On Reading Amazon Reviews

Chris Bohjalian has a tongue-in-cheeker in today's Washington Post titled "In which the author obsesses over potshots by amateur critics on Amazon.com." Describing himself as "hunched over a laptop, cringing at the customer reviews of my novels on Amazon.com and bn.com," Bohjalian then recounts some of the all-time worst zingers. This one, for example, was a stand out:

"I proceded to read it untill i got to chapter 7, and when i found that no plot has even erupted yet. The entire chapter was about a deer. How can a book be seven chapters in, and about 100 pages in, and still have expostition material. this book was terrible and would never suggest to anyone."

I read the piece with an empathetic smile, recalling the former hunched-over me who, heart racing, would check Amazon each morning, hoping for a sign from the world beyond: A book bought, perhaps; a line or two that resonated. I empathized with a man confronted by an accuser who did not, well, have all those accusing words stacked up quite right. True, I was often greeted by the kind of generosity one wants to throw one's arms around. A few memorable times I was not. Then one day I encountered one angry reader of a book who announced in no ironic, uncertain terms, that I was at least—actually, I don't recall the quantifier, but I believe it was in the range of 7 million years old. 7 million years old, maybe, or 700,000, 7,000, even, or... well, the point is, I stopped checking Amazon reviews some time after that.

The point is, I learned my lesson. One day I woke up and the habit was gone, disappeared, vanished, cured. My heart, a miracle, wasn't racing.

Readers invest their time in a book and often (unless they've borrowed from a friend or a library) their money, too. They have earned their right to their opinion, in other words, however they wish to express it (though there are merits to diplomacy, truly) and those of us who have put our work out there have a choice to make: either we will eavesdrop on Amazon or we will not.

I have discovered the wonders of not. The sun rises differently around here these days. The conversation I have about books—with bloggers, with Goodreaders, with good hearts—is rich, and real. Sure, there are still those who don't like what I write, or who wish for different endings, or for different characters, or for a different me, indeed. But we're talking to each other, one book lover to another. We're engaged in a human dialogue.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/14/AR2008081402498.html