Commenting on comments, reviewing reviews
Great discussion from the last post! Many of you in your comments noted how people will just glance at a rated review to see how many stars it got without reading the whole thing. There were of mixed reviews of sites like goodreads. Some found it crippled their reading. Others love it. It can be a dangerous place to be as an author, as people tend to be more brutal than they might be on their blogs or amazon. But I found commenter Cara's note interesting: "By the way I saw some people say they hated goodreads. I love it. My to-read list is soooooooo long now. For awhile there I thought there weren't even good books around anymore. I was so wrong." Hooray! Reading will never die!
Mixed reviews about rating reviews vs. not rating. Some who do rate their reviews noted that they don't pay attention to other reviewers' ratings anymore because they've learned first hand how arbitrary it is. This fascinates me--how the process of reviewing and rating changes you as a reader. Not the same for everyone, of course, but it's become a phenomenon in only the past few years and I find the discussion of it helpful.
Commenter Margie wrote, "I love to talk about what I have read just after I have read it, but I hate the stars. I have done them, mostly because I know how much it means to an author to get them." This made me realize I needed to clarify! There are two very different kinds of "starred reviews":
1. Individuals who write reviews on goodreads, amazon, B&N.com, etc., might give a book 1-5 stars based on their personal experience reading.
2. Professional review publications sometimes give a single star to a book review, indicating that they consider the book a standout title. (e.g. Kirkus, Publisher's Weekly, Horn Book, and Booklist)
In the case of professional reviews, the star isn't considered a rating, just a stronger recommendation. These "starred reviews" are very important to authors. Librarians with limited budgets and booksellers with limited shelf space sometimes only buy the books that get multiple starred reviews. Yes, we writers celebrate with big whooping the receiving of such stars. It's a sweet kiss to for our book baby, a happy thing.
However, I don't know any authors who love the first kind of stars, the 1-5 rating system. The stars on amazon, etc., are stressful to me. I avoid them as much as I can. It can feel like every day is the end of term, every day I'm opening up a new report card. And I have hundreds of teachers who I've never met. And many of them seem to hate my work. And some seem to hate me personally. And some find creative metaphors to express how much they hate my work, me, and anything that smells like me. Anyhoo...writers don't usually love having their books summed up in 1-5 stars, in my opinion. But I don't review books, so I have been curious about how that process affects readers and reviewers. Thanks for all your thoughtful comments!
[EDIT: I should also restate here that I don't think reviews are intended for the authors (as we discussed last year). I don't mean to be prescriptive and tell everyone how they should review and if they should use stars, etc. I just find the discussion interesting and hopefully valuable.]
Commenter Sally asks, "How do we discuss the books without giving spoilers?" Good question, and as I'm not a reviewer, maybe I'm not the best person to answer, and others of you will have better ideas. But as a reader I know I DESPISE spoilers when I haven't read the book, and LOVE to discuss all the details after. This was one reason why I asked the reviewers out there, why do you review? What's the motivation to post them? I wish we could have two classes of "reviews": one intended for those who have read them and one for those who haven't. They're all mixed together as it is. I do think there are some reviewers who can manage to appeal to both sets of people. As an author, I'm so grateful to those reviewers who will review my upcoming book in such a way as to give the premise and the idea of the story without disclosing (or hinting at) the spoiler details. Tricky to do, I think.
A reminder: On Wednesday I'll be at the Orem, Utah Barnes & Noble at 7 pm and on Saturday at the 2nd Annual Writing for Charity in Ogden, Utah. Also, I put up the complete Yellowbelly interview on my site.