[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Hitech_luddite

I have yet to give a 5*review to any book on Smashwords. Like any cataloging system the 5* rating system popularized by recent editions of Windows, is reductive. There are a variety of criteria by which a book can be judged but in my experience the majority of people use only one - the plotline. They don't review the book, they rate the plot which leads to an unrealistically high rating much of the time.

I've recently read two books from smashwords with poor formatting. One was well-written, good plot & characters, and I believe professionally edited... by someone who's willing to put multiple lines of conversation in the same paragraph. (I went back to check the other formats; at first I thought something in the conversion process removed the paragraph breaks. I suppose it's possible that's what happened, but it's consistent across several filetypes.) I want to write a review but find myself unsure how to begin or what to say. Or how many stars to give a book when I liked the story itself, and found the characters believable & compelling, but the formatting kept throwing me out of the book.

Another book was... awful. I'd've given up at page two, except I couldn't believe it would stay that bad. I don't think I'd ever seen a novel that didn't consistently capitalize the word "I;" I was just fascinated by the sheer amount of misspelled words, bad punctuation, and erratic capitalization. It's the kind of bad I'd feel bad posting a 1-star review for because I suspect it's some teenager's first try at writing (at least, I hope that's what it is).

If you look at Smashwords reviews the majority of people write little more than a line, yet it is the review not the rating which tells the full story. I try to never write less than a paragraph, sometimes several, and when I read the reviews I look for people who have taken into account things like dialog, characterization, imagery and weigh their opinions higher than those who just say how much they enjoyed the story.

I agree, it is not easy to write a negative review. We humans are fragile things and our egos are easily hurt. I wrote a review the other week that took me half a day because I wanted to be balanced and reflect the strengths and weaknesses of the book and because it had received nothing but praise from all the other reviewers. Within an hour the author had unpublished the book. I felt extremely guilty.

I don't know if I'd feel guilty if that happened if I posted a negative review about the book I mentioned. It's awful. Really awful. OTOH, it's free, and the awfulness is apparent from the very beginning; I could potentially post a very simple review mentioning that it continues as it begins, and that's enough warning for people to know whether to bother reading it. I want to post something like "If the synopsis bothered you but you downloaded anyway (maybe you liked the picture), and you didn't like reading the first six pages, just walk away; no, it doesn't get better later. If you found yourself fascinated by the unrealistic characters and incredibly thin plot, and entertained by the random grammar, have as much fun with it as you can stand."