Outch

2012-06-22 Daniel Book Information, Organizing Creativity 2nd Ed. 2

Nullus est liber tam malus ut non aliqua parte prosit.
[There is no book so bad that it is not profitable on some part.]
Pliny the Younger

After writing yesterday’s posting about the current status of the book regarding downloads etc., I had a look at the sites where the book is available to check for customer feedback. I got one customer review on Amazon — and I think “outch” pretty much describes (my reaction to) it.

amazon_outch

I’m not sure what to make of it — sure, it hurts, but that will pass (I have some reminders that should prevent lasting damage), but I wonder whether it is really that bad. The feedback I have gotten so far was (mostly) positive. One (self-serving) explanation is that the person did order the book without checking first that it is available also without having to pay something for it. But writing a review — and such a negative one — for that reason?

I don’t know — what do you think?

Update

I wrote an author review as an answer (after all, I am also my own customer as I always order one version for myself) and added a comment. The whole thing has one positive side — I made the book available here so that you can have a look before you spend any money on it. I think this is more clear now …

Update 2

Wohooo! I got another review, this time a more positive one: 🙂 🙂 🙂

yes-yes-yes

Thank you very much 🙂 🙂 🙂

Update 3

And another one by Luc — hey, thank you very much 🙂

yuppa

2 Comments

  1. It’s difficult not to pay attention to these kind of reviews. I wouldn’t take it too personal though (I know, very difficult if you put your heart and soul in your creative work).
    I think your broad and practical approach is useful for actually creating stuff. There’s no one solution to the creative process. One needs methods, tools and tricks to get oneself to produce stuff. As many as one can gather. I didn’t read your whole book, but I used it a few times as intervention in my own process.
    The review is probably more about the expectations of this particular person. He mentions positives things about the book, but maybe he was looking for something else. I wouldn’t pay much attention to one star reviewers (or 5 star for that matter). If you want feedback, aks people who you can thrust and are critical at the same time. You can recognize them by their non-black&white thinking 🙂
    Looking forward to your next post.

  2. Hoi Joep,

    thank you very much for your comment — I think you are right, it was probably an expectation problem. I tried to cover it in the introduction (creativity not a silver bullet and it requires a lot of work, which is probably something that is not that nice to hear), but of course, it is too late if the person has already bought the book. In the end, it reminded me to point to this website, so it turned out well. The second review also made things easier.

    Well, I spend the last weeks writing a project proposal and I reinstalled my Mac OS the day before yesterday, so I am pretty much ready to write a few postings again 🙂

    Thanks again and all the best

    Daniel

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