It seems so unfair that anyone who wishes so can completely tear the flesh off your work for absolutely no good reason.
Why do people do it.
Maybe I am just a fool but I just cannot understand why anyone would want to destroy someone's hard work!
If you buy a book on Amazon then most of time you have the 'Look inside' feature which allows you to preview the book before you purchase.
On my novel Zachania the preview is set on twenty percent so that is almost 100 pages which are available to see and allow you to make up your mind if you want to read more or not.
Then there is the 30 day refund available!
I am just completely at a loss why there are people out there who get there kicks trying to belittle other people, self-publishers are not trying to make a nuclear missile or commit an act of terrorism, we are just writing a novel, doing what we love for Gods sake! And within our hearts we have a distant hope that someone might come back to us and say they enjoyed what we have created.
I am currently so disappointed that at present I feel like just giving the whole thing up, stop writing completely and move on to doing other things.
It is the reality that people can stab the knife in for absolutely no good reason which is really effecting me, I just cannot get my head around why would you want to cut someone down for trying to do what they love?
We have just had the London marathon and we do not stand at the finish line shouting abuse and being harsh to the runners who come in hours after the race has begun, we applaud them for achieving, we applaud them for trying.
Amazon should really look at their review system and try to make it more fair.
below is a recent review I have just received.
No no no!, 19 April 2013
Amazon Verified Purchase(What is this?)
This review is from: Zachania (Tome 1) (Kindle Edition)
Poorly written, grammatically incorrect in so many places throughout the book, became more and more annoyed as I read the book. I rarely give up on a book, but this was the exception. Dreadful.Every time I read this and this may sound dramatic, but I get a tight feeling of nausea in my stomach at how a fellow human being can be so harsh, and for what reason.... Dreadful he has put at the end of it, like I have been knocking on his door trying to sell my book or maybe I have kicked his dog.
All I have done is spend months on end trying to share what I have in my mind and create a story, Do self-publishers really deserve to be vilified like this!
i thought long and hard about leaving a response where everyone says do not answer a bad review, but i am sorry its the kind of guy i am where i feel that someone somewhere should speak up for Self-pub material.
below is what I have written;
Joseph Henry Gaines says:
I am sorry to say that I find your review extremely harsh
I am a self-publishing author who does not have the thousands of pounds spare to have my novel professional edited and proof read.
This is the reason why the book of over five hundred pages is on sale for under £2.
Self-publishing is a fantastic platform which allows people like myself who love to write, an opportunity to share material which otherwise would never get shared.
I can understand if you criticized me for my grammar if I was writing a historical piece of works like war and peace, but Zachania is a fictional novel based in a mythical time.
Self-publisher's earn a pittance from sales and do this because of the love and a distant hope that someone somewhere may enjoy what they produce.
For future reference I would just like to point out what damage you do when you leave a terrible review like the one you posted, since your review my novel has dropped 6000 places and I have not had one sale.
I have thought very hard about leaving this comment but I feel that certain Amazon reviewers are giving self-publishers a really hard time.
Why I don't know? People like me are not claiming to be a Dickens or a James Joyce yet we are judged by a standard which we do not have at our disposal.
There is the look inside feature and also a thirty day refund available for our stories so why is there the need to vilify our hard work. Why not just claim the refund and say, "thank you very much but the book wasn't for me!"
I spend hours and hours going over and over my manuscript trying to create something which will be enjoyed, when we receive a cruel damnation like your review, it absolutely rips the soul out of us and is cruel thanks for the days and months on end, we have slaved away trying to do the thing we love.
I am extremely proud of the books I have written, and I am trying against all the odds to persevere in my quest to one day be a full time author.
So please if you feel the urge again to obliterate someone's work, then please try to remember that there is a human being at the other end, a human being who is just trying to do the thing he loves
I am a self-publishing author who does not have the thousands of pounds spare to have my novel professional edited and proof read.
This is the reason why the book of over five hundred pages is on sale for under £2.
Self-publishing is a fantastic platform which allows people like myself who love to write, an opportunity to share material which otherwise would never get shared.
I can understand if you criticized me for my grammar if I was writing a historical piece of works like war and peace, but Zachania is a fictional novel based in a mythical time.
Self-publisher's earn a pittance from sales and do this because of the love and a distant hope that someone somewhere may enjoy what they produce.
For future reference I would just like to point out what damage you do when you leave a terrible review like the one you posted, since your review my novel has dropped 6000 places and I have not had one sale.
I have thought very hard about leaving this comment but I feel that certain Amazon reviewers are giving self-publishers a really hard time.
Why I don't know? People like me are not claiming to be a Dickens or a James Joyce yet we are judged by a standard which we do not have at our disposal.
There is the look inside feature and also a thirty day refund available for our stories so why is there the need to vilify our hard work. Why not just claim the refund and say, "thank you very much but the book wasn't for me!"
I spend hours and hours going over and over my manuscript trying to create something which will be enjoyed, when we receive a cruel damnation like your review, it absolutely rips the soul out of us and is cruel thanks for the days and months on end, we have slaved away trying to do the thing we love.
I am extremely proud of the books I have written, and I am trying against all the odds to persevere in my quest to one day be a full time author.
So please if you feel the urge again to obliterate someone's work, then please try to remember that there is a human being at the other end, a human being who is just trying to do the thing he loves
I found your great blog through the WLC Blog Follows on the World Literary Cafe! Great to connect!
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