Post-Traumatic Book Review Syndrome

Despite my novel's failure to sell, I'd remained steadfast in my belief that it's really very good. One's gotta understand that I held onto this belief in the face of every single indignity, from putting the book up on an ARC site and getting no reviews, despite garnering about a dozen volunteers (obviously, those eleven or twelve people hated it, right?) to the other three or so review sites, on which not one person chose to read and review my book.

My faith never wavered, even after spending $732.04 on promotions and getting three paid downloads. And that's not even counting the money I spent on Amazon and Facebook ads. "Well, if people would just read it, they'd know it's good."

It was easy to tell myself that no one could know how good or how bad a book is until they're actually read it. And since no one has read mine.....

When an author accumulates a total of ten Amazon reviews and one on Goodreads, that's all she has to go by to know whether people liked it. My Amazon average rating is 4.7. That's damn good, even if it is only calculated from ten reviews. But then along came my lone Goodreads review--3 stars--and based on her narrative, a generous three stars, at that. The reviewer couldn't have made it clearer how much she hated it. She could have given it five stars, and her written words would have still conveyed her distaste.

And this is what I'm left with. My faith in my novel has shattered. Maybe it really is bad, and I refused to see it. I anticipated sitting down with the paperback at some point and reading it. Now I never will.  

Worse, now I'm embarrassed to have chased book bloggers, begging them (well, politely asking them) to review it. To those who said no, or ignored me completely, thank you. You've saved both yourself and me a ton of grief.  

The fact that I received a glowing editorial review (once) is tainted by the fact that I paid $30.00 for it. Are they gonna write a bad review when they're taking my money? Of course not. That's not a good business model. Other authors would see it and shake their heads. "No way am I taking that chance!" I tried ignoring that niggling reality and just enjoying the reviewer's words, but deep down I knew that she went out of her way to be positive, because that's what her boss's standing instructions are.

I've still got one professional review to go. I would have two, but one blogger who agreed to read my novel months ago obviously isn't going to. No problem! I'm glad! The other blogger will, in January, in fact. I paid her, too, via a "donation". So, her review will be "fine". I won't believe it, but it'll be fine. Since she publishes a magazine that is actually widely read, my little 300-word article in the January edition might drive people to buy my book. I hope not. I don't want anyone to read it.

I've tried analyzing what it is about my novel that's kept people away or that's driven some negative words. When I was writing it, I was so excited. Every scene flowed. That was never the case with my other books. The "back and forth" comment in that Goodreads review has made me question my plot. Is it really confusing? I honestly didn't see it that way. It all made perfect sense to me. I still don't think it would read as confusing, if I was to re-read it (which I won't). 

As for why no one's been interested in reading it, I'm not sure. The cover is fantastic now. It wasn't before, but it is now. The blurb is pretty bright and sparkly (now that I've revised it). Subject matter? That must be it. It must not sound like an interesting story. Maybe it's not. Just because it's interesting to me, maybe I'm freakish. An outlier; a moron.

The result of all this, these eleven months of pushing, prodding, debasing myself, is that I'll never again try to get people to read it. It stinks; why put yourself through that, readers? My November Kindle Unlimited page reads are 378, so somebody or a few somebodies started the book and gave up. Can't blame them. 

No, I'm not going to unpublish it. I've got worse books up for sale, and I reap nothing by taking any of them down. I reap nothing either way, so why bother? I only had one book that was so bad, I did unpublish it. Running From Herself is miles above that one in quality, though it's still obviously a loser. A big fat loser.

My eleventh published novel, after almost a decade of publishing, and this is what I have to show for it.