Five Starlets
This'd get me pilloried in the indie circuit, but who cares? I'm saying it, anyway:
The only five-star reviews that matter are ones you get from strangers. Those are the only honest (aka, objective) five stars; all of the others are tarnished by association. The five stars you're getting from friends, allies, family, and acolytes (FAFA, for short)? They're not for real, and are piled on simply to con unwary readers into thinking a book is worth their time.
I often see it when indie works pile up the five stars from FAFA, and then objective outsiders read the work in question and they slag it, usually commenting that they can't understand why XYZ book had all of those five stars. FAFA in action.
It's perhaps ego-gratifying for someone to pile up those five stars based on their FAFA network, and it's likely the main point of those efforts (beyond conning readers into thinking that publishing pyrite is true gold). It's dishonest, and that's what bugs me.
The indie publishing pool is a sea of five stars -- absolutely everything is earth-shatteringly fantastic, with the FAFA choruses singing praises to the heavens. Which (spoiler warning) diminishes the actual value of a five-star review.
It's hard enough to get readers to buy, rate, and review books to begin with, versus the FAFA set filling the room with false positives. Each time a reader gets burned by FAFA fakery, they're probably less likely to take the "risk" of buying books from readers they don't know.
Maybe I'm in a minority opinion here, but I'd rather have an honest three-star review than a bogus FAFA five-star review. Even if I had a reliable FAFA network, I'd still put more value on an objective stranger's five-star review than a review from anyone who knows me.
Might put me in the category of being an honest fool, but there it is. I'd rather be that than a charlatan and/or a manipulative fraud trying to game the system by means of FAFA.
Then again, from a deeply cynical/opportunistic perspective, if a reader is fooled into buying a book that's been rating-inflated through FAFA five stars, what does it matter if they're disappointed when they find that the book wasn't as good as they were led to believe it was? I suppose there's always the threat of returns. I don't know. The whole thing seems sketchy -- everybody jerking everyone else around.
All I care about is getting my books out there, and hoping readers find them fairly and enjoy them. Maybe that accounts for why I'm out in the weeds, versus maneuvering FAFA five stars to my advantage.
The only five-star reviews that matter are ones you get from strangers. Those are the only honest (aka, objective) five stars; all of the others are tarnished by association. The five stars you're getting from friends, allies, family, and acolytes (FAFA, for short)? They're not for real, and are piled on simply to con unwary readers into thinking a book is worth their time.
I often see it when indie works pile up the five stars from FAFA, and then objective outsiders read the work in question and they slag it, usually commenting that they can't understand why XYZ book had all of those five stars. FAFA in action.
It's perhaps ego-gratifying for someone to pile up those five stars based on their FAFA network, and it's likely the main point of those efforts (beyond conning readers into thinking that publishing pyrite is true gold). It's dishonest, and that's what bugs me.
The indie publishing pool is a sea of five stars -- absolutely everything is earth-shatteringly fantastic, with the FAFA choruses singing praises to the heavens. Which (spoiler warning) diminishes the actual value of a five-star review.
It's hard enough to get readers to buy, rate, and review books to begin with, versus the FAFA set filling the room with false positives. Each time a reader gets burned by FAFA fakery, they're probably less likely to take the "risk" of buying books from readers they don't know.
Maybe I'm in a minority opinion here, but I'd rather have an honest three-star review than a bogus FAFA five-star review. Even if I had a reliable FAFA network, I'd still put more value on an objective stranger's five-star review than a review from anyone who knows me.
Might put me in the category of being an honest fool, but there it is. I'd rather be that than a charlatan and/or a manipulative fraud trying to game the system by means of FAFA.
Then again, from a deeply cynical/opportunistic perspective, if a reader is fooled into buying a book that's been rating-inflated through FAFA five stars, what does it matter if they're disappointed when they find that the book wasn't as good as they were led to believe it was? I suppose there's always the threat of returns. I don't know. The whole thing seems sketchy -- everybody jerking everyone else around.
All I care about is getting my books out there, and hoping readers find them fairly and enjoy them. Maybe that accounts for why I'm out in the weeds, versus maneuvering FAFA five stars to my advantage.
No comments have been added yet.
