The 3% Rule: Why some of your book’s reviews don’t even matter

I’m currently reading The Indie Author’s Guide to the Universe by Jeff Bennington. A review is coming soon, but I had to step up and mention something he said. It struck me as something that needed to be shared.

He says 3% of your reviews do not matter. At all.

Bennington claims this stems from a little something called the 3% rule. According to his book, businesses use this rule to monitor their customer satisfaction. In business, you’re always going to have customers who will never be happy. You just can’t please them. So instead of trying to get your ratings to 100%, the goal becomes 97%. The closer you are to 97%, the better.

The problem? I can’t find any research on the 3% rule as it relates to statistics or customer service. At all. Maybe someone can point me to a hidden part of the internet I missed.

While I can’t prove his 3% theory, it does ring true to me personally. The fact is you will never make everyone happy. That’s just common sense. Some people really do just rate or review to be mean. I’ve seen it. It sucks for everyone involved, from the author to the readers. Is this rating method logical? No. Mature? Nah. Does that matter?  Nope. It happens anyway.

Let’s give Bennington’s 3% rule a chance, but as a theory and not a rule. I do like the number. From my experience analyzing reviews, it sure sounds right. So check out this quote from the book:

Businesses use the 3% rule to determine when it’s okay to let customers go, as in drop them from their mailing list, or to determine if [the company is] doing something wrong. In other words, the closer a business’s customer satisfaction rate is to 97 percent, the closer it is to perfect. The further away it is from 97 percent, the greater the chance it needs to make some changes.

Bennington claims authors can use this rule by evaluating their own customer satisfaction rate to see where on the scale they sit. If you’re low, you need to hire a new editor or maybe do a full rewrite.

But if you’re close to the 97%, you can stop beating yourself up over every low rating. Seriously. Stop it. You can’t please everyone…that’s what this whole post is all about.

To be honest, he wasn’t clear on how he did the math for this. He kind of skimmed over it, and I don’t wholly believe you should actually throw 3% of the ratings out of the equation like he suggests. Maybe I misinterpreted what he said, but I doubt it.

So here’s what I did:

Group your ratings into 2 groups: “thumbs up” or “recommended” (3-5 stars) and “thumbs down” or “not recommended” (1-2 stars).
Take the total count of the reviews in your “thumbs up” group.
Divide the value from step 2 by your total number of reviews.
Get as close to 97% as possible.

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I added a little equation for funsies, in case some of you are like me and need a visual.

The reason I’m bringing up this 3% rule/theory is to make you understand that you will never make the whole world happy. There are just some people who want to complain. Some people are “one hit wonders” and leave only one review—a negative 1 star berating you and your first born and all others unfortunate enough to share your bloodline. You know who I mean.

Do you get to respond to those reviews?

Don’t even. No. Don’t even start with me. You know better. You don’t respond to reviews…especially negative ones. Ever. Stay away from the drama. Breathe in, breathe out, and shake it off. Big kid pants and all that.

So, okay. Does that at least discount all your negative reviews?

Hell no. Many negative reviews have perfectly reasonable points that you should listen to if you want to improve as a writer. The key is learning the difference. Check out my recent post on this to see what I mean. You can also read this wonderful guest post on the subject.

With today’s entry, I want to point out that some people like being unhappy. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve heard of lately—even after watching the republican and democratic conventions—but it’s true.

I do recommend you get The Indie Author’s Guide to the Universe—mostly, though, if you’re new to this game and have only one or a couple books. This is an intro…a broad overview. But more on that when I write up the review. Give me a week or so.

Have you heard of the 3% rule before? What do you think of it? Throw your input into the pot. I’m looking forward to discussing this one!