Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
So what? Let the author take it up with the publisher then. Typos and bad formatting might not be the author's fault either, and might be corrected after a review is posted, but reviews complain about those, too.
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You do realize that being an author is (at least partially) a profession, right? Bad reviews are a reflection on the writer, who will not only take a hit on this book, but might not be able to get a second book going because of them.
That's why it's important to put the blame where it belongs. And even if you don't care how it affects individual authors, consider how it affects the industry in general. Who's going to want to write an e-book, if their work is going to be maligned for things they can't even control? Who's really that much of a masochist?
Yes, self-publishing is an option, but that will inevitably lead to a loss of quality. People who self-publish can't usually afford good editing/proofreading. (I'm not painting all self-published authors with the same brush. I'm just saying that on average, quality will suffer.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
Again, so what? I could argue that this is a good thing, as if people don't buy, that's more pressure on the publisher to adjust pricing.
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Except, it's really not. They could just say "To hell with it" with the e-book version altogether, and save themselves some trouble.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
I really am not concerned that a bunch of one-star reviews are going to hurt the author's tender feelings. In any case, the reviews state why they are one-star--price, not content.
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The problem is that the main page at Amazon doesn't break things down that way. If you've got a list of books to choose from, you see the average star rating, not the individual reviews. It's not only the author's tender feelings at stake. (I assume most authors are fairly thick-skinned.) It's the livelihoood of good authors, and the health of the e-book industry in general that's my concern.
It's appropriate for price to be
a factor in a review, but if it's an overall review (which the Amazon reviews are) then it should be an
overall assessment, not just one based on price.
Personally, I would be in favor of preventing people who haven't bought an item on Amazon from even
posting a review of it. I think it really hurts the site's usefulness when you get a bunch of reviews (positive, negative, or neutral) from people who haven't even bought the product in question. That goes for anything from e-books to toasters.