Bad Review Blues?

Written By Joe Smolen

Getting some bad reviews of your book, or worrying about same? You know what? I and my publisher dialogued about this. He's a new publisher and he's scrambling for income and he told me even a bad review has value. Even a bad review says the griping reviewer was energized enough by the story to take the time to write the review in the first place. Beats silence - which is pretty much my take in general. I’ll listen to ANY comment about what I have presented to the public. And some of the crank stuff I have had said about what I wrote was spot-on. It led to improvements in more than one of my stories. Of course, neither I nor my publisher were talking about vitriol. Angry, scathing blather isn’t useful. Don’t like it? Tell me why? You will be my benefactor. No lie.

Joe Smolen

Joe C. Smolen, AKA L.W. Smolen is an Oregon Coast writer of insufficiently exaggerated notoriety. Never having been arrested, he lives with his wife Sherrie and the ghost of their black, Standard Poodle Rico Suave in a really pretty good, Prairie Style house they built themselves. Since the Literary Magazine Fleas on the Dog of Kitchener, Ontario has permanently stopped accepting submissions, in order to read L.W. Smolen’s 2021 short fiction, A Real Guy, you are referred to joecsmolen.com. Some of L.W’s other, subsequent short fictions are archived at Olive Tree Review, Ginosko, Cardinal Sins Journal, Wrath Bearing Tree, Wilderness House and etc. Kirkus reviews once interpreted his work favorably.

https://joecsmolen.com
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