I got my first review from someone I couldn’t identify and it’s 3 stars. Here it is:
“The writing style of the author made it tough for me to follow.
Not a bad book, and I enjoyed the characters.”
I’m guessing this boils down to my use of present tense instead of the traditional past tense, so I shouldn’t be surprised. As I’ve been finding, this style seems to throw readers off a lot. Guess I’m going to have to brace myself for a few low scores because of it.
Legends of Windemere 
Charles,
I came by to smack you around a little. (Sorry in advance.) First of all, three stars is not a “low score.” It is a neutral review. reviews, regardless of whether they are glowing or not are important. Do you know when you have become part of the “I’m an actual author club?” When you have a nice mixture of 1-5 star reviews, and you have had your first how could anyone say that about my book meltdown dusted yourself off and gone one with life. You better develop a thick hide. Even the best of literature classics have one star reviews.
Secondly, tense. Write what you want to write but accept that if you don’t go with the mainstream there will be some detractors. My advice would be to reflect the tense your story is written in in your book blurb. That will help stop returns and negative comments from people who refuse to try reading it AFTER they paid for it.
So basically what I am saying is: people suck sometimes but without them who would buy your book??
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Yeah. I’m better now and the rant I did after helped me clear the rest. I can take a lot, but the tense thing has become a pet peeve because I simply don’t understand the bias. It’s also been the one that people seem to harp on and claiming will be the thing to make me fail. The hole in my armor I guess is a good analogy.
I’ve been pondering how to reflect the tense in the blurb without blatantly saying it. I don’t know if writing the blurb in present tense would bring the point across.
To answer your question, I’m working on training poodles to buy books on Amazon. It isn’t going well, so I still have to depend on humans. 🙂
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Actually, my book blurb is written partially in present tense, so now I’m out of ideas. Maybe it’s better for me to let people find out on their own. Think of it as an attempt to convert readers to a different writing style.
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A brief story. When I wrote my fourth book, it was a romance. Ugh. I didn’t read romance as a rule, but I had heard it was an easier way to break into the market, so i thought I would give it a try. I picked up a book on how to write a best selling romance and here was the basic advice: Don’t stray from what people expect. Have a beautiful main character, have a sexy hunk as the hero, don’t ever write in first person in a romance and for Heaven’s sake whatever you do don’t make the characters seem insecure.
My heroine was highly overweight. Her “hunk” was an average guy, she joined a weight loss group because she was insecure and it is all written in first person. I am now approaching 150,000 copies having been sold since it was released. I say do what feels right to you.
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Thanks. That makes me feel a lot better about carrying on with my present tense. There are standards for everything, but there will always be an audience for something that doesn’t follow the standards.
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There is something positive in writing in a way that is either non-traditional or just plain unexpected. You want to set yourself, and your style apart from other authors so why not do it the way you see fit. Also a 3 star out of 5 star review is not a bad review at all. The style threw the person off a little bit, but they like the story and characters so to me it sounds like a success.
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