THE Group for Authors! discussion

A reader who could not possibly have read a book (new release, no sales yet -- one Giveaway and the reader is hundreds of miles away from any of the addresses, and one author signing 500+ miles away) gave the book a 2 star rating.

Looks like a 15 year old High school student... not a big deal, but disrespectful of authors work.

Seems there should be a way of reporting a suspected unscrupulous rater, and after they get "X" number of reports, they should be warned or worse.

Just a suggestion as I saw in other threads there is no requirement someone rating a book had to actually read it. Sounds like a weakness.

No, there is no requirement to have read any part of it. Readers are, in fact, welcome to use the star system to classify books as they wish, the reasoning being that this is really a social/categorizing site, not a commercial one like Amazon. Some readers will use the stars to triage books by their interest level, which is considered an acceptable usage.

Now, apparently there is a glitch that sometimes assigns random two-stars, and you could ask GR staff if that has occurred in this instance.

And how do you know for sure that someone who got that book through a giveaway or the author signing didn't give the book to the person who rated it?

You are correct, I don't know the person did not get a copy somehow, someway. But common sense... just laughing it off!

I see the point about rating and social site. It is actually better than anything Amazon does, that's for sure.

Have a good day and I appreciate the response!

This ended up being a glitch.

The rating system seems to have a few glitches. Right now, 'Solar 30' is saying 12 ratings, 7 reviews and a 4.17 average.

But there are only 5 ratings, 3 reviews and 4.4 average (22/5) as far as I can tell.

Anyone else have a similar problem? I think it has something to do with trying to add the Kindle edition and combining with the Paperback. Not sure.

Maybe it re-calculates overnight?

You're essentially right-- the community reviews section of the book page is on a longer cache than the stats that appear a the top of the page. Often, you'll see the stats change before you're able to see the new ratings or reviews below. Within a few days (usually less than 3) you should see the new reviews appear.

They can take a while to update, sometimes as long as a couple of days, and can sometimes update unevenly. If it's like that for more than a day or two I would contact GR staff.

Seems your comment timing corrected it! (probably not the comment, I know).