As I was preparing to write this post, I saw this TikTok by @dylanwhitewrites that cracked me up:
The text on the screen says:
“When someone leaves a long, scathing one-star review…”
And the sound (that he’s lip syncing to) says:
“Wow, that’s a lot of words…”
“Too bad I’m not reading ‘em.” (As he closes his laptop.)
It can be very entertaining when authors make jokes about negative reviews, even if they’re not showing an actual negative review for their book. It reminds viewers that authors (just like you!) are real people who have emotional reactions when it comes to their reviews.
In addition to creating light-hearted TikToks around the author’s perspective on book reviews, you can also highlight your reviews, both the negative and the positive ones. In this post I’ll show you examples of both.
How to share negative book reviews on TikTok
As an author, it never feels good to receive a negative review for your book, but negative reviews also provide an opportunity for funny responses. Here are a couple of examples:
- Romance author @brookekfox posted this TikTok using a TikTok Trend to make a joke about negative reviews she and her co-author had received:
Text on the screen:
“Turning our bad reviews into pretty wallpaper posters”
“Impressed that so many people actually read and even liked this book.”
“It took two people to write this garbage?”
“Foul language, lots of graphics eggs, and no story.”
“It’s a good story once you get pass the fact the author has decided that a woman cannot resist a hot body.”
“In true enemies to lovers fashion, there’s drama, absolutely no communication, and there’s a whole lot of steam.”
- Fiona Lucas (@fionalucasauthor) posted this video showing one of her one-star reviews:
She also used a TikTok Trend to share this review. What she’s really pointing out is that the review is for something not actually related to her book or her writing (which is incredibly frustrating for an author).
The reviewer gave the book one star and says:
“Was not delivered to Kindle”
The text on the screen says:
“Customers giving your book a 1⭐ review because Amazon messed up the delivery.”
And the sound that she lip syncs to says:
“It is so bad, I want to give you a zero. But that’s not possible, so I give you a one.”
How to share positive book reviews
Whether or not you’ve received any negative reviews for your book, hopefully you’ve also received plenty of positive reviews for your book.
Here are some ways authors are using positive reviews for more TikTok content creation:
- Rachel Menard (@rachel_writes_books) posted this video showing the 5-star average rating for her book with 29 reviews:
The sound she lip syncs to says:
“Oh, my god. What is that? …Oh, my god. What is that?”
- David Pere (@militarymillionaire) dueted a fellow TikToker who posted a review for his book.
- Valerie Thompkins (@authorvaleriethompkins) posted this TikTok of herself holding a copy of her children’s book:
On the screen the text reads:
“What people are saying about my book:”
Then she phases in quotes from 7 different positive reviews for her book.
She lip syncs to the sound in the background, “I said thank you, I designed it.”
The more reviews you receive for your book, the more opportunities you have to turn those reviews into video content to share with your audience. As you connect with other authors on TikTok, be on the lookout for ways they are sharing their reviews. Take notes about the ones you like so you can do similar videos with your own reviews.
And, if reviews for your book aren’t coming in as fast as you’d like, you can always create TikToks like the Dylan White example I shared at the beginning of this post. Posts like this will help people get to know you and increase your following.
For more tips, see this post on 19 ways to promote a book on TikTok.
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