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Authors review their worst reviews

May 28

Finally, a chance for jilted authors to vent their spleens – The Worst Review Ever is a great and frankly hilarious blog where writers get the opportunity to respond to their harshest critics. An extract of the bad review is uploaded and authors then get to react through a series of standard questions, such as ‘How did you feel immediately after reading/watching the review?’ and ‘How long did it take you to get over the pain and humiliation of the review (assuming you got over it)?’. The final element allows fellow ‘worsties’ get to rate the writer’s pain our of 5 stars (1 star meaning ‘That wasn’t so bad’ and 5 stars indicating ‘Definitely the WORST. REVIEW. EVER’).

The site is the brainchild of American writer Alexa Young, who started the blog after a less-than-flattering review of her debut YA novel Frenemies last year. Perhaps it’s because Young kicked off the site with her on worst review response, but the books featured are mostly to do with YA or chicklit. This does made for some very interesting fodder – the most recent response is by Kim Culbertson, author of Songs for a Teenage Nomad, whose book was brutally canned by none other than one of her own high school students. ‘The toughest part was having to come back to class and just pick up as her teacher without judgment and without getting angry with her,’ she wrote. Culberston’s pain got rated as 2.5 stars, somewhere between ‘Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!’ and ‘Yeah, that would hurt’.

Ironically, the harshest reviews seem to come from the author’s own websites (see this article for more on writers who blog). William Meikle who wrote the children’s fantasy novel Generations had this to contend with:

‘Maybe if you didn't write such utterly shallow, banal, pointless books that don't take account or make any sort of statement about modern or previous culture, psychology, history, politics, theology or anything of any kind of importance that informs the way we live or have lived, then I might have some respect for you as a writer…'Generations'…is one of the most pointless wastes of my time I've ever endeavoured. What are you writing for? And if you give that pathetic response of, it's just entertainment, then you have no business being an author or calling yourself a writer.’

Even though this site was presumably designed to allow writers to get on an even keel with their reviewers, there is an element of ridicule all over again as you read the bad reviews and then their reactions to it. Although I’m guessing Young already knew this when creating the site, as the invite reads ‘So join the conversation—whether you're here to grieve, lend support via comments or simply enjoy a bit of schadenfreude (because hello? If reading other people's bad reviews doesn’t make you feel better about your own crappy review—or life, as it were—really, what will?)’.

JA

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