My Feelings on Reviews
There has been a lot of discord in the book world recently about reviews. What’s a bad review, what’s a good review, and what authors expect for reviews. Honestly, it’s a lot of words that have no business being put out into the world. Reviews are for readers. They are for others to decide whether or not they want to take a chance on a book (movie, podcast, or song–anything really).
A reader is not obligated to give a good review.
Once they start that process, that reviewer is not obligated to say nice things in said review. A review itself should be well versed and critical. Readers and reviewers are not beholden to making an author happy.
ARC reviews are touted as “honest” but is that really what we are getting when authors are saying that a 3-star review is bad. And a review can’t be posted on release day if it is lower than a 3 star. Now for me personally, I will 3-star review a book I like. There might be something wrong with it, or there might be a part of the story that I don’t enjoy. But overall, a 3 star for me is a good book. However, there are some authors spouting chaos in the book world about how a 3-star review is bad and we as reviewers shouldn’t be posting them.
Reviews have been around for a very long time. Many products/services are reviewed.
Reviews give us truths about a product that has been consumed or used. People look for reviews to see if they might gravitate to a work or not.
I get that authors get hurt by things that come up in reviews, but they are putting their work out into the world for public consumption. Not everyone is going to love everything an author publishes. Not everyone connects to work that is put out there. I get super frustrated when authors, who are artists of the written word think that everyone has to love everything they put out.
As an art major in college, critique day was truly one of the worst days. Because you knew that there was someone or multiple someone that is going to hate what you have put in front of them. And those fellow students were not gentle in their critiques. I literally sat in a class and one of my professors told me the work I did was trash. Yeah, it hurts, but being in an area in which the work is judged authors have to realize that NO EVERYONE WILL LIKE YOUR BOOKS. A 3-star rating might not be bad… but honestly stay out of reader spaces.
