“Meh.” Yes, that’s the word of the day. “Meh.”

As in mediocre. Could be better could be worse. Can’t really muster enough care for more than this half-utterance of a word. Meh.

There are people who say making it on Amazon is your sure ticket to making it everywhere else. Well, even though Amazon is a big player and the readers there are some of the most active on the internet I tend to put them only first in line. There are other places where you have to make it that seem to be independent of Amazon’s rating. There’s Kobo, for example. And Barnes and Noble.

Speaking of Barnes and Noble, I can honestly say I’ve noticed a striking difference between reviews found there from reviews found at Amazon.com. Take, for example, the well-thought out review for my two page erotica, Going Under, that reads, “I barfed.” There’s so much deep, philosophical input there I can’t grasp it no matter how hard I try. It’s way above me.

Essentially, the reviews I’ve found on Amazon for various books, mine and not mine, were good reviews that covered a book’s interior and explained why the reader liked or disliked the story. Barnes and Noble seems to be populated by… well… Let’s just say it’s a little shallow, IMHO, when someone gives a book a single star because they downloaded the sample and didn’t get to see much of the whole book. Or someone else “barfed” with no real reason. Or someone else gives a book a one star on the book because they MEAN it as a rating for the poor review they’re defending their book against. But this is just IMHO.

So where Heavenly Bride, after months of rewriting it and agonizing over every little detail, has gotten over 2000 downloads in a single month (for chapter 1, which is free) and – glory! – a few five star reviews on Amazon… it’s not faring so good on Barnes and Noble. And if Amazon were truly the be all end all of book publishing, this wouldn’t be a big deal. But I, the author and someone interested in putting out a good story and having people fall in love with it everywhere including places outside of Amazon, find it to be a very big deal.

Enter “meh”.

Bad reviews don’t have to be the world-shaking end of everything many people take them to be. When I first starting to put Heavenly Bride on the eBook market, it was a bad review that woke me up to what I was doing wrong and set me on the path to improvement. I’ve come a long way since then, and to tell the truth if it weren’t for a random five star review on Amazon I would probably still be holding the chapters hostage as I worked and reworked them. It takes me about 12 hours to produce a single page, especially when the pages are detailed with hidden meaning. It took me over a year to write the first script. I’m still reworking things, adding details, making sure there are no loose ends, and polishing the story to perfection. It’s several years later. In short, my entire heart and soul gets poured into Heavenly Bride with some of the best artwork I have ever done and probably will never be able to do again.

And someone on Barnes and Noble said, “The artwork was meh.” Guess how many stars they gave the book.

When I found the review, I was a little pissed at first. Meh? My art is NOT meh! It’s a normal reaction. I immediately called to mind one of the rules some authors have a lot of trouble adhering to: don’t address a poor review. It will only make you look bad.

Then I recalled the difference between reviews I’ve found on Barnes and Noble and Amazon. I didn’t feel any better. Unlike the barfing review, this was a real one. For whatever reason, this person didn’t like my book and found my 12 hour pages to be nothing more than “meh”.

So the next tactic is to look seriously at the review and figure out why it’s there. I’ve spent two days doing this… and all I can come up with is Lincoln’s philosophy about not being able to please everybody at once. I’m not going to try to quote him. Please don’t ask me to.

There’s no input in that “meh” except that the reader wasn’t enthused by the artwork. Were they expecting Marvel’s Wolverine to come ripping off the pages and turn my love story into your typical tits-n-cape tale? Were they expecting my artwork to come straight from Studio Ghibli? I have no idea, no clue, and even if they were expecting such things – all that tells me is they don’t appreciate my style, my art, and anything *I* produce.

This revelation tends to cause me to go “meh” at their reviews. Ironically.

I’m not the world’s greatest artist. I probably never will be. I try, but at 40 I’ve given up on the thought of producing perfect, anatomically correct statuesque men and woman that grace my page like some Wendy Pini wet dream. I know where my true power lies: in the story telling itself. So that’s what I have come to rely on. I do pretty pages when they’re called for, and I worry about getting the story told. If I could hire someone to draw for me, I’d hire them for pencils and do the rest. But in the end, I have to accept that I am what I am.

And with that, the answer to how to handle the poor review is revealed. There are bad reviews that will help you along if you can listen to them – and I recommend you set aside your ego enough to do so. “Poor spelling” and “bad eBook conversion” are two such examples. And I admit, if my artwork were truly “meh” in that I’m not giving this book my 100% best then I’d have to stop, look and listen.

In this case, the way to handle this review is to turn it into a lesson – now posted on this blog – and remember Lincoln. And hope my plight is a good example for someone else to take a note from.