What’s a critical review on Amazon?
Amazon considers a 3-star review a "critical" review
The Easter long weekend was a perfect time to burn through four of my KDP Select free days for my new book, The Ohakune Easter Hunt.
The result was over 100 downloads. This was a drop in the ocean compared to the numbers for two free days for Hot Silver – Riding the Indian Pacific in January. It was, however, a respectable number in a quieter month for book sales and for a title that had only been out for a couple of days and had no reviews.
The most recent review was from food and wine blogger Simon Gianoutsos, who gave it three stars.*
As you can see, Simon compared it to reading Bill Bryson and described it as “an ok read”. I’m not clutching at straws, I recognise that “ok read” isn’t the highest of praise, but it strikes me as odd that Amazon calls this a “critical review”. It isn’t my impression from his review that Simon would see this as an “unfavourable” review. (I’ll be contacting him with a link to this post so he’s welcome to correct me.)
It suits me of course for readers to be presented with a “most helpful critical review” that isn’t really critical.
Simon mentioned in the review that The Ohakune Easter Hunt is short, and I have had some issues with this and reviews in the past, particularly for In-Book Promotion. As I wrote in Why it would be better for some authors to be single:
The problem is that an expectation is created in readers by the word “book”. In the physical world, you wouldn’t hand someone a one-page document and describe it as a book.
The Ohakune Easter Hunt was designed as a 99-cent title. I think it’s worth it, but you can buy a novel for that price, too.
Both Ohakune and In-Book Promotion are carefully described on Amazon as short but I still wish there was an accepted term for an ebook that isn’t a book, so to speak.
I’m open to ideas but what seeing Simon’s review described by Amazon as unfavourable really made me wonder was what you think…
When you give something three stars (out of a possible five) are you giving it a “negative” review?
* I don’t know Simon but I’m giving him the link love because I’m grateful to anyone who takes the time to review books, especially if they do it when they like a book as well as when they don’t, which Simon does.
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