Would you trust a review that was paid for?

[Giggleton]

Originally Posted by Anke Wehner

I don't agree. When rating books I run into the problem that a scale with 5 points isn't fine-grained enough - I keep wanting to give half stars because a book is better than this, but not as good as that. So limiting myself to only 3 options would be even worse.

(I give five stars to books thatmake me think "that was so good, I want to read it again in a week"; one star is for books that put me off so that I did not finish them.)

Why limit yourself? The entire universe is at your disposal with every possible review. I don't like numbers in my review systems. As a sign post, the numbers describing the content contained within in the review, they can be helpful. And for content that is rapidly consumed i.e. games/apps numbers can take the place of critical reviews entirely and in many places have. But books are something special.

The problem is that your definition of one star is unique to you.

[book_addict]

Goes back to how subjective reading is in general and why reviews and ratings should not be taken too seriously.

Thanks, Fbone for clarifying. I agree that for products and services the most helpful reviews are those that balance the reviewers subjective like and dislikes.

[ATDrake]

Honestly, even unpaid reviews can be thoroughly untrustworthy.

Case in point: Night Shade Books decided to offer for B&N's Free Fridays feature e-book Kameron Hurley's God's War.

Are people grateful, or thanks-but-I'll-pass appreciative? Or do they even confine their complaints that they're sick of romance/paranormal/Christian fiction Free Fridays-whyyyy can't we get some [insert favoured genre here] instead on the blog comments as they did in the past?

No. They immediately go and put several 1 star "reviews" trashing the book solely because they want something from a different genre free as the promotional friday e-book. B&N only display the latest few on the actual product page, and make you click through several pages to go through all the reviews 5 at a time, so people visiting will at first glance get a completely false impression and most probably won't bother to trawl through the reviews.

Worse yet, there are several dozen 1-star "ratings" which can't be "unhelpful"-ed or otherwise countermanded (short of giving sympathy 5-star ratings which also don't reflect reality), which allow people to drag the book's rating down without having to take the time to write even a fake review. This is part of why I disagree with "rate without reviewing" proposals. At least making people type in some words puts an extra step in their path towards abusing the system, if they're so inclined.

I must say this brings a new twist to the "1-star based solely on price over 9.99" grudge review, but it's not a development I like to see.

Hopefully it's just an isolated incident that's the result of concerted trolling and today's calendar date, rather than a trend in how people voice their market preferences.

Also, this is a good way for those B&N complainers to get no Free Fridays books at all in the future if this is the reception they get. Serve them right if B&N suspended the offer for the rest of the month. It could be their April Fools' prank.

[Frida Fantastic]

Yeah, pretty darn mean of those B&N readers. All that fuss actually made me go out and download the sample of God's War for myself. The premise is interesting (bugpunk?) and let's admit, the cover art is really good. I'll write a review in my new sf review blog when I get around to reading the book.

[ATDrake]

To be fair, I think it was mostly outside trolls taking advantage of April Fool's Day.

Most of the B&N regulars were protesting their behaviour pretty strongly on the actual discussion forums and requesting that B&N remove the off-topic complaint "reviews" and reset the book's star rating so it wouldn't be affected by the troll negatives (or sympathy positives, for that matter).

Anyway, glad to see you're now doing the sort of review blog you talked about wanting to see. Best of luck with it.

[Frida Fantastic]

Thanks! Yeah, resetting the rating is a good idea, it's just not reflective of real opinions about the book at the moment. It makes me pretty happy about being able to access reviews on several sites: Amazon, Goodreads, etc.

[MaggieScratch]

It looks like the one-star reviews have been moved off the front page--they've all been marked down as unhelpful, and (I think) the default view is Most Helpful reviews first. Crowdsourcing does sometimes work!

[Russell Brooks]

I would never submit one of my books to a reviewer if I had to pay them to read my novel. They're already getting a free book. I only pay to advertise.

[AlexSno]

We can extend this question to all sort of things.
For example i am also a big video game player that enjoys a good book and a good game.
You should see all sort of "thumb up" reviews you get from some sites and if you do a little digging only to find out the same companies that do the game also own the site....