Authors who read mean book reviews will make you feel better about your own writing

If you like watching celebrities read mean tweets on Jimmy Kimmel liveyou will love this video of authors reading mean book reviews. Compiled by The year we turned forty authors Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke, the video features 12 female writers sharing some of their worst reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. At the very least, you’ll be glad no one ever said anything like that about your writing.

For some people, leaving a negative review on a book is a way of sticking it to the author. It says, Ha! Take that, author whose book I hated. That’ll teach you to waste my time. Ha!

I can understand that it makes the reviewer feel good, but it really doesn’t make sense.

You see, bad writers don’t waste our time with their books, unless they force us to read them, A clockwork orange – and then they did something much, much worse. We almost always have the option of putting the book down and doing something more enjoyable and productive with our time instead.

Even if you DNF you get out of one of the worst books you have ever read, you can always leave a constructive comment explaining why you did not like the book. You can even quietly pull it off your Goodreads shelf and decide not to see it again at all. For 12 examples of what not to do when you’ve read a terrible book, check out Fenton, Steinke and the rest of these authors reading their book reviews below.

Image: Liz Fenton/Youtube