The most difficult thing for an author to deal with after releasing their book is the public, highly visible critique of their book online. Return to Hardscrabble Road was published in October, and some reviews are starting to come in. The good news is that there are generous reviews for which I’m so very grateful—and from more than just my friends. The bad news is that not every reader loves me and my work as much as I want them to.

This is the central paradox of what I think a successful writing career looks like: an author must sell books to strangers in order to succeed, but strangers care far less about the authors’ feelings and are much more likely to leave a scathing review than a friend who might rate something well just to preserve the friendship.

“Success” in my case is measured in book sales. Are there other measures of success? Of course. An author could aim for perfection in the ratings they receive and as a result they only want to sell books to “safe” prospects. These reviewers, all friends of the author, will give five stars guaranteed. The author can then boast about their perfect record of impeccable reviews—all the while hoping that some cranky, anonymous book buyer doesn’t purchase their work and post an unfavorable opinion. Success for other authors might be achieving their goal of getting their book on the market or sharing a specific viewpoint with the world. That’s fine for them, but I’m trying to make money from my work—I have a family to support—and the only way to do that is to sell books to strangers.

In September, I wrote blogposts about why readers should give reviews and why writers should seek them. It’s hard on the ego, though, when readers cooperate but then you don’t like some of the reviews you’ve actively solicited. Return to Hardscrabble Road had a rocky start review-wise. Within an hour of my publisher posting the book on Amazon, two people gave it three stars. There’s no way they could’ve read the book; apparently, they were unmoved by the cover and were expressing their unhelpful opinions. Then someone posted a one-star review, which was terrible in many respects—the worst being that they weren’t reviewing Return—they were actually reviewing the first book in the series, Hardscrabble Road! So, now my book had two questionable three-stars and an incorrectly placed, nasty one-star review. A bunch of five- and four-star reviews since then have helped to pull up the average, but it’s possible that some fans of the first book chose not to take a chance on the sequel because of those initial critiques.

Unfair? I think so, but this is what we sign up for as authors selling our work in a public forum where anyone can express their opinion, no matter how mean-spirited, ill-conceived, or fatuous. We don’t fight back or call for a retraction (or we shouldn’t, though some authors do) because to stifle those opinions, regardless of what we think of them, would be to suppress freedom of speech. Would we want to give those reviewers the power to take down our books for sale because they didn’t like them? Certainly not. So, why would it be okay for us to cancel their critiques? As Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch often says, “Everybody counts, or nobody counts.”

It’s important for writers to acknowledge the devil’s bargain we make when we sell our work in the public marketplace. We can’t have the exposure without exposing ourselves to hostility, misinterpretation, and/or scorn. All we can do is write the best book possible and hope many more people love it than don’t and post their reviews online so those positive opinions sway more book-buyers than the words of the naysayers do. And then we write another one and start the process again….