Quote:
Originally Posted by koland
Has anyone read any of her short stories on Kindle (or even anything from Baen)? What little has been reviewed on Amazon has overwhelmingly bad reviews (which could indicate bad writing or just hate-fans).
|
To be perfectly frank, I haven't read
any of these KDP things myself unless it's something I've previously encountered earlier like the Pulver SCA mystery.
As for 1 and 5-star reviews, I personally don't bother to consult most of them, at least not on e-books, because the ones on Amazon especially tend to be suspiciously fake-looking or pricing-grudges. And I refer everyone to
John Scalzi's challenge to his fellow sf/fantasy authors, most of whom have been nominated for major awards at some point, if not outright prize-winners, to post their 1-star Amazon reviews on their "best" works. Or perhaps more to the point, Charles Stross's unearthing of some
depressingly hilarious 1-star reviews on well-known and generally beloved classics.
The main criterion for ending up included in these posts (no, it's actually not Stuff I Find Relevant To My Interests, as one might think) is whether or not an author has at some point in the past had their writing thought of highly enough by someone who wasn't their friend/family/writing support circle to release to a wider audience under the aegis of said someone's brand imprint.
Admittedly, a lot of the stuff will be marginal at best (Sturgeon's Law strikes again!), but hopefully having been printed at some point will put that margin somewhere at the higher end of the "90% of everything is crap" cutoff because at some point, someone besides the author's mother seems to have liked their writing (which may have sadly deteriorated since then) and one of you might perhaps, as well.
In any case, I leave you all with
Bad Review Bingo, which I encourage you to play along with at home, especially when you find a negative comment about a negative review, especially if it happens to be your negative review. It's funny because it's true!
ETA: Sistla's actual reviews on Amazon may perhaps seem insufficiently stellar if one is used to seeing the hyperbolic 5-star BEST BOOK EVAR praise that normally gets attached to indies, but it does look like overall she's got a decent balance of 2-4 stars with reasonably articulate remarks which describe what the reviewer did/didn't like about the story.
Even the
2-star one here says that while her writing falls flat for the reader, it's okay on a technical level and has potential, and this
1-star one here simply seems to be a case of YMMV for the reader.