The Breaking Point of Negative Feedback

I heard it said that negative feedback is better than no feedback, or you need to hear the negative to fix the mistakes. While that is true, for the purpose of this blog, there are two types of negative feedback. Critical and harsh. You can tell someone they suck without using the word suck.

This cherry pie sucked!

This cherry didn’t do it for me.

Both tell the baker he didn’t do a good job on the pie, but while one can make the baker reexamine his recipe, the other can inadvertently make that baker put away his mixing bowl for a long time.

When you put yourself out there, especially as a writer, you have to expect the bad with the good. I know this, I have been doing this a long time. People are going to love your stories, hate your stories, or be indifferent.

You can’t please everyone, and I know that. I love getting positive feedback, emails thanking me for a great story, I mean, who doesn’t. Believe it or not, I don’t mind the critical ones. Often times, I see their point and make the change or mental note.

Critical.

Not Harsh Negative.

There’s a big difference you know and every so often, every couple years, something I write causes a rash of harsh negative emails. Again, not critical, but harsh negative.

For example, things like … (Taken from recent emails)

‘I’ll never read your books again, the errors were horrible.’

‘I wanted to throw my kindle, what a waste.’

‘Did you even graduate eighth grade?’ (Why do I get asked this? It’s happened before)

‘What were you thinking putting out crap like this’

A recent critical comment, the woman said, ‘I really enjoyed the story, there seemed to be far more errors than normal for you, please let me know if I can help.’

If you don’t see the difference, I can’t explain. But I can say this, the impact of the emails makes a difference. One type tells me, ‘Wow, she hasn’t given up on me’, the other makes me question as to why I even bother.

Recently, after a book was released through my publisher, those harsh negative emails started to arrive. All stating multiple errors, but they weren’t just letting me know about them, they were slamming me as a writer. I’ve had this happen with self published books, despite having two or three sets of eyes on the book. Things slip by.

But this … this is relentless and I am not exaggerating. It started as a few here and there after the release. A couple critical, one or two harsh negative and then it took a turn. After a weekend of several a day, suddenly, every single day I am getting no less than five emails. First, balancing out between criticism and negative and then the scales tipped. Never in my career have I ever gotten so many negative, bashing emails a day over one book. The ones not ‘slamming’ became few and far between. It has gotten to the point if I see an email and the subject even slightly talks about ‘The Book’, I don’t even open it. I have probably 50 unread in my inbox. So I apologize if you were emailing about something else and I didn’t reply yet..

Not one. Not a single one is positive. And you know what sucks? I LOVED writing that book, I created a cover from scratch and labored over it. Before you say it’s on the publisher, ask yourself … is it? My name is on that book and my name is also synonymous with self publishing so those who know my work just assume it’s self published. They aren’t blaming a publisher, they’re blaming me.

Maybe I should take it as a good thing that people feel they can reach out to me about this. That I am so approachable they can tell me anything,

There are readers I communicate with regularly that are just ‘letting me know how horrible it was’,. Not the story, the errors, then again, no one cares about this story. Little hint, if a book has been out for a couple months, and it’s that bad, really there’s  no need to let me know, chances are 50 others beat you to the punch.

So here I have a super original story, I freaking loved, sunk to a quicksand world of humiliation. A work I want to be proud of but now that ship has sailed.

For the errors, I blame myself. I didn’t pick up what the editor missed. My eyes read what my mind wrote.

I own it. My readers deserve the best I can give them and I failed them.

I know how frustrating it is to be in the flow of reading only to be halted by an avoidable error. I have reached out to many authors and none have ever experienced this, especially at this volume. Readers leave the negativity in the reviews for them not their inbox. Heck not even I have had it this bad.

This is a phenomenon, even after I was assured the mistakes were corrected the emails not only kept coming but grew in numbers.

The bottom line is, everyone has their breaking point. I’ve reached mine along with a legitimate fear that his could be the downfall of everything I worked so hard for.

So why did I write this blog? Maybe to vent, to be a bit of therapy, but mainly to ask anyone reading this that before you fire off an email of criticism/complaint penned in your frustration, whether it’s a coworker, an author, a business, just pause, breathe, reread before you hit send.

As a consumer, leaving bad reviews are your right, say what you want. But when sending a personal email, just know you, think it through.

Maybe I’m wrong. But I just wanted to put this out there.