TUMBLR

A scrapbook of stuff I'm reading / looking at / listening to / thinking about...

Jan 25, 2013

Bad Reviews: All In The Game

People ask me how I handle bad reviews.¹ I wrote about the subject in Steal Like An Artist:

Not everybody will get it. People will misinterpret you and what you do. They might even call you names. So get comfortable with being misunderstood, disparaged, or ignored—the trick is to be too busy doing your work to care.

All of the following scenarios are ascending levels of amazing to me:

Someone heard of my book
Someone bought my book
Someone read my book
Someone read my book and hated it
Someone read my book and loved it

Seriously.

And, you always remember that a review says just as much about the reader as it does about the book — first you evaluate the critic, then you can listen or not listen to the criticism.

As Omar said, “It’s all in the game, yo. All in the game.”