Re: Negative Comments On Your Books

I recently published my first book and was very excited about it. The very same day I received a notification from Blurb that someone commented on my book.

I was very excited and logged in to see the comment.

To my surprise (and disgust), a fellow "Blurbian" took it upon himself to comment on "how expensive the book was selling for considering  it was from a cruise ship".

Firstly, it was none of his business.

Secondly, no one asked him to buy it.

Thirdly, the images weren’t shot from a cruise ship.

Finally, I hope he felt better by trying to make someone else feel bad…….BTW…the images in his book were definitely not National Geographic quality to be sure.

What a jerkwad!!!

I would rate the photography in your book as excellent or better.  You cn be very proud of that book.

You photographs look great…

From my point of view there is no harm in activating the full preview. Thus you can create the same situation as in a book shop where people can look at the entire book.

 Is it possible to delete such destructive comments or is the only alternative to shut down comment function ?

I just had a person call my book a pile of crap. Kinda surprised as its been getting great reviews from everyone else. Larry you images look fine, and the design is very nice. Your preview is set to only a few pages, I wonder if having my preview on the full book is not a good thing. Hmmm.

Well thats why the delete key is there right?

I agree, but I was just kinda shocked that here, that attitude would manifest.

I think some of these people simply have nothing ever to do with their lives than get on here and do things like that. Sometimes their own books arent selling so hot & things arent so hanky dorry, so they get jealous when they see someone else has something good. Good for you for not letting him get  you down.  I wish you the best of luck and success with your book

And I’d like to go to Alaska on one of my future’s cruise trips.

For those who haven’t take cruise trip, perhaps that you should consider taking a cruise trip at least once. My regret that I didn’t take cruise trip years ago. Considering the fact with challenges at the airport these days, cruise is much easier to get around and travel and able to get around to many different countries just on one cruise trip.

My family and I took a trip on Mexican Riviera cruise on December 2007 to remote destinations from San Diego, California, USA, to Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlán, Puerto Vallarta, and along the seashore of Baja California in Mexico and then to San Diego. It was remarkable cruise trip I ever had experienced in my life. It was really nice and fun, as well as relaxing time… and had managed to shoot over 3,500 photos. It was the best thing to travel with family (and friends as well). It was fun, actually.

Anyway, traveling abroad is the best thing as ever. Once we get back home, then we have so many interesting story-telling about this trip… and photos I took and many people had made many nice remarks on certain photos.

Best of all, Blurb gets the most credit for making the self-publishing a reality for ordinary people like you and me. Please join and other Blurbarians take one’s hat off to!

Brian {a passionately Blurbarian}

So, I’m still confused.  If some goon makes an inappropriate comment on your book page, do you have the option of removing the offending text?

If you are signed in and go to your book via your home page or My Books you’ll see, just to the right of each comment, there are two options. Delete and Flag. The first deletes the comment. the second, I think, flags the comment for Blurb staff to review the content for non-compliance with policy/guidelines (e.g. offensive).

I haven’t tried either of these though so can’t say any  more than what I think they both do.

…..Tony

I have to agree Lee!

I think one of the major points in Blurb’s favour is their courage in allowing negative comments, as well as the positive ones, in the forums. Not many companies would even consider that.

I think the same philosophy should apply to comments on people’s books. But I have to admit to being somewhat biased, the few I have had so far are positive. Would I change my mind if I got a few negative ones? I hope not, but who can tell.

Though I’d have no hesitation in using the "flag" option if the comment was abusive.

…..Tony

Hi Tony;

I think we can agree that there is a clear distinction between the Forum and the Bookstore…

Like you, I’m on record as saying publicly, here on the forum and elsewhere, that Blurb is to be congratulated and supported for its ‘bravery’ in allowing a public debate; moreso considering that much of what’s on here is largely unjustified for much of the time!

The Bookstore though is another matter; that’s the ‘commercial’ outlet and should be subject to normal commercial rules! ‘Unjustified’ commentary is part & parcel of the commercial world. As I noted before, if all negative commentary were removed from sites such as TripAdvisor or eBay, the ‘rating’ would be farcical!

As an informed buyer, I don’t take much notice of comments such as "It’s expensive". That’s subjective; ‘expense’ means different things to different people…

However, a comment along the lines of "The images in the book are very poor quality and low resolution." or "The grammar is appalling; the author clearly didn’t even bother to run ‘spellcheck’…" would mean something to me, and I would not want to see that commentary deleted if it were justified!

Perhaps the better approach would be to enable commentary on books ONLY to those who have purchased a book; that would at least ensure that the commenter had a ‘right’ to leave a comment!

It is true that if someone made such a comment abouy your photos not being beautiful, then their comment is very shallow.  I do find it interesting that the author of this book is deleting negative comments about his book that deals specifically with the content and questions the accuracy of its conclusions – these are not shallow.  Robert James, why are you deleting critisisms.  You also stopped previewing all of your book after this article was released. Why did you stop previewing parts of your book. Any of you who want to read the critisism of his book can follow this link. The only way to decide is to read for yourselves.

(LINK REMOVED BY MODERATOR)