Go to amazon.com and check out a bunch of articles that you’ve been planning to buy. Or perhaps, the stuff that you have already purchased in the past month or so.
Now, check out the reviews. If you’re like me, you will go for products with the highest average rating and the most number of reviewers. If that’s not you, don’t worry, this experiment is nearly universal.
Check out the one and 2-star ratings if you’re still with me. Go through them; I will wait.
How do you feel about the product you’ve purchased or are about to buy? Doubtful? Or perhaps, you already think you (almost) made a mistake. The good news is that this is normal.
The bad news is this — the haters will always be louder, and there’s no way you can avoid them.
Now, I buy many books, so it’s natural for me to check the reviews, including the one and 2-starred ones, to see what they hated about the book. And 90% would give a book a bad rating for stupid things that don’t even matter. The remaining 10% might have a point or two, which almost a 100% do not affect my decision to purchase that book.
Yet, if someone were to rely on the bad ratings entirely, they might not buy the book. Likewise, if authors were to rely on the one and 2-star reviews, they wouldn’t ever write a book again. Heck, the overly sensitive ones might even pull their books off the shelves! What a waste!
Of course, I believe reviews have a place when it comes to feedback, but how valuable is this feedback? I am yet to meet an author who says, “wow, that 1-star review on Amazon for my 1st book changed the course of my writing career.”
I heard Robert Greene once say that if you have a million followers, 100,000 of them will follow just because they get a kick out of trolling you. That’s all they know — to hate you for reasons that might not ever be clear to anyone. Not even the haters!
And if that’s the case, why would you ever pay attention to the haters? They will always be louder if you allow them to be. The best way to shut them down is to ignore them and focus on the 90% who appreciate what you do.
When it comes to haters, ignorance is bliss.