{"id":531,"date":"2010-10-29T10:03:44","date_gmt":"2010-10-29T14:03:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=531"},"modified":"2010-10-29T10:13:10","modified_gmt":"2010-10-29T14:13:10","slug":"q-do-you-read-reviews-of-your-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/birthmarked\/q-do-you-read-reviews-of-your-book\/","title":{"rendered":"Q. Do You Read Reviews of Your Book?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A. Not normally.\u00a0 I notice they\u2019re out there.\u00a0 If I see a review has 5 stars or a raving first line, I might read it.\u00a0 Anything less, and I look away.<\/p>\n

I learned this the hard way.\u00a0 I wish it weren\u2019t the case that strangers\u2019 opinions have any power over me, but they do, so back when Birthmarked<\/em> first came out, when I read a few bad reviews, they stung.\u00a0 For days.\u00a0 Even an otherwise very nice review could include a zinger about the unresolved ending, or the so-so world-building, or the soap-opera-esque drama, and that would be all I saw.<\/p>\n

Who needs that?\u00a0 It\u2019s hard enough to write at all without adding in extra negative voices.\u00a0 Don\u2019t get me wrong: I\u2019m all for people reviewing books honestly.\u00a0 It means they care, and they read, and they\u2019re in the great discussion of books.\u00a0 I just know, to protect myself, that I shouldn\u2019t read reviews of my book.\u00a0 So I don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Iceland Volcano April 17, 2010<\/p><\/div>\n

I do, on the other hand, read emails, because so far only polite people who like the book have bothered to email me.\u00a0 I recently received one from a girl who hates to read and normally puts down a book after one page, but Birthmarked<\/em> was keeping her up late.\u00a0 That means a lot to me.\u00a0 There was one from a girl who was stranded in Europe after the volcano eruption in Iceland closed down the airports, and reading Gaia\u2019s story distracted her from being stressed and lonely while she waited to come home.\u00a0 There have been emails from librarians, teachers, and booksellers who really know their stuff, and the one from a grandmother whose granddaughter loaned it to her when she saw she needed something to read.\u00a0 A book group in Indonesia wrote to me and sent a photo.\u00a0 People post kind things on my Facebook<\/a> writer page, too, often the minute they finish reading the book.\u00a0 Those are really fun.<\/p>\n

Like I said: strangers\u2019 opinions matter to me.\u00a0 I just pick which strangers I listen to, and those are the ones I think about while I\u2019m writing the next book.\u00a0 I really hope they\u2019ll like it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A. Not normally.\u00a0 I notice they\u2019re out there.\u00a0 If I see a review has 5 stars or a raving first line, I might read it.\u00a0 Anything less, and I look away. I learned this the hard way.\u00a0 I wish it weren\u2019t the case that strangers\u2019 opinions have any power over me, but they do, so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthmarked"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":540,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531\/revisions\/540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}