Flipping the Script on Rejection and Criticism

How do you deal with rejection, negative criticism, and disappointment?

In this week's Quick Tips, we're giving you our best advice to overcome the negativity and flip the switch to a positive mindset.

There are all kinds of disappointments in this job. Rejections from agents and editors, fizzled launches, and one-star reviews. 

Our advice? 

1. Remember this business, like so many others, is all about relationships. 
2. Analyze the data. If you get a negative review, assess whether that person was really your target audience, or if there's truly an issue in your book that should be addressed.
3. Spin it to a positive. That one-star review that wasn't your audience, may actually draw in your true target. A rejection from an agent with feedback might help you pitch better next time.
4. Reward your wins. Post the good stuff prominently in your workspace and refer to to frequently to keep yourself motivated.

We talk about all this and more, so tune in!

Don't forget!

The Writing Romance Mastery Summit will take place from February 19, 2024 through February 23, 2024, and we promise it’ll be a top-notch event. Paula Judith is bringing together the biggest names and most knowledgeable experts to share their best secrets.

We're proud to be included in this year's lineup of guests, talking about how to decide if you should self-publish or get an agent. By clicking this link, we may earn a commission from your purchase, at no additional cost to you.

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Greta Boris:
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Megan Haskell:
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

Welcome to the AuthorWeal podcast. I'm Megan Haskell, award-winning fantasy author of the Senyari Chronicles and the Rise of Lilith series.

Speaker 2: 0:45

And I'm Greta Boris, usa Today Bestselling Author of the Mortician Murders and the soon to be released almost true crime series. In today's Quick Tips episode, we are talking about a painful topic. Oh, how do you deal with disappointment? Yes, and there are many of them. This career is a rife with potential disappointments, right? Yes?

Speaker 1: 1:14

This is honestly one of those careers where it's like if you didn't have to do it, if you didn't feel that drive to write, story and create worlds and entertain people, don't do it, not gonna make a million dollars. It's not a quick get rich, quick scheme. So there's a lot of hardship in this job, unfortunately, but it can be so rewarding as well.

Speaker 2: 1:41

Yeah, and I would say anything like in the arts is that way I mean acting music and in fact those kind of disappointments can be even worse. We've had a couple of people on the podcast who've had careers, acting careers and they're like, well, if I could deal with that rejection, I could deal with anything right, probably. So, lest we think you know, that we are the most hard hit with this. We are not.

Speaker 1: 2:09

We are not.

Speaker 2: 2:10

I think people who get in front of people and entertain have it harder than we do. However, we do have disappointments. So we're the different kinds. I'd say one of the first is if you are trying to go traditional pitching stories, it's you are 100% going to get rejections.

Speaker 1: 2:30

How many rejections did you get before you got your deal?

Speaker 2: 2:33

I think it was 75. Yeah, that's a lot, that's a lot.

Speaker 1: 2:40

But famous authors. You know JK Rowling had I can't remember the number, but some large number of rejections before she finally sold Harry Potter.

Speaker 2: 2:50

Yeah, I think Stephen King had more than me with Terry. Yeah, he was up in the hundreds.

Speaker 1: 2:56

I think that's true. I don't quote us on the numbers, but lots and lots and lots of very, very famous, very very successful authors had to deal with dozens, if not hundreds, of rejections from publishers before they got their first deal.

Speaker 2: 3:13

So you know, a funny thing I read on JK Rowling's. I think it was in Twitter. She was talking, she put up a letter that she got you know when she moved away from Harry Potter and she was writing the adult crime, which I'm blanking on what the name of the series is right now, but I read the first book too, but so, anyway, she was pitching that and she was pitching it under a pen name because she didn't want publishers to think that. You know, just to take it because she's.

Speaker 2: 3:44

JK Rowling, you know. So she pitched it under this pen name and she actually posted with the appropriate names and stuff, walked out A letter she got from a publishing house and it basically told her that she needed to take writing classes. Amazing that, she was a very you know. She just didn't really know what she was doing yet. She was not ready to. So lust is so there. That should make you feel a little bit better if you're getting rejections.

Speaker 1: 4:14

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 4:14

But so one thing you can do, too, is turn it into a numbers game. Our episode with Jonathan Yanez he told us an analogy about like if you had a bin with a hundred red balls in it and there was only one green ball and you had to put on a blindfold and reach your hand in. That's kind of what it's like pitching agents and stuff, but each time you throw away that red ball. You're closer to the green ball.

Speaker 1: 4:46

You're closer to the green ball, right You're statistically more likely to draw that green ball on the next turn.

Speaker 2: 4:54

Right, right, yeah. So if you look at and that's kind of what I did when I was pitching I would just say a certain number every week had to go in the out in the you know emails and then when I got rejections I was just like, okay, knock that one off, that wasn't the one for me, you know next, and so on. So yeah, another kind of disappointment that we do run into are the same as you get in actually in any phase of life in school and family and jobs is relationships. You know, writers are like everybody else and some people you hit it off with and some you don't. And I talked to people who did that pitch, pitch, pitch. They finally got an agent. They thought that it was just going to change their life and then they didn't hit it off. Their agent wasn't was big disappointment and it didn't work out for them.

Speaker 2: 5:47

Or maybe you've tried to co-write a book with somebody and you you really like them, but then you realize your writing styles are too you know they don't work together. Those things are disappointments, but I think that it's important to recognize that no single person is going to make or break your career unless you allow them to. You know you just kind of it's a similar thing. You just got to kind of chalk it up to well, drive that and move on and try the next thing.

Speaker 1: 6:16

Which is kind of the same with launch launches. When you launch a book, right, no like, especially if you're indie. If you're if you're traditional, there's a little bit more nuance to this, but especially if you're indie one bad launch is not going to end your career. You can always, you know, revise the book and republish it, publish it under a different title. You can always start a new pen name and publish, you know, a new series or a new genre under a new pen name. There are so many ways to hit the refresh button that worrying about that one launch that didn't go the way you wanted it to is kind of, I mean, it sucks, right, it hurts.

Speaker 2: 7:00

Sure.

Speaker 1: 7:00

But it's also kind of silly because you can always keep going Again. There's a little nuance there, but but for the most part, like some books are going to hit that market just spot on and like take off, rocket, ship to the moon bestseller status they're lightning in a bottle, but it does happen. Some books, especially debut novels more commonly, are kind of slippers, right, Like maybe they take a while to get going or maybe the series you know you have to publish several books in the series before it starts to take off, so you might have to invest, you know, a few years and three, four, five books before you actually get get that return that you're looking for and some never resonate, right. But it really like taking a look at what you published, where the market was, what's happening, where you are as a writer, all of those things can sort of give you new information and you can always hit that refresh button if you need to.

Speaker 2: 7:59

So here's my question for you, megan how do you know, if you wrote a book and say it's book one in a series and you play an entity to make this a trilogy, right, yeah, how do you know it's a net launch fizzles whether that book it's not really worth your time and energy to write the next two because that book is never going to resonate. Or this is just a sleeper that needs some extra love, needs a few more books, a little more marketing dollars, maybe a new cover or new whatever. How do you know?

Speaker 1: 8:33

I think a lot of it comes down to analyzing that book and the current situation. Right, I had a book that I launched that fizzled because I launched it right at the beginning of COVID. Quite honestly, I knew it was a good book. It actually was a Reader's Favorite Book Award, honorable Mention in the fantasy category, so it was a good book. When I sell it at conventions and conferences and things like that, it does really well. People seem to really like it. But it just never took off. I could never get it off the ground. Now, to be fair, I have not continued that series yet because of COVID and certain mindset challenges that I faced. But I do plan to continue that series and we'll try again in the future. But COVID was a big problem for that book. It was just bad timing.

Speaker 1: 9:31

You can also ask other writers or people in the publishing industry what they think went wrong. Do they think it's a good enough book? Be open to that criticism. Maybe it needs another editing pass. Maybe it needs a different cover. Maybe it didn't quite hit the target audience properly or it didn't have the tropes represented or something like that.

Speaker 1: 9:53

Ask your readers. We're going to get into this more later, but you can look at those reviews. If you're seeing things on those reviews that are craft related there are a lot of typos If a lot of people are saying there were a lot of typos, go back and edit it again, hire another proofreader or something like that, and see if you can get it off the ground. Ultimately, data is power Understanding what went wrong, what happened, getting outside feedback, objective eyes, objective opinions that will ultimately tell you if I think it's worth continuing or not. And then also, what do you want to write? Are you still happy writing this series? Then finish it. Do what you want to do. You're an author, you're a creative person. Just go for it. If you want to do it, if you're telling the story that you want to read, go for it. It might not work in the market, but maybe that's not the goal, really. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 10:51

And I have definitely heard about authors who've had a book or a trilogy or a series or whatever that didn't do much for years and then all of a sudden something changed in the zeitgeist and somebody discovered their book and it just blew up years and years later.

Speaker 1: 11:12

Yeah, I've also heard the advice that you have to write at least three books in a series before you can tell if it's going to do well in the market. Because a lot of readers won't start a new series, a book one, if they don't see a continuation of the series. They don't want to be burned, they don't want to have the series never finish or take years between books. They're binge readers, they want to keep going. So at least three books before you can really tell if readers will pick it up. So sometimes you just have to give it time.

Speaker 2: 11:46

That was so true with my Mortician series the first, I mean it didn't do badly. They were popular with my list. I knew readers liked them and the reviews were good. But I didn't even really bother marketing until I launched book three, because I just thought that's the kind of book it is. People are going to want to get in there and they're going to want at least three books before they. And every time I publish a new book I get new readers who are looking for that longer series. Yeah, so that's very true. So you mentioned reviews.

Speaker 1: 12:19

Yeah, what do you do with bad reviews?

Speaker 2: 12:22

Well, I try to avoid reading that because they generally bum me out and often like I would say, one in two stars. And I think I heard some an author say this on the on a podcast that was on the Writing Excuses podcast. Mary can't think of her name, she's on the red.

Speaker 1: 12:46

Robinette. Yeah, mary Robinette. Cool, is that right? Something like that.

Speaker 2: 12:52

She said this and I thought this was great advice and it was that generally one in two stars mean you've just You're, there's something wrong with your marketing, you've reached the wrong reader. Mm-hmm, they were expecting something different than what they got. Four and five stars they're fun to read but they're often not that helpful because they're usually people just raving. But it's nice to know what people like and there's a use for good reviews, which we'll talk about in a couple minutes. But those three stars they can be valuable and a little painful because they're usually they're saying this book is a good book, but and that can be a place when are you? You do some assessment? So if you did get a bunch of those and they're all saying the same thing, like you said about you know you need to re-edit or something like that. That that, yeah, that is something then to address. But sometimes these are funny, like I had one. I had two three Star reviews, I think, on the first book and the Marenti series and one of them said or maybe the second book.

Speaker 2: 14:01

One of them said this book is not paranormal enough, it's it's it's saying it's paranormal, but it's not paranormal enough, you know, like, where's the, where's the the ghost, where's the vampires? Or there's no vampires, where's the whatever? And then the other review three star reviews said I really like this book, but it was too paranormal. Right, so, right there. That means to me Well, I don't need to worry about this. The vast majority of the reviews are happy with what they got. Therefore, I'm I'm marketing them okay you know these, these two individuals.

Speaker 2: 14:42

Were obviously looking for something slightly different than what they got, but that's probably not my fault. However, if I was getting a ton of three star reviews that said, this book is not paranormal enough, I might want to think about recategorizing, changing my you know where the book was showing up and and how I what the subtitle was or with the metadata was Making sure it showed up in the right category, a different category. So that's something to think about. Yeah, with bad reviews.

Speaker 1: 15:10

Yeah, but if you do read your bad reviews and they kind of bum you out one, one thing that I like to do is go back to some of my favorite authors, classic authors, jane Austen, pride and prejudice, one of my favorite books of all time. I reread it every few years. Read her one star review. Yes, there are so many negative reviews of like these Phenomenal authors or your favorite author Maybe it's you know, and maybe it's Stephen King, right, or maybe it's, I don't know. I'm trying to think of other good examples of like just really famous, really fabulous authors that so many people love, their household names, and they're gonna have one and two star reviews and and sometimes they're kind of funny, like I remember reading one for pride and prejudice, where that the reviewer was like this book just seems outdated. Like who talks like this? This is no, there's no action in this. Like what do you think you're reading?

Speaker 2: 16:14

Do you not know when this book was written?

Speaker 1: 16:17

Yeah, yeah, so that always kind of gives me a little bit of a boost of confidence so that I know that you know we're not alone.

Speaker 2: 16:25

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 16:27

You're never alone in this. And then the other thing that I've seen other authors do which I have not done myself, but I always try to think about how I could or what I would do but One of my friends, rachel Renner she was actually on the show Back in the fall of 2023, so you can go back and listen to her episode if you want. She was talking about her Kickstarter campaign and stuff, but in any case, one of her favorite things to do is take her one and two star reviews and spin them into a positive, which she then uses for advertising. So if you have a bad review, a negative review that and I don't remember, I didn't look it up I probably should have, but I didn't look up the specific one I was thinking of, but there's if you have one star review that said, oh, this is just there's, there's too much Romance in this story for, in her case, because hers is a kind of a paranormal romance, it's too much romance, it's too too spicy She'll post that up and be like one star too spicy.

Speaker 1: 17:26

Okay, that's my target audience, right, like that's actually selling her book to her target audience because she missed the target with that one reader who gave it the one star, but she can spin it into hey, if you like you know spicy paranormal romance, then guess what this book is for you. Check out this one star. It was so spicy. Somebody like negatively reviewed it, you know, and so you can spin it into a positive.

Speaker 2: 17:56

I've seen a couple of authors do that.

Speaker 1: 17:58

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 17:58

Yeah, I like that. That's really, and I think that's good for your own psyche too, even if you don't use it for advertising. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 1: 18:08

Yeah, if you look at that one star review and you can go, okay, well, that person wasn't my. So one of my favorite one star reviews was a very early one star review on the Last Descendant, which was my debut novel, and all it said was one star yuck, which every time it makes me laugh, because the reason it didn't resonate with that reader was because, yeah, it's a little violent, right, Like there's some. There are carnivorous pixies in the story, people, I mean it's in the description.

Speaker 2: 18:37

The first chapter has a lot of spurting blood.

Speaker 1: 18:41

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:41

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:43

And so it just was not my target audience, and so I can laugh at that, even though it's a one star review, because it was just such a wide miss.

Speaker 2: 18:51

Yeah, and I've seen other people do that too. I think that's a great way and it kind of takes a bad review and turns it into a good review.

Speaker 1: 19:01

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 19:03

And so just a quick note on good reviews, which is not exactly dealing with disappointments, because good reviews are not disappointing, but we might as well end on a happy note. Yeah, so when you do get really good reviews, save them and use them Like I use them in my Facebook ads all the time, Like I'll put. You know I had one. That was what's better than finding a story you can't? What's better than finding a new mystery you can't put down, finding out it's a series. I couldn't have written that, but I mean that was great.

Speaker 2: 19:41

It was like that went into all kinds of advertising material and that was really a review from one of my readers. So I like to comb the four and five stars for those kinds of lines and use them in advertising. I send them to my list when I'm kind of marketing a new book and all of that. So that's a great thing to do. And then also just save them to a file to read when you get a bad review. Guess I could just boost your backup again. There are people you know. Yes, I am okay, my mother loves me. So here you go, Read your good reviews. Your readers, some of your readers, are gonna love you.

Speaker 1: 20:23

Yeah, and the nice thing about keeping your good reviews sort of top of mind is that it can actually be really motivating for that long-term career, which next week we are gonna talk more about career sustainability and how to take care of yourself and your writing long-term. So until then, keep your stories rolling.