Quote:
Originally Posted by Shazza
Just had the first review of my book and I'm very excited! Grace Crispy from Motherlode gave me three stars. She caught the essence of the book, liked some parts, didn't like others and wrote a very thoughtful review.
I couldn't be happier.
Would love to hear the thoughts of ereaders on how much emphasis they put on reviews in general and starred reviews in particular. |
excellent understanding of how ratings based on a 5-star system should work rather than people equating it to a 10-pt/10-star system. Basically even a 10-star system should mean that an average book would rate 4.5-5.5 and in a 5-star system I would tend to say between 3-3.5 even though 3 is right in the middle.
I recently had an exchange on an Amazon product where I tried to get across that the constant need to gush over a product ruins the value of any rating system since gushing is basically using hyperbole in the evaluation of the average. To me if a product, in your case a book, delivers as expected, nothing more nothing less and I found it worth a read, then a solid 3-stars is what it gets. After that as my water-line, I add or subtract if I find a product better or worse than hoped or expected. Giving a product a "perfect" score for just doing what it is supposed to do dilutes the ability to differentiate the exceptional product from those which just do the job. Of course this is where the showing the entire distribution of ratings could be argued as important to useful evaluation of a given product. A polarizing product could engender lots of 1's and 5's which is why the average rating is often not all that helpful.
But I feel people in the current and past couple generations have been surrounded by the idea of gushing praise for the average or just for trying. This has resulted in their developing a somewhat distorted sense of achievement as well as value. It's one of my pet peeves about participation "awards". There is value in not being given a ribbon just for showing up.