THE Group for Authors! discussion

Hello,
I seem to have ratings and reviews come and go from the top of my book page. It's been 31 ratings / 24 reviews for a few days and today it's showing 27 ratings / 21 reviews. I can't see any that have been deleted. This has happened a couple of times before and then it will right itself in a day or two, but I would like for all of my reviews to show consistently. Is there a reason for this or is it a glitch? Thanks, Bec.

Possibly a cache issue, particularly if less than 72 hours or so.

Did you try refreshing the stats? (when editing any edition of the book midway down righthand column there used to be an option to refresh)

If no longer an option or didn't fx it, then likely staff will need to refresh for you when back at work tomorrow.

I'm just a regular (non-staff, non-author and non-librarian) member so I'll go see how many reviews appear for me and post back here letting you know.

ETA: tells me 27 ratings and 21 reviews. I can see 24 reviews (some say hidden for spoiler but are still visible and should count?)

Hello, they're not new reviews and have been showing for a few days so Im not sure what's happened to them today. I can see them too but they don't show in the count up the top. I'll try refreshing when I get home and see if that helps :)

I refreshed the stats and it's still on 21 reviews but when I count them there are 24. It was sitting on 24 for about a week so they're not new ones. I will hang tight and hopefully a GR staff member or a librarian can see what's happening with it.

I've had a few oddities for a while now. I spent quite a bit of time trying to work out why one day it would show a rating of 4.0, then return to the 4.06. This has happened several times and I can't match the number of ratings to those showing either.

I'm not going to spend any more time looking! I'm not too worried about it - yet.

I've noticed the numbers fluctuating a lot more than usual lately, as well. I've given up trying to make sense of it, though, and it doesn't bother me now.

We were experiencing a site issue with this but it should all be resolved now. Please let me know here if anyone is still experiencing this - I'd be happy to take a closer look!

I have about 10 times more reviews on Amazon than on Goodreads for my novel, Pianist in a Bordello. Is there a way I can post the Amazon reviews on Goodread?

I would really like to know the answer to Mike's question as well. Can the Amazon reviews be posted on Goodreads? If so, how?

Since consumer reviews don't belong to the authors, I don't see how you could legally copy them on to another site.

My gut reaction is the same as Faith's. If the author of the review wanted to post a review in multiple places, he/she could have done so. The reason for AMZ and not GR could be anything from not being a GR member to hating GR with a passion, so it wouldn't be ethical (in my never humble opinion) to "move" an AMZ review to GR or vice versa, no matter the mechanism.

That said, I see no reason you can't post something at GR that asks people to check out your reviews at AMZ.

Just my USD .02.

Eric

Adding to Faith's astute observation, it is important to remember that the vast majority of avid readers choose not to ever post a review in a literary or commercial vendor's website. Those that do, wish to share their personal opinion of a book with other readers, not the author.

Since a consumer review is subjective, its value and effectiveness as a marketing tool ranks rather low when compared to other options available. Very few readers base their purchasing decision primarily upon a consumer review, whether it be positive, negative or indifferent. One reader's "worst book ever" may very well be another reader's "best book ever".

I agree. I would like for them to see my reviews. Then they will know if they are interested in buying my book.

Faith wrote: "Since consumer reviews don't belong to the authors, I don't see how you could legally copy them on to another site."

I'd comment on those Amazon reviews asking if you even had permission to post or quote them elsewhere. Some reviewers don't mind if it's the author requesting. Others very specifically will only review on Amazon or only on certain sites and would object to the reviews showing elsewhere (some goodreads members in their settings do allow their reviews here shared via goodreads review feed some sites subscribe to).

I'm pretty sure the only place on goodreads you could then quote those reviews once permission received would be on your author page or updates. I'm positive the book description/synopsis is against policy (and quotes, praises and reviews will be removed there). I'm not sure about your own review of the book other than that on goodreads you do have to have permission to use anything quoted in your review (not just Amazon reviews but quoting anything other than bits of the book deemed fair use for reviews).

Mike wrote: "I have about 10 times more reviews on Amazon than on Goodreads for my novel, Pianist in a Bordello. Is there a way I can post the Amazon reviews on Goodread?"

Goodreads and Amazon use two separate review systems, so unfortunately Amazon reviews can't be included alongside your Goodreads reviews. You are welcome to post these in an author blog, or in the description on your author page, however, these may not be posted onto any book pages.

Hope that helps!

Jim - well, a single review is not very helpful as a marketing tool for the author or a guide for the reader as to whether they will like the book.

But a book with 10 reviews will generally sell better than a book with none. 100 reviews is better than 10. 1,000 is better than 100.

And when we are into the giddy heights of 10 or more reviews, we start to get a reasonable picture of what the book is like. The more reviews we have, the less of a chance that the outliers (good or bad) will sway the overall average.

So I can see why Mike is asking the question. It is galling to have lots of reviews on one platform that can't be seen on another. But as Jaclyn has said, there is no legit way for an author to copy and paste reviews between Amazon and Goodreads. It is probably not something that we should be doing. A reader leaves a review on Amazon or GR if they want to. We can't interfere with that.

One thing I have found is that being active on GR helps to get GR reviews.

Can anyone help? I have 2 books on Goodreads which now show an average of 0 ratings and 0 reviews below the title, and yet the actual ratings/reviews from the users can still be found below the page.

Justin wrote: "Can anyone help? I have 2 books on Goodreads which now show an average of 0 ratings and 0 reviews below the title, and yet the actual ratings/reviews from the users can still be found below the page."

So sorry about that Justin. Our developers have recently been fine-tuning the way reviews, ratings and to-read shelf additions are displayed in order to improve site performance, so stats may temporarily seem off for some books or authors. I've manually refreshed your stats so everything should be back to normal

If you're not seeing the changes on your side yet, I'd suggest refreshing your browser cache in order to see the most up-to-date version of the site.

Let me know if you continue to experience problems!

Thank you, Jaclyn! Looking good now. :)

Fantastic - thanks for letting me know! :)

Since this seems to be the thread for it:

My ratings and reviews seem to have disappeared. I mean, they are still there when I click on the book, but when I just look at them from my dashboard they are shown with zero ratings and zero reviews.

Even when I click on the book, I have to scroll down to see the ratings because they don't show up at the top with the book title. It just shows zero stars, zero ratings, and zero reviews.

F.A.R. wrote: "Since this seems to be the thread for it:

My ratings and reviews seem to have disappeared."

This should all be correct now. As mentioned above, please refresh your cache if you still can't see there.

Jaclyn wrote:

Thank you! It's all good now.

Jaclyn'

I'm still experiencing this problem in that all my reviews are there on the page but the totals say '0', etc at the top of the page.

Can you take a look at this for me, please?

Thanks,

Andrew

Andrew wrote: "Jaclyn'

I'm still experiencing this problem in that all my reviews are there on the page but the totals say '0', etc at the top of the page."

Ander, it looks like this is all fixed now - please let me know if you're still not seeing a review count.

Hi I noticed that my reviews for https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... on Goodreads dropped from 10 to 5 this week! Any specific reason why?

Hi B.J. The number of ratings and reviews on a book page tends to be very dynamic, as Goodreads is a live site with many moving pieces. It can be quite common for members to remove books from their shelves or remove their accounts, which would remove those ratings or reviews. I've refreshed your reviews and ratings, and done a manual recount and these are now reflecting correctly.