Don't waste tears on Reviews...

Trawling through reviews of your audiobooks you have narrated can be disheartening but I have (sort of) learnt to accept and deal with it.  On line Audiobook Reviews are an extraordinary phenomenon - possibly this can be said about most reviews.  Sometimes I think that the reviewer is reviewing another book entirely.

And you can't get away from social media platforms seemingly liking to list the negative reviews first which then affect your overall star rating.  My star rating on one of my books was effected for quite a while by a one star rating review because "the purchased audiobook didn't down load"! Well... for heaven sake that wasn't my fault... and this review seemed to take prominence for a while until all the positive reviews on audible.com the actual book actually took effect.  

My Keri Series of books does seem to have gone down well and I am lucky enough to have a wonderful following of listeners.  The reviews are very enlightening and I read every one in order to learn and make the next book even better. In amongst the good of course are those who didn't like the book and this can give a thumbs down a perfectly good narration. And that is fair enough - not much you can do about that. 

And then there are reviews which don't like the narrator. So do read the review and see what they didn't like. Rather than reaching for the tissues (some reviews can really be quite cutting) can you learn from it or do you just chalk it up to experience. But also remember, behind every narration there is the matter of how an author hears their work. I have had authors ask for me to 'not be so cheery', 'pick up the speed', 'slow down' and then you get a reviewer saying the book was very long and slow!   
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Reviews are a balancing act and, whilst we don't want to read them, it is a must. It is all part of a continuous education on audiobook narration. So don't get emotional - take it on the chin and enjoy the good times!

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