If someone hates a book, they'll write a review about 50 percent of the time. Even if they only read a little bit of it. The people who hate something are always very quick to write reviews.
If someone likes a book, they'll write a review 1 percent of the time. That's right, one in a hundred people who like a book with stop to write a review about it.
You'll tip people for good food, good service, for all sorts of things. But you won't take 30 seconds to tell an author that you liked his book. A book that you only paid a few dollars for, but which entertained you for hours.
No, I don't get it.
Tell me about it ;) What is worse, many of the low star reviews also leave you wonder whether they were looking at the same book as you did ;)
ReplyDeleteWeirdly enough, for me it is the otherway around. I tend to write short review about books I like, or at least did not dislike. I find it hard to write an honest review about books I disliked to the point of not being able to finish it. I feel bad about reviewing something I have not read completely.
When I choose the book I read 1-2 stars comments only. If they are stupid or meaningless or talking shit - I buy the book. If they have some meaning I try to explore more. I never read 5 and 4 stars comments, 3 stars maybe.
ReplyDeleteThe thing is, reviews have a huge impact on the way Amazon ranks and promotes your book. Four and Five star reviews have a very real impact with Amazon, and what Amazon decides to do. And the more of them you get, the more Amazon will do for you.
DeleteThis is how a number of now famous authors actually got famous! They paid people to enter hundreds of reviews for their books, which got Amazon to promote the hell out of them. And even now that it is known that they cheated the system to get ahead, Amazon won't do anything to them, but heaven help anyone else who tries it now.
I do not read comments about your books.
ReplyDeleteThe best example for me is the first Tad Williams's Bobby Dollar book. People were doing lots of negative comments there - I really liked this book (I cannot say that I like the second book in this series). I still did not read the third one.
ReplyDeleteIt's that customer service thing you always hear about where if someone has a bad experience they will tell 10 people but if you get a good experience usually it's only 1
ReplyDelete