In this paper, researchers Jonah Berger, Alan T. Sorensen, and Scott J. Rasmussen scientifically demonstrate a truth that I’ve been asserting intuitively for years: if you’re an unknown author, negative reviews of your book only let more people know about you. And since most of us are relatively unknown, for most of us there’s no such thing as a bad review.

Some snippets from the paper:

I have been telling myself for years now that I’m good at rejection and that I’ve learned to take it like water off a ducks back, and I think relatively I probably do handle it okay, but my rejection/acceptance ratio is really starting to make me feel like a hack…

But the thing is, how do you really know you aren’t just lousy? I’m serious when I ask that question. Sure your family and roommates will say it’s good, but how do you know editors aren’t laughing at your short story and using it to line their garbage cans? Again, serious question. What’s the check? Is it the number of rejections?

The stories we write are part of us. Like children, we nurture them and raise them. We identify with them. Then we push them out into the world and hope that they make a good name for us.

This, I’m sure, is why some reviewers refuse to rate books that they can’t give at least 4 stars to (out of 5). They don’t want to break hearts. When one reviewer gave one of my books a half-hearted 3-star review, with comments on how my characters made no sense, I became convinced that she simply didn’t “get” it. Now, years later, I think she actually got it more than I had thought—rather I needed to dig deeper into my characters. Even so, I never got over that review.

Some years ago, when I was a fledgling storyteller still puzzling through the basics of what makes a story work (or not), I frequented a certain writer’s forum, now defunct. One of the writers there made it very clear that when we critiqued his work, we should be positively nasty about it. He didn’t want to hear anything soft and fluffy about how well he wrote, because otherwise how could he grow as a writer? Rather, he wanted to hear about all the stuff he did wrong. That’s what we call “having a thick skin.”

This is a common enough view in critique groups, although I don’t share it. I think that positive criticism can be even more useful than negative, as long as it’s constructive. That is, if you tell the writer what she did that particularly worked (rather than what didn’t work), you’ll be supporting her in her strengths. That’s even more important than helping her overcome her weaknesses, because we all have areas in which we’re weak. But a writer makes her name on her strengths, not her weaknesses, because her fans read her work in order to experience those strengths.

That’s a writer’s critique group. But you really don’t know how criticism feels until you get your first unfair review— that reviewer who doesn’t just dislike your story, but dislikes you personally. He doesn’t just disagree with what you’ve written, but rather thinks you yourself are a charlatan. And he may not have even read your book. Every author has gotten such a review at least once, and as soon as you do, you can say you’ve arrived. That’s when a thick skin really comes in handy.

Despite the thick skin, it gets easier to be criticized as much as it gets easier to be turned down for a date. In other words, it doesn’t get easier. You just get used to it— maybe.

Or more likely, you don’t.