Bad book or music review? Here’s how to recover from it

I was a guest on yesterday’s National Public Radio show “Talk of the Nation,” and the topic was “The Web and the Rise of Rotten Reviews” and how to recover from them, whether you’re a restaurant, an author, a band or anyone who is reviewed by anybody.

One of the callers was Debra Fine, author of the book “The Fine Art of Small Talk,” who said she got one bad review of her book at Amazon.com.    

Later in the show, after host Neal Conan introduced me, I suggested that Debra and another caller, a guy who’s in a blues band and got a bad review, not fret over just one review. Instead, I said, go to Amazon and start critiquing other books and CDs created by your competitors so that people who are interersted in those titles can read your review, which will link back to your own website. Post articles at Amazon. Create your “favorites” lists. And do all the other things Amazon lets you do.

All of them will help you generate so much publicity, I said, that the bad review will be just a tiny blip on the screen.

Don Mitchell and Randy Gilbert, who were guests during a teleseminar I hosted last year called “How to Turn Amazon.com into a River of Gold,” said anyone—you don’t even have to be an author or a musician—can take advantage of the 17 ways that Amazon.com lets you create fabulous publicity at its website. The three ideas I mentioned above are among them.