Book Ratings

CrastersBabies, what do you have in mind here? Are you suggesting trying to convince Amazon to change their system? Do you want to create a database here of our own ratings?

The problem with any system is that ratings are so subjective, and people have so many conscious and unconscious biases. Many of us here can speak to the technical aspects of a book, but the average reader can't. The average reader can talk about whether the book was "engaging" or not. Or if they liked the "story" or not.

Tell me what you think.

I think most of us know that ratings at Amazon are pretty sketchy. Get 30 people to write reviews and give you 5 stars and you're set, right? Family, friends, ghost accounts, etc..

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I don't know, maybe the people I know just suck, but they don't buy my books. They have no interest. They have even less interest in posting fake reviews.

I'm sure it happens, but I'm not convinced it's something to worry about.

CrastersBabies said:

How do you think this can be solved? Is there a solution? I mean, wikipedia has volunteers that go through and do fact-checking, but books are a bigger time investment and take longer to finish.

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Don't rely on Wiki to be factual, anyone can get an account and alter it. Recently I left a review on Amazon, saying the author's representation was highly inaccurate and owed more to John Buchan and colonialist interpretations of native cultures [i.e Africa, Native Americans, Indians etc.] I went back on a few days ago, the author had received a rash of two star reviews, and a 'friend' had appeared with a five-star review and went on to say he had checked wikipedia and the portrayal appeared correct.
*Cue me dashing my brains out on my keyboard.*
I left a friendly comment about reading some of the many fine Scottish historians on Pictish culture, and perhaps the recent archaeolgy performed by Historic Scotland on Traprain Law, instead.

I read a non-fiction book a few years ago which was shockingly inaccurate and misleading. I reviewed it accordingly, and in the spirit of fairness pointed out the (very few) areas in which the book was useful; and the author reported my review and had it removed. I don't rely on Amazon reviews at all any more.

I rely on the negative reviews and comments in the reviews. If there is a trend in the negative reviews that concerns me, I usually won't buy it. That strategy has served me well so far.

Old Hack said:

I read a non-fiction book a few years ago which was shockingly inaccurate and misleading. I reviewed it accordingly, and in the spirit of fairness pointed out the (very few) areas in which the book was useful; and the author reported my review and had it removed. I don't rely on Amazon reviews at all any more.

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Wow. That's unbelievable. And good to know.

escritora said:

I don't know, maybe the people I know just suck, but they don't buy my books. They have no interest. They have even less interest in posting fake reviews.

I'm sure it happens, but I'm not convinced it's something to worry about.

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It always interests me how many times a bestselling author recieves a rash of 1-2* reviews, which is then suddenly followed by a 5*, couple of sentence length reviews [which don't actually say anything about the book itself.] On further investigation, you discover it is the reviewer's one and only review.

gothicangel said:

It always interests me how many times a bestselling author recieves a rash of 1-2* reviews, which is then suddenly followed by a 5*, couple of sentence length reviews [which don't actually say anything about the book itself.] On further investigation, you discover it is the reviewer's one and only review.

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Or seeing an author and all they have is five star reviews, all glowing comments. Those always make me wonder if the reviewers actually read the book. I'm more trustful of the 2-3 star reviews because those are likely to be more honest.

I've never found reviews to be the least bit useful, before the digital age, or since. I rely on word of mouth, and on sample pages and chapters. If people I know tell me a book is a must read, I read it. And I have no trouble finding books with adequate sample pages that let me know whether I like the writer's style. Print or electronic, the jacket copy, plus two or three sample pages, is more than enough. Add word of mouth to this, and I seldom buy a book I don't enjoy.

For print books, and for more and more eBooks, there's also the library.

I find far more books to read than I possibly can. My TBR stacks number in the thousands, and I even have more eBooks on my computer than I'll get read next year.

I never have understood why so many pay attention to reviews. Unless you know whoever did the review well enough to know whether their taste matches yours, it makes no sense to trust the review.

@gothi and Linda --- that settles it! I need new friends.

Ratings are the most meaningless part of reviews anyway. Someone might love a book for a thing I'd dislike, and hate it for a thing I'm looking for. That's why the text of the review is the important part. As long as it has a decent number of reviews, I can get a fair idea if the book contains anything I'll love/hate that isn't apparent in the first few pages and blurb.

The big issue is getting enough reviews on a book. I've generally found Goodreads to be better for reviews, as they don't get removed for silly things and there are more per book.

Overall average rating isn't something I check.

Most people here say they never read reviews or look at the stars ratings, but I think general readers do. I have a quite-intelligent friend who gave me a novel to read that she'd purchased off Amazon. She wanted to see what I thought of this novel, which she had liked.

She was surprised when I told her I thought it was badly written and here are the reasons why. She said she'd bought it partly because it had all 5-star reviews on Amazon (she also liked the plot summary).

I checked and yep, 6 or 7 reviews, all 5-star and gushing without saying anything meaningful. "Exciting, magical, loved the characters" - that sort of thing. When I said those reviews were probably all from friends and family and not true reviews, she said she'd never considered that people would write fake reviews. It had just never crossed her mind.

So I think ratings and reviews do affect how some readers - not writers - will decide what to buy. And the fake reviews do a disservice to both readers and authors (in the long run), but I can't imagine that Amazon really cares, as long as they sell books.

One of the strangest reader mails I ever received was from a Russian reader who hadn't liked my work.* In the course of his rather long mail he brought up the number of four and five star reviews the books had on amazon.com and on goodreads. He simply couldn't believe that anyone would give the books four or five stars and so was certain I had either written them myself, had my family and friends write them or (most hilariously) that my publisher had had them written. Thinking about this still tickles me. I just can't imagine actually doing it (and I certainly can't imagine my publishers going to the bother)

Do you guys think it actually happens as often as folks seem to think, or is it a sort of myth that has grown out of proportion?

*(despite his absolute hatred of the work, he read all three books, which boggles my mind - was he in some kind of masochistic competition to see how much 'awful writing' he could stand? )

Polenth said:

Ratings are the most meaningless part of reviews anyway. Someone might love a book for a thing I'd dislike, and hate it for a thing I'm looking for. That's why the text of the review is the important part. As long as it has a decent number of reviews, I can get a fair idea if the book contains anything I'll love/hate that isn't apparent in the first few pages and blurb.

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Yes. Ratings are only meaningful in a couple of ways, but if you know what to look for, they aren't useless.

First, if the book has only a few ratings then you can dismiss them; there's no statistical significance. The reviews themselves might be useful; a discerning individual can read a review and tell whether it's a good one or full of crap. You can also tell whether or not the reviewer's tastes match yours if it's a long thorough review.

But most ratings follow a fairly normal distribution. If I see a book with a mode of 3 stars or less, or an average rating of less than 3.2, that's usually a warning sign. And a book with a mode of 5 stars and/or an average rating of 4.0 or above is usually worth checking out if it's something that looks interesting to begin with. Of course I don't decide to buy a book based solely on its description and its average rating; I usually look at both the good and bad reviews rated "most helpful."

But as far as "fixing" the ratings system -- you can't really. People will always try to game the system. The best defense is not relying on numbers alone, especially when there are few numbers to begin with. A book with only 5 reviews and all of them are 5 stars? Maybe it's got a small number of fans but they really love it, or maybe those are all reviews posted by the author's friends. You can't tell (though sock/friend reviews are usually pretty vague and obvious). But it's a lot harder to manipulate the rankings when you have several hundred reviews.

Of course, any author who can get several hundred reviews of his or her book probably doesn't even think about how to game the system.

I mostly skip reviews and just go for reading books by my fellow AWers. We have some incredible authors here. What kind of books do you like to read? I'll bet you can get recs from some of us that will keep you in good books for years.

Gary Clarke said:

... had my family and friends write them ....
Do you guys think it actually happens as often as folks seem to think, or is it a sort of myth that has grown out of proportion?

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Yes, I think it happens. I know it does. I'm a member of a in-person writing group in which it seems most of the members automatically give every other member a 5-star review, whether self-pub or small-pub or whatever. Some members abstain from doing reviews at all.

And there's a large facebook group that (apparently) exists only to give each other "likes" on their fan pages and good reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. There's rarely any postings other than, "new books up at Amazon, pls like" and then comments saying, "Gave it the stars" etc. 95% are self-pub.

I don't even know why I'm still a member of the FB group. I thought it was going to be more conversations, when I joined, but then it's turned into this circle-jerk.

juniper said:

And there's a large facebook group that (apparently) exists only to give each other "likes" on their fan pages and good reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. There's rarely any postings other than, "new books up at Amazon, pls like" and then comments saying, "Gave it the stars" etc. 95% are self-pub..

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Jeez, that sucks. The longer I'm in the business the more of a bloody innocent I feel (though I have to confess I did get a sickener this year when I realized how very cynical some cliques of writers are about promoting each other's work online - tweeting 'reviews' of each others books and talking them up to each other's fans in a very calculated manner. I know it's all business but ... I dunno... I can't imagine being so cynical towards my readers as to steer them towards someone's work just because that person was a 'friend' or in the same 'stable' as I was.)

Gary Clarke said:

Jeez, that sucks. The longer I'm in the business the more of a bloody innocent I feel (though I have to confess I did get a sickener this year when I realized how very cynical some cliques of writers are about promoting each other's work online - tweeting 'reviews' of each others books and talking them up to each other's fans in a very calculated manner. I know it's all business but ... I dunno... I can't imagine being so cynical towards my readers as to steer them towards someone's work just because that person was a 'friend' or in the same 'stable' as I was.)

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Weeellll...

I'm sure there are some where it's very coldly done, but really, the purpose of an author promo group is to cross-promote and expand each other's audiences. That's why author groups are formed, is to expose the others to your audience and in turn be exposed to theirs. It may sound calculated, but being in two groups at the moment and having been in others I can tell you that members aren't just grabbed out of thin air; it's usually writers whose work you genuinely like and often feel is similar to yours, and whose work you feel your readership might honestly enjoy. (Not to mention them being writers you personally like as people.)

It's not cynical when I tell people who like my Downside books that they will probably like (for example) my friend Caitlin Kittredge's Black London books, too. It's genuine. I love those books. I want people to read them. I think they have enough similarities in tone to mine, and that Caitlin and I have similar enough opinions on what constitutes good writing and good stories, that my readers will enjoy her books too. And many of them have.

When one of my friends whose work I liked gets a good review and tweets it, of course I retweet it. Why wouldn't I? Why would I not help expose books I like, written by people I like, to a larger audience who might not have heard of it but may also like it? Why would I not acknowledge their success and congratulate them on it, and pass it on? And most importantly, why would I not want to help my readers find other books they may enjoy?

How is that cynical? Have you ever recommended a book to a friend because you really liked it? How is it different? Ever sent someone to a business owned by a friend, or recommended a friend for a job? How is that different?

Like I said, I'm sure there may be author groups who don't read each others' work and don't care. But that's never been the case in any I've been in; those are invitation only, and invitations only go to people whose work is considered worthy and whose personalities are considered a fit. So I just don't agree at all with the idea that author promo groups are cold and cynical and there's something wrong with them, and I don't agree at all with the idea that I'm not allowed to recommend my friends' books or it is cynical to do so.

I really don't meant to sound like I'm yelling at you--I hope I don't, and I'm really just using your post as a jumping-off point rather than "rebutting" you or anything--I'm just giving another POV on this.

Stacia Kane said:

When one of my friends whose work I liked gets a good review and tweets it, of course I retweet it. Why wouldn't I? Why would I not help expose books I like, written by people I like, to a larger audience who might not have heard of it but may also like it? Why would I not acknowledge their success and congratulate them on it, and pass it on? And most importantly, why would I not want to help my readers find other books they may enjoy?

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With respect... I don't doubt that you and your friends are sincere and you don't mindlessly promote books you haven't actually read and enjoyed. But, I still pretty much tune out any "recommendations" that I know come from an author's clique. The worst manifestation of this phenomenon is the so-called "YA Mafia," which while I agree with the always-incisive John Scalzi is a pretty silly idea to regard as a threat, does seem to me to be a bunch of YA writers who exist to squee over each other's books, and I don't believe for a second any of them would be honestly critical even if they did think one of their friends wrote a turd.

So, basically, yeah, I know not every author's promo circle is the same as the self-pubbers auto-clicking "Like" and retweet buttons all day, but I really don't see the principle as being all that different. There are authors who recommend other author's books (even other authors who happen to be their friends) in a way that makes me believe that they actually really loved that book, but a group that's formed for the express purpose of promoting one another to boost sales ain't it.