Reviews, Are They Useful?

I apologize for not having a proper ‘Wednesday Brief’ to post, but life – better known as ‘lil q, Easter and a bit of a cold – got in the way and sapped my creativity.  I’ll do my best to resume next week and there after.  But since this is a group I belong to, I wanted to be able to promote those good souls who managed to keep with it.  Those flashers are listed as usual, at the end of this post.

In addition to the Wednesday Briefs, I belong to a few author groups. One of the themes lately has been reviews. Good, bad, or just maybe not really a review at all. Different people have different positions on reviews, but I’ll admit that I read and react to reviews.  I like good ones and I don’t like bad ones.  That said, well written critical reviews do have some benefit. The trick, for me, is to look past the disappointment to find those benefits.

I’ve also noticed a pattern. On open post sites – those where authors post stories that can be read for free – the reviews tend to be almost uniformly positive.  Negative ones can result in the reviewer being torched a bit. If you think about it, this would make sense. The authors are providing a free service and the readers would want that service to continue. The downside is it can lead to the ‘naked emperor’ syndrome – where the author believes all the ‘good press’ and doesn’t think there are any areas they can improve on.

On sites like Amazon or Goodreads, there is a much broader spectrum of reviews/ratings/comments, from gushingly good to attackingly awful.  That is to be expected and also makes sense. You can’t please everyone. But it is in that diversity that my questions arise. How useful are reviews to a reader in choosing to buy a book?  I’d like to see if I can’t generate a bit of feed back from readers (authors/readers included) on the usefulness of reviews and ratings so I’ll do a bit of an impromptu contest outlined below.

For me, as an author, I want as high a rating as I can get – it’s a confidence [dare I say ego] boost to be sure.  And we all “know” that higher is better – right?  Right?  Maybe, maybe not.

Do textless ratings sway you? Do snarky reviews from people you don’t know scare you off? Do gushing reviews from people whose taste in books you don’t know make you want to buy the book?

I’m a ‘facts’ person. I love to look at things and see if I can’t find a connection.  It’s part of being a lawyer/prosecutor I suppose, but I’ve always been this way. I’ll track things, kick the tires, look under the hood – you get the idea.  So let me give some anecdotes to grease the wheels.

One book I was interested in had 8(eight) 5 star reviews a month before the book came out. Really?? One was from the author, another from the publisher, and 5 others from what would appear to be family and friends who didn’t offer so much as a word of explanation. (One had a detailed review) At least two of these ‘ratings’ were from people whose only rating was this book. Hmm.  Last I checked – and it’s been a while – this book only had 14 ratings – of which 7 were what I’d call too biased to be of any use.  Were those ratings of any use to anyone? Was anyone swayed by the books ‘high’ rating and never looked any closer?

Okay, so ‘naked’ ratings aren’t that helpful, but what about gushing reviews from people you don’t know? I understand that in the Amazon age, the ‘citizen reviewer’ is supposed to be more reliable as these are people ‘just like you or me.’ But fake, for purchase reviews aside, is that really true?  Does Joe in Kansas really care what Sara in Rhode Island thinks when they’ve never met?  I suppose here, the value is more long term.  Readers can find reviewers who’ve read books the reader has, and then they look for patterns. I liked book “A” so did this reviewer, I thought book “B” sucked so did they. Then you can see what else this reviewer likes and used that to weigh buying it or not. At least that’s how I am. But in general, do you find reviews from people you don’t know useful? Or do you look at them all with a suspect eye – i.e. these are either written by the author using a different account, or they are close friends and family?

Another question is ‘rating inflation.’  One thing I’ve noticed – and I admit to being guilty of it myself – is that many authors do not give low ratings – ever.  Makes sense because what the rater giveth, the receiver can giveth as well.  Given how simple it is to open a ‘reader’ account, an author who received a low rating could easily rate the reviewing author equally low or lower (if possible). Never mind their friends and supporters. For me, if I can’t say something good or in all honesty give a book a decent rating, I don’t rate/review it. This leads to a very high average for the books I’ve rated.  Being totally honest, I doubt there are too many 5 star books out there. a 3 or 4 should indicate the book is worth buying. But when authors can ‘collect’ seven 5 star ratings before their book has been finished, the clear pattern is for friends and family to dap the book up. Using me as an example, I’ve only rated 10 books and my average rating is 4.9. how useful is that? Have I never read a bad book? Of course I have, but if you didn’t know me and didn’t know I only rate books I like, would my rating – even with a written review- be of any value to you?

Contrast this with a 3 star rating I received from someone this week. At first blush, he probably didn’t like it much, right? But his average rating is 2.71. meaning out of the 1600 plus books he’s read and rated, mine is better than the average book.  Is this 3 star rating from him better than a 5 from me?  The real inches vs. web inflation debate. [some of you will get that reference. ] So do you focus on absolute numbers or do you take them in context?

Along the lines of numbers to look at – I read a blog post that said the rating given wasn’t as important as the fact that someone gave you a review/rating because it shows they read it.  Good point. Here’s a tale of two books I read recently. Both were okay in my mind. One has a Goodreads rating of 3.79 from 600+ ratings. Of those 600+ ratings more than 125 were 5 stars.  The other book has a rating of 4.27, but from less than 90 reviews.  Which is better? At least 125 people liked the first book well enough to rate it a 5, which is more than all the people who thought enough to leave any rating for the second.  So, again, what matters more? A high absolute rating or a lower rating but a higher absolute number of positive reviews?

Last there are reviews from ‘review sites.’ In theory, these are people who have an interest in being fair and even handed. Yet here too, opinion vary – wildly. Much like the ‘citizen reviewers’, these reviewers each have their own likes and dislikes that earn them a following. So are these sites/reviews the holy grail of ratings for you? Or do you just read them for entertainment and sometimes use them to start your ‘research?”

So, what do readers think?  {And authors, take off your author hats if you can and think like a reader} Do you find reviews helpful? What about average ratings? Overall number of positive reviews? Do you look for people whose opinions you trust and rely on those? Or is there something else you find helpful in reviews?

To give you all a bit more incentive to comment, I’ll give away a copy of either The Last Grand Master or (Un)Masked to one person who comments, drawn at random. To enter, you need to leave a comment telling me whether or not you find reviews, rating, comments, whatever, helpful.  If you don’t read the reviews but focus on the synopsis, or whatever, that’s fine too, so long as you leave it in the comment section.  Remember to leave your email address so I can contact you if you win. I’ll pick the winner on Monday April 8th at 8 pm, Washington, DC time.

Now, don’t forget to check out the briefs of these authors who are giving it away for free:
Lily Sawyer

Cia Nordwell

MA Church

Julie Lynn Hayes

Nephylim

Legalese. Each person who comments will be assigned a number based on when the comment. So first person is “1″ next person is “2″, etc.  I’ll use Randomizer.org to pick a winner. I’ll email you if you win and you’ll need to email back and let me know which book if any you want. If you don’t want to be included in the give away, you can say so in your post or let me know when I contact you. If you decline the book, I’ll pick another winner.