More than Just a Rating discussion

Review bombing, especially pre-publication, has been in the news.

Does review bombing influence whether or not you write a review?

How much do pre-publication ratings, be they 1* or 5*, influence your opinion? Do pre-publication reviews, often from people who state they haven't read the book, influence you reading the book?

Some sites don't allow pre-publication reviews and Amazon notes verified purchase. Does knowing the reviewer purchased the book influence your opinion of the review?

I don't give much weight to ratings or reviews from unknown to me reviewers.

Pre-publication reviews and ratings can be valid and proof of purchase is not proof of reading.

I don't spend much time nowadays reading or writing reviews and when I do read reviews they are usually reviews written by those with whom I am acquainted. I choose to spend more time reading books.

I mostly trust reviews from people I'm GR friends with, or people on GR that I'm following. I do write reviews for every book that I attempt to read, whether or not I finish it, because I want my thoughts to be available to my GR network so they don't have to rely on strangers' opinions. I do not, however, generally write very long reviews.

Ratings, well, no, never have put much stock at all in them.

I appreciate the style of your reviews but I don't run across them often as our reading lists are pretty different.

Yes. But, yes, any review that reveals that the reviewer has not read the book is suspect. I googled 'review bombing' and found a title that had been subjected to it... went to the book page here on GR... and it is clear that there are a lot of comments and low ratings that were placed by 'friends of friends' who had not actually read the book. So, yes, RBing is def. a problem.

I don't rate books that I don't finish. I review them, to explain why I didn't, but I almost never rate them.

Cheryl wrote: "...I don't rate books that I don't finish. I review them, to explain why I didn't, but I almost never rate them."

For me it depends on how much of the book I read and why I quit.

If I started the book and found it wasn't something I wanted to read then it will probably just go on a not read shelf.

If I read most of the book I'm probably going to rate it.

In spite of the bogus 5* friend/family/hired reviews and 1* hater et al reviews I still think we are better off now than when we were dependant on people who wrote reviews as a job or part of a job. I knew some very good, very dedicated reviewers but there were others...

I read a romantic suspense novel that today might be considered women's fiction. It was one of the best books I read that year. This was before reader reviews were a thing but there were ARCs and other early copies sent to reviewers, friends, other authors, booksellers, and so on. A couple of months later professional reviewer panned the book in a very short uninformative review. Gave it like a 1.5 out of 5.

Another romantic suspense, not greatest ever but way better than average, another low rating and a negative review with comment about characters so far off I wondered if the reviewer had read beyond the first few pages of the book.

Later heard the reviewer speak about how they rated books. Turns out they had check lists. They considered these books romance and they didn't have all the elements on the reviewers romance check list.

or

One who criticized portrayal of female main character because she had long hair and there was no mention of her religion. They believed a woman would only have long hair if her religion required it.

or

Glowing review based on having met the author and just knowing the book will be great because of how charming and well spoken the author is and what the author said about the book.

Just a few examples of why, in spite of problems, I prefer reader reviews to the limited number of review sources of the past.

Oh gosh yes. "Professional" reviewers are the worst. Still are. I read the reviews in the magazines sometimes and then compare my thoughts, and it definitely seems like they didn't read the book but only reacted to elements of it.

And of course the community of 'critics' and publishers etc. is insular and almost incestuous; they really don't know what the rest of us want.

I still look for and use pre-pub reviews for my books. I sometimes supply them for others if I have really enjoyed the book. However, I am hesitant to do so these days as often I receive an abridged version of the book and for all I know the rest could be twaddle. I was asked for a pre-pub review based on a summary recently and refused. How can you really tell from a summary?
I have been offered money to act as a professional reviewer as I do occasional work for a newspaper reviewing new releases but that always seems mercenary to me.

Raymond wrote: "I still look for and use pre-pub reviews for my books. I sometimes supply them for others if I have really enjoyed the book. However, I am hesitant to do so these days as often I receive an abridge..."

I was occasionally asked to review based on early draft and thought that was bad but summary is even worse.

I agree completely. I could not surrender to that.

Thank you. Both for the information and for not participating. I'm actually not surprised to learn of this practice.

I must say, I think that some of those professionals do review summaries, as their comments give praise to the exact things that I find wrong with the published book. And/or sometimes they skim, and miss significant problems, admiring only the surface of the book. This seems to happen more in non-fiction.

I'll have to remember to call them out, now that I have learned that this can indeed happen.

L J wrote: "Does review bombing influence whether or not you write a review? - No. I write reviews for myself and developing my writing skills, and for my GR friends. Fighting a tide of review bombs, or getting on the front page, are no concern of mine.

How much do pre-publication ratings, be they 1* or 5*, influence your opinion? - depends on the book, the author, the genre. I'm not above further firing up my enthusiasm for an anticipated book by reading reviews of GR friends who lucked into an ARC. :) Whether they would actually influence my opinion? I hope not, but it could happen.

Do pre-publication reviews, often from people who state they haven't read the book, influence you reading the book? - They aren't reviews, but using a review to address other things, like being part of a conversation about the author's behavior, or whatever. But I guess if accusations of poor behavior go beyond cliqueish internet gossip, that might influence whether I read their book. But most of the time those conversations are about books I likely wouldn't read anyway.

"Some sites don't allow pre-publication reviews and Amazon notes verified purchase. Does knowing the reviewer purchased the book influence your opinion of the review?" - No. Libraries exist and perform a valuable service for their communities.

Another Author Behaving Badly tale of woe and this time it involves author review bombing other authors' books on Goodreads.

Wonder if any of the fake accounts were flagged by anyone as suspicious?

https://www.themarysue.com/cait-corra...

The Mary Sue tells the tale but be warned it is long and twisty.

Edited to add
Goodreads has a 'review bombing' problem — and wants its users to help solve it
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/17/121959...

Kind of wish NPR article left out "librarians" as it holds out false hope that anyone other than staff can deal with problem.

Indeed. And The Guardian quoted disgruntled authors, but not Otis or any reviewer, staff member, or anyone from GR.

There's another problem; apparently Amazon is trying to build a competitor for GR. I'm worried. I really don't want this site to fold.

I mean, they did vaguely reference a staff member implying something was going to be done. Surely that's worth something!

I'm not worried about that other Amazon site, though, honestly. It seems mainly geared toward cataloging, recommendations and sales. So it's not something I'm interested in at all. I do catalog my books here obviously, and sometimes use the recommendations that show up on my homepage when they seem relevant, but I would never switch to using a site specifically for that and no social content.

Probably 95% of the recommendations/books I find are through my friends and feed and groups. Even WITH review bombing, which usually is pretty obvious and easy to discount, IMO, reviews here are still far more valuable to me than a giant corporation just looking to sell me a book. I don't even buy most of the books I consume these days, so that site is pretty much worthless from the start for me.

Yes, since Amazon does own GR, they could decide that we who use libraries, friends' collections, etc. are not worthy of being served.

I need the cataloguing here and the groups, as well as the reviews from real readers. Well, need is an absolute, but really really would hate to lose.