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Old 08-04-2011, 06:28 PM   #46
Arrghus
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Originally Posted by Skibble View Post
Even though I don't have a Kindle, I do go to Amazon to see if there is a preview available for books I'm interested in purchasing. I must be interested in some obscure books, because there often isn't one. There aren't on other sites, either. So for those books, I do appreciate reviews that mention formatting errors.

I have also found that the preview is sometimes of the paper edition rather than the ebook. Not too helpful, since formatting mistakes seem to creep in during the conversion. But again, perhaps I am looking at obscure titles.
Sorry. I should rephrase. When I said 'preview' I actually meant a 'sample'. If you have Kindle for PC or a similar free app, or an actual Kindle device, from Amazon, they can send you virtually any Kindle book (I've not come across a book not offering a sample) to the app or device of your choice. You aren't previewing a paper copy then! This is extremely useful as there are lots (unfortunately) of people who have uploaded terrible copies of public domain works; or, in some cases, they've actually gone and copied and pasted from Wikipedia and tried passing off their 'work' as some kind of textbook! By 'sampling' you can separate the wheat from the chaff, as it were.
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Old 08-05-2011, 02:26 AM   #47
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Originally Posted by Arrghus View Post
While it must be tough on authors to see 1-star reviews that make no comment on the literary merit of their work, I nevertheless support those who give a 1-star reviews because of genuine disappointment with things like formatting, and typographical errors. Reviews can be retracted, so the onus is then on the author and/or publisher to correct these errors and therefore kindly ask for the reviewer to retract their review.
A while back, I read a book that had some typos, and I left a review that mentioned them. It was a self-published book, and I e-mailed the author with the mistakes I'd found. He fixed them and asked me to alter my review to reflect that, which I was happy to do.

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Originally Posted by Arrghus View Post
That said, now that nearly every book has a preview on Kindle, there's less excuse to leave a bad review for formatting, when the formatting can be sampled quite easily.
I'm currently reading a book that has obviously been scanned & OCR'd. It's a great book, one that I read on paper some years ago. As soon as I saw there was a Kindle edition I snapped it up. Once I've finished it, I'll leave a review, and mention the OCR errors.

The story is brilliant, so it's well worth putting up with the OCR errors, but if I'm going to write a review, then I think they have to be mentioned.
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Old 08-05-2011, 03:03 AM   #48
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Yes. I like sites where you can write a review, but don't have to leave a rating. I can write "I did not like this at all because [reason], it was just not my cup of tea", which is useful for people who dislike the same things I do, or like the things I dislike, but the author is not "punished" for me reading a book that wasn't to my taste by having the average rating dragged down. Or I can mention why I stopped reading a few chapters in.

(
Goodreads allows you to review without a rating. I do this for books I abandoned mostly as a memory aid.

For books I finish I leave a rating but don't review.
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Old 08-05-2011, 03:32 PM   #49
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[QUOTE=ficbot;1688353]How are they different from air conditioners? They are a product which is sold to the customer for money, the end. Being a novel instead of an air conditioner or a widget or a loaf of bread doesn't confer upon them special status.

Okay, I'm belaboring the obvious, but you put an air-conditioner in a room and either it cools the room or it doesn't. It's noisy or it isn't. These are things that can be objectively measured. A novel moves you or it doesn't. It speaks to your experience of life and your expectations of art or it doesn't. Those things are subjective and emotional. I think that means you should approach reviewing books with some awareness of the sensitivities of others and the possible limits of your own perceptions.
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Old 08-05-2011, 04:02 PM   #50
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If that was all it was about, they would only sell one brand of air conditioner. Obviously, it's more complicated than that. But as far as ebooks go, what I was responding to was the implication that a reviewer should hold back and not nitpick the formatting or opine about value for money so as not to hurt the author's feelings. In that respect, I wholeheartedly disagree. I don't believe personally in writing reviews that are cruel. But if I have constructive feedback and I express it tactfully, I feel that any comment I want to make is my privilege. The author put it out there on the marketplace for sale. If they can't handle reviews, they shouldn't have put it out there. The item being a book instead of something else doesn't change the rules of commerce for me.
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Old 08-06-2011, 01:25 AM   #51
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ficbot View Post
How are they different from air conditioners? They are a product which is sold to the customer for money, the end.
I strongly object to this vision that considers a book in the same class as an utilitarian object.

Art and knowledge are not the same as technology and utilities.
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Old 08-06-2011, 10:26 PM   #52
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I absolutely appreciate a review that tells me an ebook has a large number of errors regardless of the number of stars given.

I'm having many more problems with 5 star reviews of books which are so full of errors that I wonder whether I'm in a different dimension than the other reviewers. The book I'm reading now is riddled with poor sentence structure, terrible word misuse and numerous errors. It received 3, 4, even 5 star reviews on Amazon and not one complaint about the poor writing within.

If it's not fair to sabotage an author with 1 star reviews based on price alone, how fair is it to praise by implication the complete butchery of a given language.

Of course, I never learn. Read the sample first, Caleb!
For indies, there are way more inflated reviews than negative reviews. But for one star reviews...

1 star for price? It's fair game if the author/publisher employed false advertising. If the book page said "novel" but but the reader got a 5,000 word short story, then the customer was cheated. If people are giving a book 1 stars because the ebook is too expensive compared to the hardcopy, then don't buy the ebook. If a neutral star rating isn't possible, then leave behind 3 stars and make the comment.
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