Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the practice of giving a book 5* reviews merely on its announcement, for no better reason than that the reviewer likes the author. There's at least one of the book sites, and I can't remember which one it is - it may be goodreads or it may be a different one - on which this practice is widespread.
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Goodreads allows ratings before release, yes - as said by others, it's very handy for ARCs and eARCs (and usually for anticipated popular releases you can get dozens of actual pre-release reviews, sometimes months in advance), but GR has no problems with people rating books also for whatever reason they choose, and there's nothing wrong with people being excited and enthused about a forthcoming release by a favourite author.
GR star rating hints are guidelines, not rules; GR staff have said repeatedly that readers are allowed to use whatever rating system or reasoning they prefer - indeed, there are users who rate books they loved with one star, because for them, 1 = the best.
That's largely because GR is primarily a cataloguing and social reading / interaction place, not a bookseller - personal cataloguing is one of the primary functions of the site for many users, who catalogue books they have read or want to read and assign star ratings that have some kind of personal meaning for them (and have no desire to write reviews or interact with anyone else).
All this doesn't make GR star ratings pointless, but it does mean that if one is just looking for "well-rated" books to read, they shouldn't just go by the GR average ratings but check out any actual reviews or take a quick look at the top reviews. For pre-release books, it's very easy to immediately tell which ratings with reviews are from people who've actually read the book, and which ratings/comments are from those who are anticipating the book with great excitement (or have it one-starred for personal purposes of "won't ever read this" or similar).
It's a system that fits me just fine, but I don't really ever pay attention to average ratings anywhere anyway - if it's a book that looks potentially interesting, I'll first check if my friends / people whose tastes I'm more familiar with have read/rated/reviewed it and then take a look at a handful of top-voted reviews, good and bad, to get a better idea of whether I might like it or not.