Learn from OTHERS’ Negative Reviews
(???)
Go on Goodreads or Amazon and read the negative reviews of other books in your niche.
I did this yesterday and learned something useful I can now use to draft my new tiny book, which — as you might know — is about my 15-year experience as a non-meat eater.
Since I want my book to include some factual information about animal behaviour and welfare, I was doing some research on these topics and came across a popular book titled Animalkind: Remarkable Discoveries about Animals and Revolutionary New Ways to Show Them Compassion.
Animalkind, like all popular books, has both 5-star and 1-star reviews on Goodreads.
I thought, Hmm, let me check why some people didn’t like it.
After a few clicks, I got to some well-written and intellectually honest comments that seemed to make good arguments against the book.
A 2-star review began like this:
[The book] starts out gently enough with the kind of anthropomorphism you’d probably expect. The very first paragraph refers to an emperor penguin protecting its “child,” the second dolphins “smiling at us from the water.” That’s not a sin in itself, but it signals a tone that leans more on emotional appeal than clarity or precision. That might be fine in a children’s story, but when you’re trying to persuade skeptical readers about ethical reform, the rhetoric matters.
I think the reader makes a valid point here, so in my book I now want to avoid anthropomorphizing animals or telling Disney-type stories about them.
I left a comment under that review.
I didn’t read the book but am writing one about my 15-year experience as a non-meat eater. Your well-articulated comments here will point my writing in the right direction. Thanks a lot!
Are you writing about productivity? Fitness? Business?
Whatever the topic, find some negative reviews of books in your subject area. Forget about the one-line comments like “Waste of time!” or “Save your money and read this other book instead.”
The most helpful reviews are the ones where the reader explains in detail why they found the book disappointing. This is market research you can do without hiring anyone. The data are right there. Collecting this information doesn’t mean you should then change your writing plans to please every potential reader. You can, however, use that negative feedback to anticipate certain problems.
Feedback is subjective.
But some authors got plenty of negative feedback before you.
Why not have a look at it to improve your work?
