't going to come arrest you.

Things happen. Nobody can control that.

Whether things matter is your call. Not me, not the cliques on social media, not the cartels of reviewers.

Their power begins and ends with your decision to give them attention.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Up8a13j-lqA

If you don't play the game of "reader feedback" then you don't have to play by its rules.

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When the "write to market" advice goes south

The market doesn't know what it wants... but your readers know what they love

Direct marketing legend Gary Halbert once asked the audience at a seminar:

"If you were starting a restaurant right now, what kind of competitive advantage would you need to succeed?"

The crowd listed off a range of predictable answers. Location. Staff. The best burgers.

Halbert listened carefully and then nixed them all.

"I'll give you all of those things, everything you want. And I'll still beat you if you give me just one thing."

The one thing that he needed to make a killer restaurant?

A starving crowd.

He's not wrong. Desire for what you're selling is a key ingredient for any business.

The more intense, urgent, and burning the desire, the better your chances.

If you're selling books, you're in business... and you best be writing what readers want to read.

Halbert said this back in the 90s or late 80s even. What's old is new all over again. Up here in the age of indie self-publishing -- "NewPub" as the younger set calls it -- some of the more savvy book marketers and self-promoters have rediscovered the power of tapping into market desires.

Now it's called "writing to the market".

The kernel of the idea is undeniable. If you write like a good MFA graduate, you'll please all your peers, get published in all the right journals, and maybe win a coveted award or three.

If you're aiming to sell books, you'd best appeal to the tastes of a larger, hungrier readership.

What's the problem, then? Give 'em what they want and you'll win.

So you thought it was that easy? C'mon.

If you give the market more of what they're already buying, that's a good way to sell books.

For the short term.

But there's a downside.

You're always chasing trends and hoping that you time it just right to catch the wave.

What happens when you think about the long-term goals?

What do you want to achieve as an author?

You want to sell books, clearly, if you want to pay the bills as a full-time author.

So how do you do that? What goal are you aiming for?

There's a saying in the marketing world: "Different is better than better."

What if, instead of looking over your shoulder at what people bought last month...

What if you showed your readers a new way of looking at the kind of story you tell?

What if you gave them new possible worlds to play in?

What if you gave them an iPod instead of a better CD player?

When you see that phrase "write to the market", it's not wrong.

But it's split between these two meanings.

You can give them more of what they're already buying...

Or...

You can fascinate your readers with a unique experience that they can't resist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FG7nTUYowQ

PS – If you enjoy these posts, why not subscribe? That way you can receive them directly in your inbox... and you'll get the members-only posts.

There's no charge (yet) to subscribe as a free member.

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