Comments on: A way to fight the review buyers and sockpuppetmasters

By: alan

alan — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 06:21:56 +0000

Personally I much prefer a 10 star rating (or out of ten rating) to a 5 star rating. There’s a lot of difference between 6/10, 7/10 and 8/10. But it’s hard to make that distinction when you’ve only got 3* or 4*. Equally, not much would score a 10/10, but some books would be a solid 9/10. 4* and 5* don’t allow for that.

By: Dark Matter Fanzine

Dark Matter Fanzine — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 03:41:37 +0000

I have a few comments to make in response:
1) I don’t pay for most of the books I read (one of the perks of reviewing), and when I do pay it’s usually not through Amazon. Thus if Amazon only allows reviews from buyers, you’re losing a lot of potential reviewers *and* giving more power to Amazon. So yeah, I’m with you there.
2) I hate hate hate giving star ratings to books. I really loathe and detest it. I try to give genuine info to readers so that they can decide whether they’ll enjoy a book, so it’s better to read my words than look at the pretty stars. I don’t like giving books 5 star ratings. When I have given 5 stars, I tend to look back later and think that the book didn’t really deserve 5 stars [cringe]. I ask myself what is the difference between 3 and 4 stars? If I rate a book like Blood Song by Rhiannon Hart as 4 stars, then read her second book and think it’s not quite as good but it’s still a good YA paranormal romance, 3 stars is average but it’s worth more than 3 stars but it’s not as good as her 4 star book [talks faster and faster until hyperventilates and collapses, exhausted and stressed].

Reviewing is a big responsibility. I feel really bad sometimes because I haven’t figured it out yet, but I am engaging with the issues. Authors have writers groups to help develop their novels. I want a reviewers’ group so I can discuss my concerns, have different people give conflicting answers and work my way through the maze of issues.

By: A way to fight the review buyers and sockpuppetmasters – The Word – According To Me | The Word « GNBraun

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 23:41:59 +0000

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By: alan

alan — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 23:58:36 +0000

Yeah, I regularly get spam tweets from people saying, “Get 30,000 followers in two weeks!” Funny thing is, the tweet is from someone with about 60 followers. There are douchefucks everywhere.

By: tim mayer

tim mayer — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 20:50:08 +0000

Great post. My company routinely gets emails from people who claim they can get us X amount of “Likes” on Facebook for X amount of dollars. I’d never do such a thing, but the pull to the dark side is strong.
I’m Tim Mayer and I approve this ad.