Just a thought: A new way to rate and list books

[Steven Lake]

Ok, here's a wild thought, and it's probably already being done, but I figure to mention it and see if it is, and if not, what people think of the idea. Ok, anyways, here goes.

One of the biggest complaints I hear about ebooks these days is how many really crappy b-listers there are out there, especially those coming from self published authors going through the big ebook sites. Right now there are systems that allow people to rate books based on the quality, and there's a lot of sites that allow samples, allowing you to decide if you want to buy the book or not.

Overall that's somewhat flawed in its perspective. Yes, the previews are nice as they allow you to see if the book is worth buying. But who's going to browse through thousands of previews just to find a few gems? It's like the needle in the haystack. Second, user reviews are somewhat nefarious. The idea of crowd sourcing might seem good in theory, but it's so one sided that it's not even funny. On top of that, it's easy to game the scoring system. I've seen it done far too many times.

Now, there is however a potential way that good books can be found easily and the lists can be shorted to only titles that score a certain number of points. Now yes, you're probably thinking "Wait, didn't you just pan user reviews?" Yes, I did. But I'm not talking about user reviews. I'm talking about professional reviews. Most people, when you talk about "professional" reviews, thinks of organizations like the NY Times, or LA Times or other papers and magazines that review books. I'm not.

There are several services out there classified as "paid reviewers". Yes, there are probably a few of you having seizures at the mere mention of something like this. However, bare with me on this. In my research for better marketing of my book I have actually run into a number of paid review services that you pay them, they review your book, and then give you a review. And it's not always a glowing review. I've seen some guys pay them expecting to get a glowing 5 star review only to get nuked hardcore and walk away with a searing 1 star lambasting.

So paid reviewers are beneficial, and there are a number of companies who do that kind of stuff that are very trustworthy. Now, here's where part 2 of my idea comes into play. The current reviewing system is a simple 5 star based grading scale. That really isn't very useful if you look at all the potentially reviewable elements in a book. From my personal experience, depending on the genre, there can be up to 10 primary elements in every book that can be graded. I say that each one of those needs to be rated individually to provide the fairest, most accurate review possible. Now for those wondering what I'm talking about, here's an example of the grading scale I'm thinking of.

Title: Todd's spaceship
Genre: Scifi
Overall Score: **** (3.0 stars)
Characters: **** (3.0 stars)
Plot: ***** (5.0 stars)
Editing: * (1.0 stars)
Ease of reading: *** (3.0 stars)

Now obviously the number of ratings categories could be more or less than that depending on the genre and type of book, but you get the idea. Anyways, each time a book is reviewed it would receive one of these expanded grading scales. A person would in turn need 5 professional reviews, either from a major media source (NYT, LAT, etc) or from an industry approved paid reviewer. Then all five (or more if you get lucky enough to have more than 5 professional reviews) are added up, as well as the individual balances of each of the subcategories to give the overall rating for the book. The reviews would then be stored in a nationally accessible database that can't be gamed by any one single party. Whatever scores you get is what you get. No more "fluffed up" reviews or cheating on/gaming of scores.

So how would this help readers? Well, fairly easily. First, there would be almost zero cheating, because sure, you could list only your 5 star reviews, and only from sites that gave your book a glowing review. But if it didn't have the "readership seal of approval" on it, everyone would immediately realize that your review claims are in question and would then look elsewhere. So it would ultimately force honesty from authors and publishers alike. I'm not saying that everyone's dishonest, but there are most certainly enough cheats out there to make the honest majority of publishers and authors look bad.

Second, when searching for a book, you could tell the search engine you're using (that follows this ratings system) "I only want books with 5 stars in the sci-fi genre." Automatically my example above would be eliminated from the list of results. But if you said, "I want books that are 3 stars or higher", it would appear. Now you could also say, "I don't care what it's overall score is, but I only want books which scored at least a 3.0 or higher for editing. Again, the above would get red flagged, but not setting a threshold for editing quality would allow it to show. So in the grand scheme of things the new system would be completely fair (or at least it should be) to authors, publishers, and readers alike.

Third. Another benefit of this system is that it would immediately level the playing field for every single author out there. (So, uh, yeah, my idea would likely get killed dead on arrival, shot point blank through the head by the big five as they wouldn't want that, even if everyone else did as they would lose their advantage of being one of the big five) Authors, regardless if they were BHP or SHP, or even self published, would have equal standing across the board. Bad novels, no matter their source, would get pushed to the bottom of the list and relatively ignored (which, given some of the titles I've seen out there from BHP all the way down to SP and Indie, would be a blessing) whereas all the gems would float to the top. I think a ton of really good authors, especially the ones self publishing, SHP, and indie publishing would really benefit most from this.

On top of that it would benefit the readers immensely, and it would make it easier to find really good titles, thus ending the "OMG my eyes are melting" syndrome caused by accidentally reading a crappy book. Also, knowing that you're almost guaranteed to get a great book every time would further boost readership as it would encourage more people to read. Another advantage, if this system could somehow be centralized, would be that publishers and/or authors couldn't lie about the quality/rating of their books because everything would be searchable. If someone ended up getting a bad book after this system was put in place, it'd be their own fault, as all the info to pick the right books would be available to them at the click of a mouse.

Now, as for how this would be pulled off, or how it would be managed to ensure that the system remained fair and wasn't gamed, I'm not sure. That's a logistics thing, and I leave stuff like that to others. But anyhow, my long winded rambling is done, and my core idea has been presented. You are now free to like it, hate it, comment on it, our outright rotomill it if you think it sucks. I'm merely presenting an idea in hopes that it might grow into something that would ultimately benefit everyone. I don't claim to be right in any respect (I actually find myself being wrong more than right these days), however if one doesn't speak their mind, then how do we know if their idea is truly genius, or not? It's like the old saying, "You can't help someone if you don't try."