The actual, real, honest-to-Dog lesson we need to learn here
One more comment on that poor disturbed self-pubbed author:
People will tell you that you need a thick skin to be an author, because reviews will be harsh.
And the response to that is often, well, why do they have to be harsh? (It's true, actually: there's no need to be deliberately cruel, ever.)
Here's the thing: you need a thick skin even if the reviews are not harsh. Even when they are kindly written and adhere strictly to the story, without making a single personal remark at all, and also without citing anything mechanical like your spelling or grammar that's faulty... Some of them are still going to be negative, because not everyone is going to like everything you write. And those other people with their other standards and their other tastes? Are entitled to them.
They are not wrong. They're just, as Waylon and Willie said, different.
From you.
Because they're not you.
And no matter how much you rail at them, they never will be.
So: a review is, in the end, the expression of the opinion of a person who is not you and whose opinion differs from yours.
There is nothing to respond to or argue about.
Okay?
People will tell you that you need a thick skin to be an author, because reviews will be harsh.
And the response to that is often, well, why do they have to be harsh? (It's true, actually: there's no need to be deliberately cruel, ever.)
Here's the thing: you need a thick skin even if the reviews are not harsh. Even when they are kindly written and adhere strictly to the story, without making a single personal remark at all, and also without citing anything mechanical like your spelling or grammar that's faulty... Some of them are still going to be negative, because not everyone is going to like everything you write. And those other people with their other standards and their other tastes? Are entitled to them.
They are not wrong. They're just, as Waylon and Willie said, different.
From you.
Because they're not you.
And no matter how much you rail at them, they never will be.
So: a review is, in the end, the expression of the opinion of a person who is not you and whose opinion differs from yours.
There is nothing to respond to or argue about.
Okay?