It doesn't seem very fair, that you should spend five years of your life pouring yourself into a book that probably won't make you rich but at least makes you happy (in that "just gave birth after five years of labor") way, and some jerk on Amazon writes that it's a 'waste of paper.' While we all like to think we don't care what other people think of us, chances are, bad reviews will get a writer down. I asked a few that I know how they handle it when they get a thumbs-down.

Says Miles Harvey, author of The Island of Lost Maps (and former teacher of mine, "My wife is an actress who usually gets wonderful reviews, which she invariably dismisses with a shrug. 'If you believe the good ones, you have to believe the bad ones,' she always says.

"I used to think this was a bunch of thespian mumbo-jumbo until I started getting reviews myself. The Island of Maps got both great raves and viscious slams, and I quickly came to understand that my wife is right. You can neither permit yourself to believe you're a genius because one critic likes your work nor to believe you're a moron because another critic hates it."

MJ Rose, author of The Halo Effect, says "Other than get into bed and pull the covers up over my head, I only have on bit of advice. A few weeks before my first novel was published, my agent, on a Friday, asked me to make sure I read the NYTBook Review that weekend and to call her on Monday. When I did she asked me what reviews I remembered. I think I remembered about 6 out of 12. She asked me if they were good or bad. I said three were good, one was so-so and two were bad. She asked which ones. I told her. Then she suggested I look at them again. I did. I had gotten it wrong. The one I thought was bad, was fine. One of the ones I thought was good wasn't. The others were. The point being, all that I really remembered was that I'd read the reviews and remembered the book titles.

"Bad reviews sting. No question. I do try to re-read them a week or so after the initial shock has worn off to see if there was something indeed constructive in them. And then I forget about them. Even a bad review is better than no review."

And Kevin Guilfoile, author of Cast of Shadows, points out: "When you read all the reviews of the same book (and no one does this except the author) you realize how often they flat-out contradict each other. For example:

A. "(Cast of Shadows is) an always surprising medical thriller complete with elegant prose and well-developed characters." -NY Times Book Review

B. "Guilfoile's first novel impresses despite poor character development...and clunky prose." -The Cavalier Daily

A. "A gripping and original book that delivers thrills on an epic level." -Charleston Post and Courier

B. "Short on thrills for a thriller; the plot drives the character's actions." -SFReader.com

C. "(Cast of Shadows) jolts and tension are driven by character rather than plot." -Publishers Weekly

A. "Cast of Shadows is a masterpiece of intelligent plotting." -Salon.com

B. "(This) smashing idea raises all sorts of interesting questions, which Guilfoile proceeds to bury beneath story lines until it feels like at least three different novels." -Chicago Reader

C. "There's enough plot in this riveting book to fuel three novels. (3.5/4 stars)" -People Magazine

A. "(Cast of Shadows) seems to condone the 'righteous' murder of civilians while demonizing science." –Toshen.com

B. "In Kevin Guilfoile's novel about cloning, science, for once, is not the villain." –The New York Times

And so forth and so on. (Oddly, in a classic case of self-contradiction, the fellow who said Cast of Shadows had "poor character development" and "clunky prose" gave the book four stars.)

You can't control what people say about your book. Some of the people who talk about your book will be smart and others will be stupid. And sometimes the stupid people will say flattering things about your book. Then what do you do?

The only thing you can do is try to write the best book you can. And if you've written a book everybody likes, you're almost certainly doing it wrong."