I published my debut novel Poison in September and I’ve
been really lucky (and dropped a bunch of money!!) and have received a
good number of reviews. In the beginning, I was religiously watching as
the reviews came in and depending on whether
the review was good or bad my mood for the day would change
accordingly. Am pretty sure this is the reason why the doctor suspects
I’ve got a stomach ulcer. So a few weeks ago I decided that I would just
ignore the fact that I have published a book altogether.
If one of my goals before I turned 32 wasn’t to publish a book I would
have waited until I had more ready go as per all the advice blogs I’ve
read. I’ve stopped refreshing sales pages and Googling my book. For the
most part it’s super easy to avoid all contact
except on Goodreads.
I love Goodreads. It’s a great site for
readers and authors and the features are awesome…except if you’re trying
to avoid looking at reviews of your books. As a Goodreads author, every
time I sign on using a PC (the app is terrible
IMO) and click on the home page in the top right hand corner is a
summary of my book stats including how many rating and reviews I’ve
gotten. From there it’s a simple click to see what my overall star
rating is and how many people are currently reading my
book. I can’t seem to find a way to not see these things and as a
result I’ve pretty much avoided Goodreads altogether for the past few
weeks. Even going on there to post a review myself is fraught with
tension. Stupid, I know but one of the tiny ways I’m
trying to do to manage my craziness. So if you've tried to contact me on there, I'm sorry I haven't responded, it's not that I don't like you! What about you guys? How do you manage
to stay away from having an author meltdown?
