Listening to readers

I do-listen that is.

Often I hear how authors refuse to read reader reviews because they only like the good ones & refuse to read the bad ones. OK, total agreement there!

But the irony there is that as a reader the first reviews I go to are the bad ones--are they simply complaining about the price? Was there a problem with delivery? Basically, are these complaints not about the book but something else? Is the bad review: This book sucks but with no backup to it?
Those are ignorable reviews. Nothing you can do about them and any reader scrolling through the reviews can see what they are for themselves.

Now the constructive criticism reviews: Those I love!

And those are the ones I listen to. In the year I've been seriously writing (concentrating on writing as opposed to letting other things interfere) I've found that no matter the level of erotica, the details, the description, that what I'm writing is still a romance. And people who read romances, be them sweet, sensual, or ménage, want the connection between characters. They want that love match-m/m, f/f, m/f/f, m/f/m, m/f, it doesn’t matter.

Love is love and let's face it. I'm writing romance. an erotic romance, a ménage romance, but a romance.

Now just because I feel that a critque is constructive it doesn't mean I'll alter my writing style to accomodate that one critique. It does mean I'll take it into consideration. I certainly hope that as time progresses my writing simply gets stronger and stronger. While I write erotica, it doesn't mean that the story aspect of the erotica is any less engaging than the sexual aspect.

So yes, I listen to my readers. And that's the reason it's taken me over a week to go through copy edits for Risqué my new Regency Ménage Tale. Because I want to make sure the level of emotional connection between characters is present, believable, and deep enough to show their love for each other.