Quote:
Originally Posted by MGlitch
I’d be curious to see what those authors would say if asked if they’d rather refund and get a negative review vs just one or the other since refunding is no guarantee they don’t review, nor is a retailer not refunding a guarantee of a review. It’s also somewhat presumptuous to assume all the negative reviews would be well written vs “This is trash!”. Judging from the Amazon reviews I’ve read that are 3 stars or less I think those authors are greatly overestimating the well written negative review counts.
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Too many variables to poll. And yes, that's right--no guarantee that the refunded party won't post a review; no guarantee that the "this is trash" review wouldn't show up, either. But such is the nature of entrepreneurial undertakings--no matter what line of work it is. Whether your endeavor is being a barber, or owning a restaurant, running a book design firm, or publishing books--your own and/or others'--them's the breaks, as they say.
People demand refunds, when their own failings caused an irreparable breakdown in the business-customer relationship (I'm dealing with one of those right now). People post bad reviews, sometimes unfairly. Worse, sometimes when they're simply utterly fake reviews, written by someone who is competing with you. Or, you screw up and you do owe someone some money. All those things happen. I've had all these things happen, over the last 7,000 books that we've done. Happily, I can count all those instances on one hand, but still--they
do happen. You can easily stretch those categories to encompass the author-reader/buyer relationship.
Here's the reality with writers--they can choose to continue to try to be trade-published and thus, somewhat insulated from all these decisions, thoughts, and realities--and take their chances that way--or they choose to become PUBLISHERS, which is an entirely different thing than being an author, a writer, a scribe.
If they choose the latter path, then they have to think about and make those business decisions, just like the rest of us. Just because what they proffer to the buying public is a line of work considered "creative" doesn't mean that their entrepreneurial endeavors are any different than anyone else's. Is the movie producer insulated from typical business demands? Do people hesitate to post bad reviews of a movie, when they're disappointed, just because the producer, the director, the DP, the actors, all "poured their hearts into it?" Of course not, don't be ridiculous. Is the art gallery owner protected from unhappy customers? No, of course they aren't. Nor is the publisher.
People
constantly make decisions, around things like returning books, based upon emotion (
"oh, no, the author worked their heart out over this!,") completely ignoring the fact that this same writer made a decision--an adult decision--that his or her writing was good enough, advanced enough, etc. to be a commercial product. Good enough for you and I to spend our money on; equivalent, basically, to trade-published books, fiction or otherwise. They went into this, as a business. They aren't posting their books on Wattpad or A03 or FanFiction.net, for feedback; this isn't Critters.org, for critique. it's a business. And it's a business, an entrepreneurship, into which they chose to enter.
Hitch