Quote:
Originally Posted by Muckraker
How often are we truly unfamiliar with an author though? Everything we need to get familiar is right there for the taking. Amazon reviews and customer ratings, sales ranks, writer blogs, forums, and--most importantly--the ability to preview a good chunk of whatever book you are thinking about buying.
It's only really a shot in the dark if you don't make use of these resources. The instant we see that a book has 100 reviews and a four star average, though, we can't claim to be unfamiliar anymore.
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For me, there are several problems with your suggestions.
First, one has to trust Amazon reviews. (I guess even before that, one has to go to Amazon, which is something I do not do.) But I see no reason to trust anonymous reviews. Besides, I have, in the past, bought ebooks with 4- and 5-star reviews only to wonder what idiots gave the books so many stars. The books were riddled with errors and clearly unedited. All it proves is that the reviewers are no more knowledgeable than many of the writers about grammar and language.
One hundred reviews or even 1000 reviews doesn't make a book good for you or me. At best it indicates that the reviewers liked it, but they may well like, for example, sexually explicit prose whereas you and I might not. In addition, reviews that read "great", "good", "best book ever" are not particularly meaningful, just as 1-star reviews that are really complaints about pricing rather than content but not disclosed as such are meaningless.
Sales ranks are meaningless. Because a book is highly ranked doesn't mean it is anything more than appealing to popular culture. Have we so suddenly forgotten how highly ranked in sales the book was that had all blank pages?
None of the suggested avenues really familiarize a buyer with an author except at the surface level. Because someone can write a pithy twit within the 140-character limit does not mean they can write a 100,000 word novel that is readable.
The other thing is that not everyone writes a review. I rarely write a review for a book. For me to write a review, the book has to be either exceptionally well done or exceptionally poorly done. I have neither the time nor the inclination to write a review for all the books I either read or start and then discard. And even if I did write a review, what would it really mean to you? You have no idea of my competency to review or rate a book. What are my standards? How do I decide that a book should be 3 stars or 4 stars?
Although for some people what you suggest is sufficient for deciding whether to buy an ebook or not, it is insufficient for me and I suspect it is insufficient for a great number of readers.