Reviews, recommendations and personal taste (Patreon)

There was a recent post about reviews on one of the FB groups once again, where said poster was discussing his personal review rating. And how, on Amazon, it seemed that 4 & 5 stars were given out like candy.

There were a lot of great replies to his post, from which the replies from authors boiled down to - anything less than 4.5 stars for many books is bad for sales. As such, any review below 4 stars, from the way Amazon has set-up the system is basically a negative review.

And that, unfortunately is true. The way Amazon has it set-up and the way our culture / world is set-up, anything less than 5 stars is considered bad.

Which is insane, when you think about it. There are books by Lois McMaster Bujold or Terry Pratchett that I wouldn't necessarily mark as 5 stars, and these are some of the greatest writers we have in contemporary times. But, that's my personal taste and beliefs.

What it does mean is that if a 'valid' review of 3 stars (which would one intuitively consider to be 'okay') appeared, it actually is a negative. It's why sometimes I wish that reviews could be made entirely personal, so that my personal thoughts could be recorded. If nothing else, it'd make keeping track of my reading easier.

It also leads me to my other thought about recommendations. Right now, I've started recommending books again - on my fan page, in my newsletter. For a time, I did and then I stopped due to concerns about some writers getting upset that I wasn't recommending their books. 

Now, I've gone back to recommending books that I've read and enjoyed, for one reason or another. I figure I don't really care anymore that much, though I'll still avoid saying negative things about other series in public. It's the best compromise I can make.

So. That's the long way of saying, if I'm recommending a book, it's generally because I enjoyed it. 

Note that just because I'm not recommending a series doesn't mean I don't like it - I might not have gotten around to reading it. Or I think it's just okay. Or I know I'm biased about the book and it's not a reasonable bias (i.e. I read the book while grumpy / not in a great mood and I know it colored my view).

This random, rather lengthy post brought to you by procrastination.