Do Positive Only Reviews Sway Judging a Book or an eBook?

[Ted]

Should a book award organization ban the posting of negative reviews during the judging period in order to prevent any negative review affecting the evaluation of other judges?

As a judge, would reading a negative review influence your evaluation of a book or ebook?

The reason I ask is that after much consideration I've decided to resign as a 2012 Global Ebook Awards judge, because of the positive only reviews mandate by the organizers.

You can read my blog post on this matter here.

[Cheryl, Host of Miscellaneous and Newbery Clubs]

Well, imo, that award is now revealed as meaningless. Either all reviews should be visible to judges, or none should.

I gotta say though, I don't understand your review - you said "I didn’t feel I trashed the author, but felt the ebook “Would be suitable for readers age 3-5 if author used less words like hourglass, offshore, collided, trustworthy, encircling, etc.”"

Huh? Presumably 3-5 year old children are having the book read to them, and can learn the vocabulary words from the older reader. Please don't imply that books for small children should be dumbed-down! It's from reading books with cool words that we learn cool words!

[Ted]

Cheryl in CC NV wrote: "...Presumably 3-5 year old children are having the book read to them, and can learn the vocabulary words from the older reader. Please don't imply that books for small children should be dumbed-down...

I certainly don't want books for small children to be dumbed-down, for I always enjoyed reading to my son and having him discover the joy of words and pictures.

No book I read to my son, or to children in a library, contained 'encircling' or 'collided', but then that was more than 30 years ago.

[LauraW]

If judges are so easily swayed by negative (or positive) reviews, then they should not be acting as judges. IMNSHO. I should think both negative and positive views would help inform judgement and make the outcome more valid.

[Steven]

I'm not familiar with the organization involved, but in general it does seem problematic to include only positive reviews. It isn't just that it leaves out potentially important views, but it also shows a remarkable lack of faith in the ability of judges to think critically.

Cheryl's response makes the point perfectly: a reasonable person can read your review, think about it and then....disagree politely with one of your points.

One has to assume that the other judges could and would do the same.