When you receive a good review

What to do.

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While I've previously shared insights on handling negative reviews, I realized I've yet to delve into managing positive ones. You may already have unique ways of celebrating, like making hundreds of copies and having a clothes-off dance party. No, that's just me being silly.

This became a topic because a woman purchased the first book in my Devil Chronicles series, The Devil You Know, and left a review on Book Bub last Thursday and it got me thinking about positive reviews. The Book Bub site notifies the author when anyone leaves a review or signs up to follow. If you haven't claimed an author site, I encourage you to do so. It costs you nothing to join Book Bub. When a fan said, “I’m obsessed with this book,” it made my day. So, what to do when you get a good review? Here are my thoughts:

• Savior it. Enjoy it for more than three seconds. Don't brush it off and dismiss it. Please don't check out and judge every other book she's read. Stop judging and accept that someone enjoyed your book and that you did something right for a change. We spend hours thinking about the bad reviews and mere seconds thinking about the good reviews we receive. Not that we shouldn't take some time considering a lousy review. We can often learn from them, but sometimes not.

• Save a copy of the review and put it in your success file on your desktop. You should have one. Every author needs one.

• Remember it. That's why we have the success file. We are so quick to judge everything we do wrong and every misstep we make that we need to remember the things we do right, and this is proof that we have, indeed, done something right.

• Use it to motivate yourself. This is the gas for your tank for today and tomorrow. Let it take us where we want to go.

• Print it out and read it whenever you need to, and there will come a time when you will need to; when you get that bad review from someone who does not like a part of your book, they slam you with a one or two-star review. You'll have this good review to lift you back up.

• Share your review with your author buddy, your mentor, and/or a family member and let them share in this success. They were a part of helping you get this accolade.

Please share what you like to do when you get a good review and why it is we seem to spend so much time thinking about a bad review and very little on a good one?

Next week, I'll review Pubby. I believe I promised a review on them.

I'm also in the research phase of writing a piece on book trailers and teasers. If you create your own, I'd love to hear from you. What software do you use and where do you purchase music, source video, etc. If you contract out for this, who do you use? If you'd like to submit your book trailer for inclusion (either you created it or contracted it out), please contact me directly or leave a comment. Again, contact me if you'd like to guest write an article about this topic. Have a great week!