Why Bad Professional Book Reviews Should Be Ignored
the reality is that every decent book has an audience
I’ve been self-publishing since 2019 when my consulting business’s lack of income forced a Hail Mary effort to stand out from the crowd in my industry. We needed income badly.
Aside from the snide dismissal of self-published books as “low-quality,” the real crazy thing about this end of the book industry is that every one of us is like Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams.1 We are crazy enough to believe great content will find its audience with the right nudges and pushes.
And some of us have pulled it off.
My first book, Ramping Your Brand, became a quiet bestseller well beneath the publishing industry’s radar (still).2 It leverages industry expert ‘blurbs’ (not third-party reviews) and word-of-mouth from early readers who were fans of my daily LinkedIn posts exposing the truths glossed over (or actively concealed) by major stakeholders in the consumer packaged goods industry, especially venture capitalists.
The book sells about 3,000 copies yearly, steadily growing 10-15% each year since launch. It has surpassed the 10,000-lifetime sales threshold, after which my sources suggest a book will sell forever at some low rate. It brings in about $13K in royalties every year. I’m happy with how it turned out. The ‘trade’ would consider this book a minimum viable release, nothing that would get any marketing, PR, or support for a second edition. Not a failure, but a ‘big whoop.’
As an author-publisher, I am a business person as much as a creator. There is no contradiction here in my mind, only symbiosis. The alternative is to be a purist author unconcerned with their royalty checks. Great. Just not me. Authors should be paid fairly for the cultural value they create in modern culture and society. If Michaelangelo can demand payment, why can’t I? The elitist idea that authors should be content to starve for their art epitomizes a luxury belief postulated first by Dr. Rob Henderson. Only trust fund kids or the severely gaslighted could possibly believe this nonsense.
Remember also that Substack primarily exists to legitimize and enable profitable self-publishing. Yet, most top authors on this platform still use large publishers to publish their books. I still don’t understand this since producing a small novel costs no more than $10-15K.3
My position should be clear. I am a publisher, not just an author. I need the books I write to succeed commercially. I want them to succeed commercially. I also want them to be great books.
Ah, yes, but who decides what ‘great’ is in a genre? The NY Times? The National Book Critics Circle? The Pulitzer committee?
And why do so many excellent books (IMO) get shitty professional reviews? Even snidely dismissive ones?
Chicago Tribune review of The Great Gatsby by H.L. Mencken - 1925 - 4
"Scott Fitzgerald's new novel, The Great Gatsby is in form no more than a glorified anecdote, and not too probable at that...
This story is obviously unimportant and, though, as I shall show, it has its place in the Fitzgerald canon, it is certainly not to be put on the same shelf with, say, This Side of Paradise. What ails it, fundamentally, is the plain fact that it is simply a story -- that Fitzgerald seems to be far more interested in maintaining its suspense than in getting under the skins of its people."
ROFLMAO. Is this twit serious? Simply a story? Mencken was born to a factory owner, a grumpy member of the elite social tier Fitzgerald was pillorying.
The reason that professional book reviews often never agree on any one book comes down to the issue of audience. Audience is something that only marketers and social scientists understand well. Authors generally do not. At all. Many publishers do not seem to get the concept either. Elite authors may figure out their fan base after multiple books come out that have unconsciously pursued a similar audience. They won’t have a conscious audience understanding until they have had enough fan interaction to infer patterns. If they even care. James Patterson cares. He was an ad man once.
The fundamental problem with professional book reviews is that the reviewer is almost always NOT in your book’s optimal audience. Frequently, they are the opposite audience, the anti-audience for your book.
And every book has an ideal audience - one whose values, demographics, etc, all converge to make them highly predisposed to shout about your book on every rooftop. These are the readers who get sucked into your book and do not nitpick. For my forthcoming book, my core audience, right here on Substack, is women aged 25-40 and anyone who is a misfit in the modern, urban, middle-class (queer, neurodivergent, etc.). The audience is not cocky, confident white men who have had just one career, never been fired or divorced. I call them the ‘contented elite.’ The audience is not an old immigrant who sucked on the straw of ‘self-reliance’ and believes they created their current success by themselves. These two anti-audiences think American individualism is perfectly fine as a way of life.
Tens of thousands of consumer products’ professionals constantly obsess over audience measurement, definition, expansion, and, yes, activation. There is art and science to this. The recent four-year rise of Liquid Death into a $250M water brand based almost entirely on targeting a punk rock critique of middle-class conformity shows how well this can work for new consumer brands.
Audience obsession is how you build consumer brands AND author brands too. It’s high time that the world of book reviews comes to terms with what world-class marketers and Amazon already know - the power of audience affinity.
The second problem with professional book reviews is that most reviewers mistakenly consider themselves a rare, gifted ‘arbiter of excellence’ in their genre of choice. Excellence is a form of truth to these folks in so far as their definition of excellence becomes ‘true excellence,’ even though it is riddled with subjectivities and personal peccadilloes. This is how elitism operates in human cultures. Individuals seek out positions where they can convince others they are unassailable experts. Or they behave this way because they have certain positions.
Professional book reviewers are NOT objective because human beings are NOT objective when acting alone. Only systems and bureaucracies can help us shed petty human biases and approach something called objectivity. Professional reviewers work alone, like most authors out there. They are commissioned, lone agents of criticism.
In sum, the problem with professional reviews is their implicit desire to assess your book against some unspecified set of truths regarding ‘superb books in the genre’ instead of assessing the book against its stated intent and target audience.
Professional reviews unconsciously tend to review a book for an implied audience of elite, expert readers (and writers) in the media industry itself. This elite cadre is a wildly smaller group than its target audience, and eventual, lifetime reading base.
This is why Kirkus didn’t think too much of my business book, which has sold every single day since its launch to gobsmacked and enthusiastic readers sent to it by investors, agencies, competitors, and other founders.
NOTE: I’ve discovered that paid reviews are not much different than commissioned ones in terms of these dynamics. They are just as mixed, if not a bit harsher because the manuscript quality is admittedly lower for indie authors.
Early Reviews of My New Book Are In!
(I omitted the ‘bad’ ones, because they were clearly NOT my audience)
KIRKUS REVIEWS
- My Lead Substack BenefactorA cultural anthropologist offers his take on America’s self-reliant culture. According to Richardson, some key traits lodged in the American ethos, such as self-reliance and maintaining privacy, seem positive but have contributed to increasing widespread isolation; trauma lessens when burdens are shared as a group, but too often Americans are expected to find their own solutions. Sally, a participant in the author’s study, is a nurse mourning the tragic death of her sister. (Richardson uses research gleaned from a sampling of older Americans aged 45-74.) Her co-workers ignored Sally’s unhappiness until her volatile emotions began to affect her job performance. By comparison, Richardson’s adopted South Indian community (he spent time in the region conducting fieldwork as a student) gave immediate “comfort and censure” to a man who had developed a drinking problem, seeing his issue as the group’s responsibility. Family ties in modern America are weak and distant compared to earlier time periods and other cultures, the author asserts. Canada’s Nêhiyawak people have 17 terms related to varieties of cousins; in the U.S., most people have little contact with any cousins at all. Richardson observes that even minor-seeming issues, such as the ways we eat and have fun, contribute to societal disconnection. With abundant specialized diets (e.g., gluten-free or vegan) available to them and unlimited access to snacks, family members and friends often eat separately rather than sharing meal times. Recreation is a healthy respite from work, but the idea of fun has shifted—rather than involving social interactions, amusement now often falls to streaming platforms like Netflix, viewed alone. Richardson effectively uses humor and personal anecdotes—his dad becomes an ongoing joke—and the book’s charts and graphs are mostly easy to read. The author’s message that we need more collectivism to be healthy again is daunting for an individualistic society, but Richardson also provides glimmers of hope; for example, Gen Z seems to be a more collaborative generation than its predecessors, and Americans are seeking mental health treatment more often.
An astute examination of loneliness and isolation that sheds light, finds humor, and provides hope.
James F. Richardson has written an invaluable book for understanding the hidden costs of American individualism. This thought-provoking resource is essential for anyone interested in how the values of self-reliance and personal freedom influence everything from family dynamics to workplace interactions.
BOOKLIFE by PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY
Radical autonomy is terrific if you’re trying to escape something horrid,” Richardson notes in this incisive, illuminating debut, but in other cases the American ethos of individualism, especially as represented by the “overwhelming lifestyle choice of the modern urban world,” can be confusing, overwhelming, and anxiety-provoking, especially for young people finding their place in life. Richardson likens contemporary Americans’ 20s and 30s to a sort of Rumspringa, a time of “exploring opportunities physical, intellectual, and income related” without “significant structural guidance, coaching, (and even therapy) from the broader communities in which we live and work,” an approach that, understandably, yields “sadly unequal outcomes” that favor “neurotypical, white men from upper-middle-class backgrounds the most.”
An anthropologist, Richardson persuasively explores the impact that growing up and living in an increasingly “hyper-individualistic” society has on careers, family life, personal happiness, and more. He examines contemporary tendencies toward loneliness, weaker friendships, over-consumption, and the costs of the “freedom to ignore the past.” He does not promise academic rigor, and draws heavily on his own experience of neurodivergence creating challenges in navigating “the confusion and ambiguity” of shifting societal rules. But as he considers telling examples like the rise of potlucks, the decline of formal club membership, and the waning influence of elders on young people, Richardson takes welcome pains to avoid nostalgia, and he acknowledges when he’s generalizing. Richardson’s a shrewd, witty, sometimes outraged observer who urges readers to approach individualistic impulses more critically.
Richardson’s life and anecdotes from interviewees illustrate his most striking arguments, such as the peculiarly American brand of individualism feeding the belief that “failures, traumas, and tragedy (whether failed relationships, getting conned abroad, or old-fashioned physical abuse)” are personal outcomes whose social context “fades into the margins of our moral memory.” The book sprawls some, but the strongest sections—like a consideration of snack culture, the erosion of meal culture, and the rise of obesity—dazzle.
Takeaway: Sprawling, dazzling exploration of the costs of American hyper-individualism.
Comparable Titles: Robert D. Putnam; Peter Callero’s The Myth of Individualism.
Production grades
Cover: B+
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A-
Marketing copy: A
NETGALLEY - GOODREADS - 5 Stars
I’m an avid reader. I read 100+ books each year. Every few years I come across a book that stands out from the others. This is THAT book. Our Worst Strength, by James F. Richardson offers a penetrating exploration of the complexities surrounding hyper-individualistic societies. With meticulous research and insightful analysis, the book delves into the paradoxical nature of individualism, shedding light on its profound impact on contemporary American society.
Drawing on a rich tapestry of sociological research, cultural anthropological studies, and real-life examples, the author deftly navigates the intricate dynamics at play in our hyper-individualistic culture. Through compelling anecdotes and thought-provoking observations, Richardson reveals the ways in which the relentless pursuit of individualism can paradoxically become our worst strength as a society.
What sets this book apart is its commitment to balance. While acknowledging the benefits of individualism, the author refuses to shy away from its darker implications. By offering a fresh perspective on the complexities of hyper-individualism, the author invites readers to reconsider their assumptions on what is currently considered “normal” in our society, along with the repercussions of this “normal” state of being.
The book itself is a delight to read. Accessible yet intellectually stimulating, the author guides readers through complex ideas without sacrificing depth or clarity.
This isn’t a book you’ll read in one sitting. It isn’t meant to be. Our Worst Strength is a tour de force. Insightful, well-researched, and endlessly fascinating, this book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand American behavior in the twenty-first century.
There are a lot of poorly edited and written books that get uploaded to Amazon KDP every week. It’s a thing. But, my experience is that these authors are so unserious that they also won’t market them. In other words, the lack of commitment to professionalism gets rewarded with zilch sales.
Well-composed books that meet minimal publishing criteria of decent work can always find an audience. It’s the author’s job to make this happen. No better suite of tools exists for this than the internet.
My definition of bestseller is a book that sells every day for years and years (not 5,000 copies in the first month and then gets forgotten). This is NOT easy to achieve, yet it is not the path the top 100-200 books every year take.
It boggles my mind, but that’s a separate essay - to explain the deep mind distortion and sanctimoniousness required to remain exploited by these not-for-your-profit organizations.
Source - 12 Classic Books That Got Horrible Reviews - HuffPost https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bad-reviews-classics_n_6527638
Hi from your anti-audience!
Awesome ~ ~ !! Proud to have been of help way back then at least, and seeing it be so good now getting a lot of positive reviews. ^^