Criticism vs Critique: How a Self-Published Author Handles Reviews and Markets a Book

Richard Lowe, The Writing King, joined Robert Plank on the Marketer of the Day show for a wide-ranging talk about the parts of an author’s life that have nothing to do with the writing itself, surviving reviews, beating the block, and getting a self-published book in front of people. The sharpest stretch is his distinction between criticism and critique, and what to do with each.

Robert: What has you excited these days?

Richard Lowe is The Writing King, a professional ghostwriter and author who has written 113+ books under his own name and ghostwritten 54+ more for clients.

Before writing full time he spent 33 years in enterprise IT, including two decades as Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s.

DISCUSS YOUR BOOK

Full transcript of the conversation follows.

Coaching a Fortune 50 executive through “Digitize or Die”

Robert: What has you excited these days?

Richard: I just wrapped a book coaching project with a senior vice president at a Fortune 50 company in France. His book, “Digitize or Die,” is about the Internet of Things and what it’s doing to companies. You can see the effect already, Sears and Kmart going down the tubes, and the book explains why, if you’re a big company and you don’t want the same fate, you’d better understand what’s happening. As a writing coach I provided the writing expertise; he’s French, so I helped with the language and proofreading, built the chapter structure, and coached him on citing sources. It’s a long, involved process, a little easier than ghostwriting, where I’d write the whole thing myself. Here he did most of the writing and I helped him get it right.

How he plans the work, and the 45/15 rule

Robert: What’s your schedule like?

Richard: At the start of each week I map out the whole week, and that plan lasts until the first day starts. All plans are good until they begin being executed, an old military idea. So each morning I plan the day, block out two or four or eight hours for what’s due, and leave some slack because things run long. I also use a 45/15 rule: write for 45 minutes, then get up for 15, because writers spend all day on their backside and you’ll wreck your back if you don’t move. Walk the block, go look at the birds. Building that into the day keeps me producing.

Beating the block

Robert: Do you ever hit writer’s block you can’t get past?

Richard: Less than most writers, for two reasons. First, I have so many projects that if one stalls I just switch to another. Second, if I’m truly stuck it usually means I’ve got “square eyes” from staring at the screen and I need to get outside for an hour. But there’s a sneakier cause: a covertly negative comment that lodges in the back of your mind. If it’s overt, you see it and deal with it. If it’s covert, it just sits there and gums up the works, and the fix is simply to spot it: “Oh, that’s the comment that’s bugging me.” Name it and the block clears.

Criticism versus critique

Robert: Could you give an example?

Richard: A beta reader who returns no comments, or just “it was okay,” or a deep sigh and “I liked most of it except this part.” It reads as lukewarm-positive but it’s really a backhanded jab, and it’s useless because it’s so general. That’s the difference between criticism and critique. Critique is “this character is poorly constructed, here’s why, and here’s how to fix it.” Criticism is “your characters all suck”, general, with nothing you can act on, which just drops you into despair. On Amazon I’ll get a one-star review that says only “the book sucked.” Well, what sucked? Virtually no book is worth one star; that says it isn’t worth the paper. Every author gets those.

Robert: There’s nothing specific to go back and improve.

Richard: Right. My dad’s advice when kids picked on me at school applies: grow up, it happens. There are malicious people, and a review like “this book is suitable for charcoal” is malicious because it’s useless, to the reader and to the writer. You ignore it. The skill is noticing it had an effect on you, that it’s the thing that stopped you writing for an hour. Once you see it, you’re fine. But sometimes a negative review is genuinely useful, one in forty will explain exactly how a character failed, and I hate it and I use it for the next book. That’s what a review should do, even a negative one: tell the reader why, so they can decide whether the book is for them.

Fixing books based on reviews

Robert: Do you fix your books based on reviews?

Richard: Often. If I can, I’ll contact the reviewer privately, sometimes publicly, and ask whether they’ll update the review if I fix the issue. It’s an interactive model you couldn’t have before. Someone catches a grammar slip, I feel embarrassed, and twenty minutes later it’s re-uploaded and fixed. With a traditional house you had a year-long cycle and 50,000 printed copies sitting in a warehouse; you couldn’t reprint.

“How to Make a Living as a Professional Self-Published Author”

Robert: Tell us about your book.

Richard: It’s about 250 pages, the first of three, and it runs from idea to publishing and the start of promotion, everything I’ve learned doing this. Brand yourself as an author, build a blog or website, start a mailing list, the things authors skip because so many of us are introverts. I was one. Volume two is how to promote your book; volume three is what to do when it isn’t selling, fix the cover, fix this, fix that, until you finally decide it never will. About 90% of it applies to fiction as well as nonfiction. The point is the overview of making a living at this, because I see authors struggle, and they struggle because they write a book and expect it to sell. Unless you’re lucky or riding someone’s coattails, it won’t. The online courses promising a book in 90 days and a thousand a week are lying. You have to do the work.

Build the brand before the book: market, don’t sell

Robert: Do you have a favorite approach to promoting books?

Richard: Start with your author brand, because people have to trust you before they’ll buy. Before you even begin writing, build that trust line: put out chapters, get to know reporters, influencers, mentors, and coaches. When people know, like, and trust you, a new book sells itself, the way Stephen King’s or J.K. Rowling’s fans buy on sight. It works in fiction too; if Mike Resnick publishes, I buy it, I’ve got a hundred of his books, because I trust the experience. And the key is to market yourself, not sell yourself. My posts aren’t “buy my book”, they’re helpful two-paragraph tips and graphics. I have a 6,000-word blog on SEO for authors that’s free and sells nothing; it builds trust, and trust is what eventually sells the books. You have to be a marketer, not a salesman.

How one LinkedIn article pulled 50,000 views

Robert: Tell us about LinkedIn articles.

Richard: They’re very worth doing, because LinkedIn promotes them if they match the right keywords. Back when I was Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s I’d seen countless resumes, so I posted a 300-word article on resumes. My posts were getting 50 or 60 views; the next day this one had 10,000. “Resumes” was a hot keyword at the time, and I’d posted it to all the HR groups. Hundreds of comments, most negative, telling me I knew nothing, and I didn’t care, because it pulled several hundred new connections and friendships from one article. By the time it settled it had over 50,000 views. Find the right keyword, post to the right groups, and LinkedIn does the rest. It beats just posting a link.

The one mistake every struggling author makes

Robert: Is there a universal mistake authors make?

Richard: We’ve said it: they write the book and expect it to sell. They don’t get trained on marketing, they don’t connect with influencers or coaches or mentors, and they never build a brand, so the books don’t sell. You can find me at thewritingking.com, and at masterofworlds.com, which lists all my books, including the self-published-author book, the networking book, and my LinkedIn bestseller, Focus on LinkedIn.

Find Richard Lowe at TheWritingKing.com.

Quotable moments

Frequently asked questions

What’s the difference between criticism and critique?

Critique is specific and useful: it names what’s wrong and how to fix it. Criticism is general and often malicious, like “your characters all suck”, giving you nothing to act on. Authors should mine critique and ignore pure criticism.

How should an author handle negative reviews?

Ignore the malicious, useless ones, and use the specific ones to improve the next book. The real skill is noticing when a covert jab has quietly gotten into your head and is blocking your writing, then naming it so it loses its grip.

Can a self-published author fix a book after it’s published?

Yes, almost instantly. Richard updates titles based on useful reviews and re-uploads a fix within minutes, then asks the reviewer to take another look, something impossible in traditional publishing’s year-long, warehouse-of-copies model.

How do LinkedIn articles drive traffic?

LinkedIn promotes articles that match popular keywords. One 300-word post on a hot keyword, shared into the right groups, pulled Richard over 50,000 views and hundreds of connections, far more than simply posting a link.