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Reviews? Didn’t we just talk about those?

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Anne Madison

I’ve had a lot of time this month to think about reviews. It turns out that while my eye is safe and sound, it is taking its own sweet time about getting better. That has taken me from a lot of fun stuff like reading, writing, fulminating, expostulating, and throwing things. It has in turn given me a lot of fun, new pastimes like sulking. I’ve developed a fairly convincing sulk, and it’s going to be better once I can get a fainting couch for this little corner of my living room. 

Last month’s topic was reviews and my experiences with a non-book purchase (a vegetable chopper) on Amazon. There are some crazy people out there who feel threatened by vegetable choppers, and they want you to be threatened, too.

Reader (and author!) Gianna Thomas wrote a thoughtful and well-reasoned response to my post. She has a calm, thoughtful attitude to the whole controversy. Her Amazon author page lists some twenty titles including both general Regency stories and Jane Austen-based stories. And she has taken the wonderful step of crediting her editor. She actually has an editor. 

Unsurprisingly, Gianna wants to get into the why of things. She took a look at books reviewed by one of her consistently three-star reviewers and discovered that the person almost always left three-star reviews for everything she read. This seems, to Gianna, to indicate a pattern of some sort, and she would like to know just why her book rated three stars rather than two or four. She’s also not too thrilled by the fact that a reader can just drop off a bunch of stars without saying a word about why. 

But the final why of Gianna’s comment is the one that should be making us all sit back and reply, “Aha! Why indeed?” I cannot improve on it, so I’ll just quote it and leave it here for you to think about: 

“However, some readers are rarely nice in their reviews. It makes one wonder why as one 3 star review takes about five 5 star reviews to bring the author’s rating up.”

It’s a pretty good question. And what about the Gentle Readers among us? Do you, Gentle Reader, review each book you’ve read? What motivates you to leave a review? Do you have a system? (No need to share it with us.) Or is it none of our business? 

I’m starting to get really interested in reviews. I  am in process of leaving one for Attman’s Delicatessen, the dean of Baltimore’s Jewish delis and the inventors of the Cloak and Dagger Sandwich. I don’t know if I am equal to the task, but GrubHub seems to think I am, simply by virtue of being one of their customers. It was a good sandwich. The driver was good. I’m tickled to death that Attman’s is now using GrubHub so I don’t have to go all the way downtown and deal with the parking. But here’s my secret: My prime motivations for leaving a five star review are sympathy with the driver, who is driving all the way out here from downtown while trying to earn a living; and the fact that the sooner I finish the review I can bite into the sandwich. 

5 responses to “Reviews? Didn’t we just talk about those?”

  1. Barry S Richman Avatar
    Barry S Richman

    Well said. For all of us.

    Reply
  2. Lois Avatar
    Lois

    I usually rate books only for my own reference (in my Calibre database) to help me decide which books I might want to reread, and which authors I want to prioritize or avoid. My standard is roughly this, and I rate most things between 3 and 4.5, but, on the rare occasions when I post a public review, add half a star because of what I consider review-inflation.

    5* – Outstanding. I want to reread this RIGHT NOW because it blew my socks off. I’d recommend this highly to anyone who asks. I’ll scour the universe for more books by this author. (This is a very rare thing).
    4.5* – Excellent. I definitely want to reread this sometime fairly soon.
    4* – Very Good. I will enjoy rereading this at some point, and if there’s a sequel, I’ll want to read that, probably after re-reading the earlier one(s) in the series. I’ll continue to look for and read works by authors of 4* and 4.5* books.
    3* – 3.5* – ok to good: I could reread this, especially if there’s a sequel I want to read, but won’t go out of my way to do so. I’ll consider reading other works by this author.
    2* – 2.5* – Fair to almost poor. Sometimes these are short and entirely unmemorable; often they have significant problems in writing mechanics, or are just pretty dull. I wouldn’t want to reread these and would think twice before reading anything else by the author unless I have reason to think this is a fluke or they have improved significantly.
    1.5* Poor; never read this or anything by this author again
    1* – Terrible. My eyes! My eyes! Make sure I never read anything by this author again! Author can’t remember their plot, which characters are which, or how to use use basic writing mechanics. Reading was painful and I gave up early on once I saw how it’s progressing.

    For posting public reviews, which I do very rarely, I will sometimes post a review for a true 5* book. I will occasionally post reviews for 3-4* books if I have something useful and specific to comment on regarding the book’s strengths & weaknesses.

    I might post public reviews of 1* or 2* books to warn other readers not to spend their time or money. In such a case I go into detail about the serious issues I find. Note that I post these kinds of reviews only in the context of sites, such as Amazon, where the reviews are intended to help readers decide what to select. Were the context to be a writers’ critique group, I’d take a different approach, but since I’m a reader, not a writer, that’s not my context. There is, however, ambiguity in some places, since some sites use the term “review” when the writers seem to expect “reviews” to consist only of praise, whether warranted or not.

    Reply
  3. cindie snyder Avatar
    cindie snyder

    I agree well said! Glad your eye is doing better and hopefully you will get back to the things you love soon.

    Reply
  4. Gianna Thomas Avatar
    Gianna Thomas

    Love this post, Anne. It was twice over fun to read: my laugh for the day and thought provoking as well. I love that you have learned to sulk and will soon have a fainting couch in your living room. 🙂
    I do read reviews and after reading a book will consider whether or not I will leave a review. If I do a review, it will be rated at four or five stars and nothing lower. I also do reviews my way. One 5 star I did about a book I enjoyed was refused by Amazon. There was nothing wrong with the review, so I resubmitted it ‘as is’. Guess what? Yep, it was accepted with no problem.
    If I have enjoyed a book, but the editing was not well done, I usually will not do a review if another reviewer has already mentioned it. I have no desire to beat the author to a bloody pulp.
    Because I am also a preliminary editor, the first edit on my books is done by me. I look for missing words, misspelled words, echoes (which I am bad about doing), and head hopping (which I am still learning not to do). I try to get as clean a copy as I can to my editor so she can concentrate on the plot, it’s progression, whether or not it works, and is it interesting reading. Kay Springsteen has been with me almost since the beginning of my writing career and I would not give for her help. She is very good at what she does.
    My advice to other authors is ‘Do not be the only editor for your books. If you want good reviews and ratings, have a final editor to catch your mistakes’. And, yes, you will make mistakes that you don’t realize need to be corrected in the manuscript. Even if you read over your manuscript, unless you read it out loud, your brain will note the correction but will not let you know to change the manuscript. That’s why it is hard for us to catch AND correct mistakes. Reading aloud brings in our sense of hearing and the mistakes are more obvious.

    Reply
    1. Anne Madison Avatar
      Anne Madison

      You’re more civilized about your assertion than I am. I usually say, “He who self-edits his own work has a fool for a client.” I find the most embarrassing things slipping by, and I’m not ashamed to admit them. In fact, since I got this Mac a year or so ago, it slips in periods wherever it wants them as opposed to at the ends of sentences.

      I’m not surprised Amazon did not differentiate between the same review and a different one. I suspect they run their censoring software on a random basis. They must get millions of reviews every day. I feel sure it has a wordy dird detector, but other than that, having someone intercept a review must be a matter of chance.

      I’ve been on an Amazon diet this month, so I don’t have a single thing to add. I was thinking, though, one of the best inventions I made was a piece of software called Perfect-it, which took over at least some of the proofreading chores in a rational manner. It quit working on my Mac, but I’m going to try to get it running again.

      Thanks!

      Reply

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