Quality over Quantity: Your Reviews

Do not gauge the quality of your writing by the number of reviews, but by the quality of the reviews themselves.

Kikurukina Bal Des'cagel
Advice!

Authors, you may have a lot of reviews on your review page for your fanfiction, but having a lot of reviews doesn't mean you have a good story.

If some of your reviews happen to look in any way like the following...

• "BWAHAHAHA!!!!! keep up the good work!!! teehee ya just ignore those flamerz! but UR GONNA WRITE MORE RITE?!!! well g2g! bye! ~*~*~ CHIBI-SAN ~*~*~"
• "WAHHHHHHHHHHH!!! you should rite a sequal!!! that rocked!! YOU HAVE TO FINISH THIS!!! DRACO IS HOTT --UR BIGEST FAN!!"
• "lololol!!! update soon plz!!! wat a sad story :( :( :(!! UR GONNA WRITE MORE RITE?!!! OMFG!! --.o0 me 0o."

You may need to re-evaluate what your reviewers are telling you, indirectly.

Think about it. Are any of your reviewers telling you anything that can help you improve as a writer? Who do your reviewers seem to be? Are they just people who eat your stories up as much as Twilighters eat Stephanie Meyer's books? (And you probably know how severely bashed the Twilight series is for its writing.)

If they are and you have a desire to improve, you may need to get outside help, such as contacting a beta reader or talking to the one reviewer who took the time to write an essay about how bad your story was.

Having a lot of reviews probably gives you a lot of confidence, and it can give you a lot of false confidence as well. As the saying goes: "Quality over quantity..."