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I used to help moderate on a Yahoo group that was designed to discuss and promote romance ebooks - especially indie ebooks.
I'm afraid I got disillusioned as time went on. There's always someone out there who will say a book was "excellent", even when a basic read showed grammatical errors and the lack of even basic editing (character eating chicken soup one minute, stew the next, for example).
There were people who would come on the list and say they posted to various indie review sites and were proud that their site "never posts a negative review". "We follow the Golden Rule - if we can't say something nice, we don't say anything at all". More than once I'd hear that they'd pass a book from reviewer to reviewer until they found someone who liked it so they could post that positive review.
To complicate matters, authors were welcome on the Yahoo group. And it's just human nature to want to "be nice" to the people you've become friendly with. If you posted honest reviews, the authors would get defensive: "You don't understand - it's my baby", "you don't know how much hard work I put into this", "I don't care if you like it, [reviewer A] at [we-never-post-negative-reviews] gave it five [hearts, cups, cupids' arrows, whatever silly measure they use at their site] and you're just a [hater, a mean-grrl, a writer-wannabee (with was never true, by the way)]".
So I found a couple of blogs where they post honest reviews about the kinds of books I like to read. And I pay attention until I figure out which of the reviewers seems to like the same things I do.
Then, if they post about an indie book that is reasonably priced (based on word count), I might give it a try.
Sadly, on the whole, I've given up on indie epubs. There are plenty of ebooks in my TBR list already. I just got tired of spending money on crappy books (it is sometimes possible to post a well-written sample and still have written an overall crappy book).
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