A booklet for authors, bloggers and anyone else who's interested in what goes down in the virtual book world.
* Dear readers,
This is a tale of my reality as a book blogger. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing about my personal...
You're a writer. You have to deal with all sorts of feedback, especially when you publish your work on Wattpad. Wattpad is a large community and everyone has an opinion on someone else's work. It's a tough business we're dealing with here.
What do you think happens when a blogger gets feedback? Well, I can tell you us bloggers receive a little bit of everything too. From authors and readers alike.
Here's a little visual to help:
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Yes. Us bloggers receive good and evil ( and the evil comments are out of this world. Lol) but we also get the weird stuff. It's amusing and tragic at the same time. Not at all constructive, mind you. No one gives a book blogger constructive feedback because every reviewer is special in their own special way. They wield the powerful „make or break" wand but they're not selling themselves. Only their thoughts. Which brings me to the delicate subject of giving out fabulous reviews.
Yes. Full ratings can be a curse.
A few years back I read a breathtaking, tragic lovestory that left me with one of the worst book hangovers EVER! ( God, I love that book *sigh * ) Anyways- after I finished the story I wrote a 5 star review and posted it everywhere. I remember being so darn proud of that review because it felt perfect ( for me, at least ). It didn't take long before the author contacted me and thanked me for my review. Can you imagine how I felt? I was totally out of it with joy. I even walked around the house and thumped my shoulder with my fist telling my husband I was the shit! ( I ignored his "You're ripe for the funny farm" face. )
The author and I exchanged more emails and talked about her book some more ( I practically interviewed the author without wanting to..lol ) until she asked something no one has asked me before.
"Your review is really awesome. But can you do me a small favor?"
Huh. Okay. I didn't give her question much thought so I told her „Sure."
"Would you please remove the character's age from the review? That might influence readers to not buy the book. I'd really appreciate it."
Wow. I never thought 28 was a bad age for a fictional character. I, personally, would love to be 28 again, but okay * shoulder shrug * I could do that. I went on ALL the places again and removed the characters age from my awesome review. I contacted the author again and told her the age was removed. I received another round of „ YOU ROCK!" until she made another request.
„ I'm so sorry. I feel so bad for asking this- but could you please remove the sentence where you wrote about the Hero being depressed?"
Can you imagine how my feelings started to change towards the author? I went from utterly happy to less happy. Still, the author was being nice and I thought it wouldn't break my neck to remove that sentence as well. 15 minutes later I contacted the author and let her know I removed the sentence, also immediately wishing her a Good Night. No one has ever asked me to remove stuff from my reviews before and that made me question my oh-so-perfect review I was so proud of.
