Quote:
Originally Posted by Catlady
So what? Anyone reading the review will immediately see that the reviewer was protesting a high price. What is so problematic about that?
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For one, the overall star rating for a review is an
average of all the reviews for a book, so that if you're seeing the book in a list of other books, the star rating you see doesn't have a review under it. It just has the average star rating. And even when you click through to a book, the first thing you see when you scroll down is a graphic of how many of each star reviews the book received. These create an impression of a book that is immediate and indelible. They're permanent marks against a book for what a) isn't the fault of the author (and thus, not the fault of the book), and b) is a temporary condition. The prices of
all books go down eventually.
If someone's already read the book, I can understand a review that says, "I liked the book, but I think it was too expensive for what it was", and to detract from their star rating appropriately. But to give a book one star basically means, "This book sucks a**.", and I can't see how it's fair or ethical to make a judgment like that without even having read it. It's essentially trolling, but worse, because it damages the function of the system.
And I would add: If the one-star reviews are so harmless, what's the point? The whole
point of the one-star reviews is to harm the book's sales, so to act as though the reviews are innocuous is kind of disingenuous.