Reviews and Indie Books

anamardoll · 07-06-2011, 05:18 PM

I have a long-standing policy that I review everything I read for better or worse. This has served me well for the past three years or so -- I enjoy reviewing as I feel it benefits both me (I can look back, read a review, and go "oh, yeah, I remember the book now"), the customers (in making time/money decisions), and potentially (but not necessarily) authors.

I review everything I read, whether I feel it's a 1-star book or a 5-star one. However...

All the new indie books I have now are testing my established system. Almost all of them I received for free, and I feel bad slapping down a 1/2 star review on something that is free unless the book just egregiously offended me somehow. I've been just tossing my 1/2 star indie books out of Calibre and into the recycle bin and going on with life -- seems like life is too short to irritate random strangers on the internet to "save" customers from a free book.

So. It's easy to award 4/5 stars to indie books (yay!) and I've stopped bothering to review 1/2 star ones. But I'm on the fence about 3-star ones.

I read an indie book today that I thought got a lot of the technical aspects of writing down pat, but nevertheless the book never really grabbed me. I *think* I can write a review that clearly describes what was good about the book and why I didn't get into it, and I *think* that review would be helpful to other people who might decide, "Huh, that's exactly the sort of thing *I* would want. I'm getting that!" BUT, the review would still have 3 stars on it, because that's what the book was to me. And a 3-star review, at least by Amazon's reckoning, is technically a "negative" one.

I'm wondering what other reviewers and writers think on this subject?

odiakkoh · 07-06-2011, 07:14 PM

I gave a free smashwords book 3 stars a couple months ago. I still feel bad because im sure other people would probably like it, it just wasnt my cup of tea.

Frida Fantastic · 07-06-2011, 11:33 PM

I don't know about writers, but from a reviewer perspective--go ahead with the three stars. As long as you're being informative and alerting the target readers that this books has X, and this book doesn't have Y, your review is useful. Reviews aren't ego-strokes for the writer, they're primarily helpful information for other readers. As a reader, most of the time, it's books with 5 star reviews (especially from people's author friends) that turn me off... because it means that no real readers are interested in the book! Real readers give a mix of stars, and that's okay, because it means that the book is reaching more people beyond the author's personal network. The more perspectives there are on a book, the better.

There's a lot of people who hate my favourite book of all time (Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude). And that's okay, because it's still a five star book for me. And over time, a good book *should* find its way to its target audience--who will give it 4-5 stars.

Anke Wehner · 07-07-2011, 04:46 AM

I've left "reviews" on Goodreads about books I got for free and stopped reading after a few chapters, saying why - eg full of typos, frustrated with there being a high tension first chapter or prologue making me want to know what happened next, and still being at another point in time four chapters later - but didn't leave a star rating on those. Sort of a compromise, I guess.

3 stars on amazon is labelled with "It's OK" - that's not negative to me. Popcorn reading, decently entertaining - "You might like this if you're looking for x, but it's weak on y". Just nothing that makes me feel like going out of my way to recommend it to people.

I might pass if I can't find something specific to point to that's good, though.

AkumaTakeshi · 07-07-2011, 05:30 AM

I think for Indie authors every review is good, of course a 3 star review will hurt them a bit because people are thinking "meh, could be better but could be worse" and 2 and 1 star reviews will hurt them even more, but if the criticism in them is well put they will accept and appreciate the feedback, even more if they're just starting out.

For example some 1 or 2 star reviews are just because the book isn't similar to their tastes so I don't even mind those. If they complain about a lot of typos and error I don't get turned off, because I'm not reading to improve my intellect (if I wanted to do that I would read non-fiction) even tho that always happens a bit. But the main reason I read is so I get drawn to a different world, and so I can enjoy the story someone crafted.

One example is "Turing Evolved" the sci-fi novel that I finished reading a few days ago. The story is really well done, is clever, has some cool features about it and really drawn me to it. Yeah there was a lot of typos, errors and such but the author is making a revision (typos can be corrected over time, a bad story no).

I'll always try to review the things a read, at least since I have the Kindle. Because even if they're free stuff people waste some time they could be reading something they would like or may find something they like because of reviews. I'm just not sure to go for a book if it doesn't have any reviews at all, only if it has a really good description.

Well just my opinion in yet another huge post, sorry

rhadin · 07-07-2011, 05:47 AM

My policy is to write reviews only of outstandingly good and outstandingly bad books, regardless of price paid. I don't review all the books that fall into the mediocre category simply because there are too many of them and because I see nothing that I can really write about them except to say they are mediocre. I defined my rating system in my article Books: Indie eBooks Worth Reading (I).

I do give mention to nearly all books that I buy ("buy" includes free) in my semi-regular posts called On Today's Bookshelf. My most recent one is On Today’s Bookshelf (IX).

Part of the problem is that middling books aren't focused. There are no strong points and no overwhelming weak points. Everything is middling but not so poor that one can't read the book, but not good enough to make either a character or the plot memorable.

So what would I write a review about? To write a review, something needs to stick in my mind about the book, which means that it has to be extraordinary rather than ordinary.

AkumaTakeshi · 07-07-2011, 06:19 AM

Yeah. Normally I only read 5 and 1 star reviews. And only if I'm interested but don't know if I really want or not, I go for 4 and 2 stars, normally I don't go to 3 stars reviews at all unless they show as the first 3 on Amazon or the book has only a few reviews.

ficbot · 07-07-2011, 11:03 AM

I too have stopped reviewing the 3-star books for the most part, and that's simply because I have so many unread books I really want to read that I can't be bothered to spend the time finishing it if it's just meh.

What I try and do with books I didn't love is to try and explain WHY I didn't love it. There could be a reason that applies to me but might not apply to a reader. For example, when I read exercise video reviews, people will sometimes feel very strongly about the music or the outfits or something. If that's why they marked down a title and it's not something I care about, I can weigh their review accordingly. It's the same with books. If I mark down the book because ti features (for instance) a major focus on the character's dog (there seems to be a sub-genre of mystery where this comes up a lot) and you adore dogs, you might feel differently about the book than I did

If a book is really terrible, I generally don't finish it either (life is too short) but I do write a 'sample review' which is explicitly a review of only the Smashwords sample. In such a review, I explain why I did not get past the sample and into the book itself---why I gave up, in other words

apbschmitz · 07-07-2011, 11:07 AM

As a reader I'm much more interested in reviews that tell me about great books that I really ought to read. For me that's a list of books about ten miles long, and the reality is that I'll never get around to most of them. Warnings about books I shouldn't read? Not really that useful, since I'm already not getting around to books with rave reviews from trusted sources.

Bashing books can be temporarily satisfying for the reviewer. You feel like your time has been wasted and you want to get even. It's sort of satisfying for the reader, in a watch-the-lions-tear-them-apart-in-the-Coliseum sense. And there's some greater purpose if it's a carefully-though-out, critical review of a book that has otherwise been praised. A dissenting view on The Corrections would fall into this category. But to maul some poor soul with a self-published book that no one would otherwise know about — I really don't see the point. It would be more useful to offer your editing services for a fee to such writers, and then see if anyone bites.

anamardoll · 07-07-2011, 12:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by apbschmitz

As a reader I'm much more interested in reviews that tell me about great books that I really ought to read. For me that's a list of books about ten miles long, and the reality is that I'll never get around to most of them. Warnings about books I shouldn't read? Not really that useful, since I'm already not getting around to books with rave reviews from trusted sources.

Bashing books can be temporarily satisfying for the reviewer. You feel like your time has been wasted and you want to get even. It's sort of satisfying for the reader, in a watch-the-lions-tear-them-apart-in-the-Coliseum sense. And there's some greater purpose if it's a carefully-though-out, critical review of a book that has otherwise been praised. A dissenting view on The Corrections would fall into this category. But to maul some poor soul with a self-published book that no one would otherwise know about — I really don't see the point. It would be more useful to offer your editing services for a fee to such writers, and then see if anyone bites.

Was this directed at me? Did you note that I said I don't leave 1/2 star reviews on indie books? Are you saying that a 3-star review is "maul[ing] some poor soul"?

ficbot · 07-07-2011, 01:12 PM

It's not 'mauling some poor soul.' They have willingly put their products out there on the marketplace.

apbschmitz · 07-07-2011, 03:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by anamardoll

I've been just tossing my 1/2 star indie books out of Calibre and into the recycle bin and going on with life -- seems like life is too short to irritate random strangers on the internet to "save" customers from a free book.

Truth be told, I thought I was agreeing with you.

And to ficbot, while I agree that if you put a product in the market, you've got to be prepared for positive and negative reaction, I still question the utility of alerting readers to a rotten book they wouldn't have heard about anyway.

anamardoll · 07-07-2011, 03:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by apbschmitz

Truth be told, I thought I was agreeing with you.

And to ficbot, while I agree that if you put a product in the market, you've got to be prepared for positive and negative reaction, I still question the utility of alerting readers to a rotten book they wouldn't have heard about anyway.

Ah, sorry for the misunderstanding. It seemed a little...forceful.

DrLaurenceBrown · 07-07-2011, 04:18 PM

I think that critical 3 star reviews can help an author out. The only reviews that I disagree with are the 1 star reviews that give no explanation other than "book bad" that offer no real insight into why they didn't enjoy the book. I wouldn't consider an informative 3 star review bashing at all.

Nancy Fulda · 07-08-2011, 08:45 AM

As an author, I prefer to have the feedback even if the review stings a little. How am I going to get better if no one ever tells me what they didn't like?

That said, there are a couple of things to consider when handing out reviews.

1) The number of reviews the book already has
If the book only has one or two reviews, a negative review will pull the average way down. That's a pretty harsh hammer to hit an indie author with. If the book has in excess of ten reviews, then a negative or mediocre review becomes less of a blow.

2) The number of books the author has published
If the author has only published one book (and especially if the book was published a long time ago) AND if the book is filled with horrible typos and grammatical errors, then there's a good chance this person isn't headed towards a full-time writing career. That one book may be all he or she ever writes and, being a beginning author, he or she probably has not yet developed a thick skin.

In this case, a negative review isn't going to influence or strengthen later works, and really may crush the heart and soul of the author whose baby you've insulted. Unless you feel an urgent need to protect other buyers from wasting their money, I'd say let it be.

Whether you're the target audience.
I confess, I wouldn't want an avid opponent of science fiction to drive by and slap a 1-star review on my work because s/he felt it was stupid genre trash. If you're not in the book's target audience, don't review it.

But if you ARE in the target audience... if you saw the cover and LOVED it and read the blurb and LOVED it and were then horribly, hideously disappointed to discover that the book you got is not the one you thought you were downloading... then yeah, a negative review is fair game.

07-06-2011, 05:18 PM	#1
anamardoll Chasing Butterflies Posts: 3,132 Karma: 5074169 Join Date: Mar 2011 Location: American Southwest Device: Uses batteries.	Reviews and Indie Books I have a long-standing policy that I review everything I read for better or worse. This has served me well for the past three years or so -- I enjoy reviewing as I feel it benefits both me (I can look back, read a review, and go "oh, yeah, I remember the book now"), the customers (in making time/money decisions), and potentially (but not necessarily) authors. I review everything I read, whether I feel it's a 1-star book or a 5-star one. However... All the new indie books I have now are testing my established system. Almost all of them I received for free, and I feel bad slapping down a 1/2 star review on something that is free unless the book just egregiously offended me somehow. I've been just tossing my 1/2 star indie books out of Calibre and into the recycle bin and going on with life -- seems like life is too short to irritate random strangers on the internet to "save" customers from a free book. So. It's easy to award 4/5 stars to indie books (yay!) and I've stopped bothering to review 1/2 star ones. But I'm on the fence about 3-star ones. I read an indie book today that I thought got a lot of the technical aspects of writing down pat, but nevertheless the book never really grabbed me. I think I can write a review that clearly describes what was good about the book and why I didn't get into it, and I think that review would be helpful to other people who might decide, "Huh, that's exactly the sort of thing I would want. I'm getting that!" BUT, the review would still have 3 stars on it, because that's what the book was to me. And a 3-star review, at least by Amazon's reckoning, is technically a "negative" one. I'm wondering what other reviewers and writers think on this subject?

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07-06-2011, 07:14 PM	#2
odiakkoh Guru Posts: 823 Karma: 1818344 Join Date: Apr 2011 Device: iPhone 5s	I gave a free smashwords book 3 stars a couple months ago. I still feel bad because im sure other people would probably like it, it just wasnt my cup of tea.

07-06-2011, 11:33 PM	#3
Frida Fantastic SF/F book blogger Posts: 270 Karma: 502030 Join Date: Mar 2011 Location: Vancouver, Canada Device: Kindle 3	I don't know about writers, but from a reviewer perspective--go ahead with the three stars. As long as you're being informative and alerting the target readers that this books has X, and this book doesn't have Y, your review is useful. Reviews aren't ego-strokes for the writer, they're primarily helpful information for other readers. As a reader, most of the time, it's books with 5 star reviews (especially from people's author friends) that turn me off... because it means that no real readers are interested in the book! Real readers give a mix of stars, and that's okay, because it means that the book is reaching more people beyond the author's personal network. The more perspectives there are on a book, the better. There's a lot of people who hate my favourite book of all time (Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude). And that's okay, because it's still a five star book for me. And over time, a good book should find its way to its target audience--who will give it 4-5 stars.

07-07-2011, 04:46 AM	#4
Anke Wehner Addict Posts: 249 Karma: 177956 Join Date: Jan 2011 Location: Germany Device: PRS-650	I've left "reviews" on Goodreads about books I got for free and stopped reading after a few chapters, saying why - eg full of typos, frustrated with there being a high tension first chapter or prologue making me want to know what happened next, and still being at another point in time four chapters later - but didn't leave a star rating on those. Sort of a compromise, I guess. 3 stars on amazon is labelled with "It's OK" - that's not negative to me. Popcorn reading, decently entertaining - "You might like this if you're looking for x, but it's weak on y". Just nothing that makes me feel like going out of my way to recommend it to people. I might pass if I can't find something specific to point to that's good, though.

07-07-2011, 05:30 AM	#5
AkumaTakeshi Lounge Lurker Posts: 669 Karma: 1635154 Join Date: May 2011 Location: Portugal Device: Kindle 3 Wifi (Screen Broken)	I think for Indie authors every review is good, of course a 3 star review will hurt them a bit because people are thinking "meh, could be better but could be worse" and 2 and 1 star reviews will hurt them even more, but if the criticism in them is well put they will accept and appreciate the feedback, even more if they're just starting out. For example some 1 or 2 star reviews are just because the book isn't similar to their tastes so I don't even mind those. If they complain about a lot of typos and error I don't get turned off, because I'm not reading to improve my intellect (if I wanted to do that I would read non-fiction) even tho that always happens a bit. But the main reason I read is so I get drawn to a different world, and so I can enjoy the story someone crafted. One example is "Turing Evolved" the sci-fi novel that I finished reading a few days ago. The story is really well done, is clever, has some cool features about it and really drawn me to it. Yeah there was a lot of typos, errors and such but the author is making a revision (typos can be corrected over time, a bad story no). I'll always try to review the things a read, at least since I have the Kindle. Because even if they're free stuff people waste some time they could be reading something they would like or may find something they like because of reviews. I'm just not sure to go for a book if it doesn't have any reviews at all, only if it has a really good description. Well just my opinion in yet another huge post, sorry

07-07-2011, 05:47 AM	#6
rhadin Literacy = Understanding Posts: 4,833 Karma: 59674358 Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: The World of Books Device: Nook, Nook Tablet	My policy is to write reviews only of outstandingly good and outstandingly bad books, regardless of price paid. I don't review all the books that fall into the mediocre category simply because there are too many of them and because I see nothing that I can really write about them except to say they are mediocre. I defined my rating system in my article Books: Indie eBooks Worth Reading (I). I do give mention to nearly all books that I buy ("buy" includes free) in my semi-regular posts called On Today's Bookshelf. My most recent one is On Today’s Bookshelf (IX). Part of the problem is that middling books aren't focused. There are no strong points and no overwhelming weak points. Everything is middling but not so poor that one can't read the book, but not good enough to make either a character or the plot memorable. So what would I write a review about? To write a review, something needs to stick in my mind about the book, which means that it has to be extraordinary rather than ordinary.

07-07-2011, 06:19 AM	#7
AkumaTakeshi Lounge Lurker Posts: 669 Karma: 1635154 Join Date: May 2011 Location: Portugal Device: Kindle 3 Wifi (Screen Broken)	Yeah. Normally I only read 5 and 1 star reviews. And only if I'm interested but don't know if I really want or not, I go for 4 and 2 stars, normally I don't go to 3 stars reviews at all unless they show as the first 3 on Amazon or the book has only a few reviews.

07-07-2011, 11:03 AM	#8
ficbot Wizard Posts: 2,409 Karma: 4132096 Join Date: Sep 2008 Device: Kindle Paperwhite/iOS Kindle App	I too have stopped reviewing the 3-star books for the most part, and that's simply because I have so many unread books I really want to read that I can't be bothered to spend the time finishing it if it's just meh. What I try and do with books I didn't love is to try and explain WHY I didn't love it. There could be a reason that applies to me but might not apply to a reader. For example, when I read exercise video reviews, people will sometimes feel very strongly about the music or the outfits or something. If that's why they marked down a title and it's not something I care about, I can weigh their review accordingly. It's the same with books. If I mark down the book because ti features (for instance) a major focus on the character's dog (there seems to be a sub-genre of mystery where this comes up a lot) and you adore dogs, you might feel differently about the book than I did If a book is really terrible, I generally don't finish it either (life is too short) but I do write a 'sample review' which is explicitly a review of only the Smashwords sample. In such a review, I explain why I did not get past the sample and into the book itself---why I gave up, in other words

07-07-2011, 11:07 AM	#9
apbschmitz Lord of Frogtown Posts: 149 Karma: 1154748 Join Date: May 2011 Location: St. Paul MN Device: Kindle	As a reader I'm much more interested in reviews that tell me about great books that I really ought to read. For me that's a list of books about ten miles long, and the reality is that I'll never get around to most of them. Warnings about books I shouldn't read? Not really that useful, since I'm already not getting around to books with rave reviews from trusted sources. Bashing books can be temporarily satisfying for the reviewer. You feel like your time has been wasted and you want to get even. It's sort of satisfying for the reader, in a watch-the-lions-tear-them-apart-in-the-Coliseum sense. And there's some greater purpose if it's a carefully-though-out, critical review of a book that has otherwise been praised. A dissenting view on The Corrections would fall into this category. But to maul some poor soul with a self-published book that no one would otherwise know about — I really don't see the point. It would be more useful to offer your editing services for a fee to such writers, and then see if anyone bites.

07-07-2011, 01:12 PM	#11
ficbot Wizard Posts: 2,409 Karma: 4132096 Join Date: Sep 2008 Device: Kindle Paperwhite/iOS Kindle App	It's not 'mauling some poor soul.' They have willingly put their products out there on the marketplace.

07-07-2011, 04:18 PM	#14
DrLaurenceBrown Member Posts: 18 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jun 2011 Device: none	I think that critical 3 star reviews can help an author out. The only reviews that I disagree with are the 1 star reviews that give no explanation other than "book bad" that offer no real insight into why they didn't enjoy the book. I wouldn't consider an informative 3 star review bashing at all.

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07-08-2011, 08:45 AM	#15
Nancy Fulda I write stories. Posts: 700 Karma: 16437432 Join Date: Jul 2011 Location: Northern Germany Device: kindle	As an author, I prefer to have the feedback even if the review stings a little. How am I going to get better if no one ever tells me what they didn't like? That said, there are a couple of things to consider when handing out reviews. 1) The number of reviews the book already has If the book only has one or two reviews, a negative review will pull the average way down. That's a pretty harsh hammer to hit an indie author with. If the book has in excess of ten reviews, then a negative or mediocre review becomes less of a blow. 2) The number of books the author has published If the author has only published one book (and especially if the book was published a long time ago) AND if the book is filled with horrible typos and grammatical errors, then there's a good chance this person isn't headed towards a full-time writing career. That one book may be all he or she ever writes and, being a beginning author, he or she probably has not yet developed a thick skin. In this case, a negative review isn't going to influence or strengthen later works, and really may crush the heart and soul of the author whose baby you've insulted. Unless you feel an urgent need to protect other buyers from wasting their money, I'd say let it be. Whether you're the target audience. I confess, I wouldn't want an avid opponent of science fiction to drive by and slap a 1-star review on my work because s/he felt it was stupid genre trash. If you're not in the book's target audience, don't review it. But if you ARE in the target audience... if you saw the cover and LOVED it and read the blurb and LOVED it and were then horribly, hideously disappointed to discover that the book you got is not the one you thought you were downloading... then yeah, a negative review is fair game.