Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
Or even the 'over the top' five-star reviews. I try to gauge the book or product by the middle of the ratings reviews.
|
I do the same sort of thing. I tend to look at reviews as a whole. I expect a certain balance. The only thing I might use individual reviews for is verification of technical specs (like when there's a discrepancy between product descriptions and manufacturer specs). Fake reviews rarely mention specs.
What's more; I usually find the negative reviews much more useful. And not always in steering me
away from purchase, like one might expect. Negative reviews of books can quite quite often push me
toward a purchase, rather than away from it.
For instance: when reviews of a book I'm on the fence about mention a lack of back-story, or a confusion in the early-going, or the author being unusually terse; it gives me hope that the author isn't a student of the brick-by-brick, school of world-building -- where spoon-fed minutiae and pointless infodumps about whose face is on the smallest denomination of the coin of the realm just might NOT abound. As is my preference.
Negative book reviewers also tend to mention authors they were
hoping the book in question would have been similar to. Which means the failure of the book to live up to the quality of an author I can't really stand is quite possibly a positive for me.
Good, bad, fake, real: they often times clue me in to the fact that the book in question is the first in a planned series of X. Something the official publisher blurbs tend to leave out more and more often these days (especially with a debut author). Which is also something I also hate to find out only AFTER buying and reading a book.
So I'll take all the reviews, thank you very much. I don't need a filter. Filtering is my job.