Warning: Ridiculously long blocks of text below. This is literally longer than a chapter. Why the hell did I write all this -_- There's also some minor spoilers relating to the book Steampunk Apocalypse!
Short answer: You get backlash because you're kind of an ass when leaving reviews. You provide little to no feedback for the author's improvement, instead opting to focus on attacking the author and the story.
The below reasons are probably why you have a hard time finding a compelling story.
1. You're an experienced reader. The more you read, the more similar things feel. Something that might seem completely original to most readers may seem cliché or overused to an experienced binge reader. I myself suffer from this, and sometimes unfairly judge books based on vague similarities. Of course, there's also books that are just blatant rip-offs.
2. You're getting a bad sample. Most of the original authors on this website are completely new to writing. In a few years, chances are that the original section will have many more experienced authors than today. This will raise the bar for quality for the top books. This is a bit different than RoyalRoad, where there's a good mix of experienced and new authors.
3. Building atop the above reason, new authors are going to make a lot of mistakes. Many new authors improve rapidly. It's to the point that I feel the 2nd volume of my book is literally several levels better than the 1st volume. This presents a problem since I can't rewrite some bad parts of volume1 due to the dependency future chapters have on it. I could drop the story and start over or start a new book, but that would upset fans. Plus, the author may just run into the same scenario again as he keeps improving. I think I'd like to use the Chinese author Er Gen as an example for this case. I Shall Seal the Heavens and A Will Eternal are both extremely popular and loved. However, his earlier books are much worse. There may be some translation issues affecting this as well, but it's easy to tell how significantly he improves with each new book and even within the individual volumes of older books.
With all that being said, I am of the opinion that there is no need for you to be thankful to an author. Especially for a story you don't like. But if you leave a bad review or comment, then some /authors/readers/fans may tell you that you should be thankful or will fire back at you. Of course, there are good ways and bad ways to do reviews. Let's use the review you left on my book Steampunk Apocalypse! as a bad example. (Note: I am obviously biased as the author in this case, but since I understand the book, it makes for a good example. Also, this is the only review below 2 stars I've ever been given.) Now first, I'm going to tear apart this review and explain everything wrong with it. Then, I'm going to completely redo it as a good example while pretending everything in it was true/accurate just for the sake of argument.
NippleGod's 1.5 star review on Steampunk Apocalypse:
"Not enough world back ground I feel like this is a mix of full metal alchemist world with the seven deadly sins homunculus but there called the seven nightmares. .... many stolen names and ideas from other famous creators shows that you could have just made up yourself to save the trouble. Literally have one punch man written word for word in your novel bro that’s just plain stealing. Forced plot of moving from one organization to another to fast no consistent power scaling literally everyone is at the same power level. Trash mc being put through so much stressed to further your plot cause you don’t know how to write a story just about him. Too many full metal alchemist rip offs what was the point of having all his arms and legs ripped off bro do you know what phantom limb pain does to you I don’t care how strong. A rapper is you should be going through something when you forcibly get your limb cut off.
Dad forced to die Cause no one orginization can keep him safe for long.
My advice to you is stop stealing sit down for a second and make your own story bro cause I’ve read it somewhere else"
The above is a bad review, and I'll break down why in multiple points.
1. A 1.5 star review means you likely only gave 5 stars on update stability. So right off the bat, you're setting yourself up for the author to not take you seriously, as the review likely isn't being made in good faith. For writing quality, story development, character design, and world background to be given 1 star is just ridiculous even if the novel is complete and utter garbage. You could argue some of these, sure. But to rank writing quality as 1 star? How horrendous would someone's writing have to be to do that? It'd pretty much have to be a story ran through many different machine translated languages.
2. Inaccurate claims. This is going to upset both the author and the fans of the book. The following claims in the above review are inaccurate.
A. Most of the comparisons to Fullmetal Alchemist. The story has very few, if any, similarities to Fullmetal Alchemist. The MC being named Ed and having a metal arm is the main one, but plenty of stories have characters with metal arms. The name was actually a coincidence, as MC was named after myself. His personality and combat style are not similar in the slightest. His arm is a steam cannon in the early chapters, and it's powered by a steam mana-core. His powers are slightly similar for the first 17ish chapters, but only if you're really looking for it. The fact that MC can melt and combine things is pretty different to the concept of alchemy. Not to mention the MC's powers are slow and impractical for combat, leading him to primarily depend on his inventions. All that being said, this is actually a fair argument to make given the few similarities and the popularity of FMA. However, the later claim of the world being similar to FMA is way off, as it has zero similarities to the Fullmetal Alchemist world.
B. 7 deadly sins. My novel has nothing to do with them. The 7 nightmares are elemental in nature and them being related to sin isn't even remotely hinted at.
3. Personal attacks on the author. See below.
A. The claim that the story has many "stolen ideas and names from famous creators" and "Literally have one punch man written word for word in your novel bro that’s just plain stealing." Now you're personally attacking the author and making an inaccurate claim. It has a single parody character in tribute to One Punch Man, with a similar name and similar looks. To top it off, the character isn't even similar to the original once we dive into his background and powers in later chapters. Several other characters take partial inspirations from existing characters, but none of them are similar enough for readers to know that without being directly told by the author. For example, the side character Dupe was partially inspired by Akumetsu despite having a completely different personality. If I hadn't told the readers that as a fun fact, they would have likely thought he was inspired by Naruto, the clone character from My Hero Academia, or the dozens of other duplication characters in every superhero story ever written. Every power has pretty much been done before, so this is pretty standard for superpower novels.
B. "My advice to you is stop stealing sit down for a second and make your own story bro cause I’ve read it somewhere else" Really? What's productive about telling a writer this? It's like you're trying to make new authors quit.
4. The rest of the review is fairly accurate as far as the first 17 chapters are concerned. There are some further details in a back-and-forth discussion we had, but I'm leaving all that out. Otherwise, this'll take forever.
So basically, you give a very low score to a novel, make claims that are very inaccurate, and then attack the author personally. Man, I wonder why you got backlash. Your entire review had a single useful line buried in the middle, which can barely be considered advice. It's the following sentence: "Forced plot of moving from one organization to another to fast no consistent power scaling literally everyone is at the same power level." That's the only useful thing you pointed out. Had this been pointed out sooner when I had first started the novel, this line would have been immensely helpful. Now? I've already learned my mistakes from the first 17 chapters. That didn't really tell me much of anything.
Woo. We've finished dissecting why your review sucks and why you get backlash. Now let's dive into a rewritten version of this that can be considered a good review. I'd like to clarify that THIS REVIEW WILL NOT BE ACCURATE, as I will be attempting to write it with the thoughts that NippleGod had in mind when writing his original review.
Reading Status: C17 Overall score: 2/5 stars.
Writing Quality: 2.5/5. The grammar is good. There are a few mistakes here and there. The main reason I've deducted points is because the writing flow/pace is too fast and choppy. The author needs to work on their pacing and to not rush things.
Stability of Updates: 5/5. The story is updated daily.
Story Development: 1/5. Forced plot of moving from one organization to another too fast. There is no consistent power scaling, and it feels as if everyone is at the same power level. The dad is forced to die because no organization can keep him safe for long. Many of these problems likely stem from the poor pacing mentioned earlier.
Character Design: 1/5. I feel the author takes too much inspiration from other works. He includes a parody character of One Punch Man which isn't at all original. Many other characters take inspirations from other popular superpowers/characters. The MC is named Ed and has a metal arm, which is obviously a Fullmetal Alchemist reference. The MC is put through too much stress just to further the plot. What was the point of ripping his limbs off? Does the author know how bad phantom limb pain is? It doesn't matter how strong the MC is, the MC should be suffering from it and that needs to be described. The author should try to focus working more on the MC's story as opposed to forcing him into bad situations for the sake of plot progression. He should also work on making the character more original in future chapters.
World Background: 1/5. The author isn't descriptive enough about the world. I feel like it's a mix of the Fullmetal Alchemist world and the seven deadly sins homunculus, but they're called the seven nightmares instead. The author should work more on fleshing out their world and describing it in more detail, while also making sure it's not too similar to existing works.
Now, let's dissect why this is a good review despite everything it said pretty much falling in line with your original review.
1. The scores are clear. Honestly, it's almost impossible for a novel to get a 1 star or 1.5 star review unless it's really bad. Even giving myself 2.5 stars on writing quality (which is really low for my story) still put me at 2 stars overall. Each individual section makes the problems you had with the story clear.
2. Suggestions. Each section told the author what the reader didn't like, what the reader thought the author could do better, etc.
3. No personal attacks. Even if the reader thought that characters were stolen from other works, there's a diplomatic method of saying it. If you attack something someone created or something someone likes, their knee-jerk reaction is going to be to defend themselves against the claim and return fire.
4. The world background section is still inaccurate. However, it provided advice to the author and opened the chance for additional dialogue. It can start a conversation such as, what similarities did you see between the 7 elemental nightmares and the 7 deadly sins? How was the world itself similar to FMA? Etc.
Honestly, dunno why I wrote all this. But people should keep in mind that original authors usually work hard on their stories regardless of how good or bad they are. If you want to leave feedback, then go ahead. But try to leave something productive. And if you're going to fling crap instead? Well, don't be surprised when someone flings it back. Even more so, don't go complain about receiving backlash when you threw the first stone.
