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Tahlia Newland

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Should authors publish negative book reviews?

August 13, 2012 by Tahlia Newland

Soon after I began writing reviews and publishing them on my blog, I asked another author if he would review my book of short stories and post it on his blog. He said that he didn’t write reviews because he didn’t want to be a target for disgruntled authors who might not like what he said about their work. I took his point and decided that if I couldn’t say something good about a book, I would say nothing about it in public. I also want to support good authors, not talk about books that aren’t so good. Who wants to hear about them anyway?

So my policy for reviewing is that I will only publish reviews for books that I can give 3 or more stars for. That doesn’t mean that I give 3-5 stars for everything I read; it means that I don’t publish my 1 & 2 star  reviews. If the author had requested a review from me, then I send them a few private notes.

However, in the same way that fake 5 star reviews have consequences for the whole rating system, so does this policy. Many reviewers, especially if they are authors, have similar policies. Some only publish their 4 and 5 star reviews.  The result is that there is nothing to counteract any fake or misguided 5 star reviews in places like Amazon, thus the rating becomes dreadfully skewed.  As a reader, I’m suspicious of any book that hasn’t many reviews, because I figure that no one had anything good to say about it, but the book may simply be recently released, or the author hasn’t managed to get anyone to write reviews for it yet.  So really this idea of not publishing negative reviews isn’t very helpful for readers or for authors who do have genuine reviews.

I am so grateful to those who publish their 1 and 2 star reviews telling me that the book has atrocious grammar and countless copy errors, because plenty of genuine reader reviewers actually don’t notice or don’t care ( That’s why to get on the AI list your reviewer has to be someone with writing or editing ‘qualifications’). Some things only writers notice and by publishing our 1 and 2 star reviews, we can educate readers and help them to be more discerning. We are also sending a message to authors that says – make sure your work is professional before you publish because we will tell everyone if it isn’t.

It goes without saying that we should be fair and kind with our words, that we should acknowledge the work that has gone into the work and also note the difference between our personal preference and technical faults. Given all of this and especially in light of the unfortunate occurrence of fake 5 star reviews, the question is – should I change my policy and publish even the reviews for books I would give only 1 or 2 stars for? For the sake of readers and realistic ratings, I’m tempted. The only reason I don’t do it, is because as an author I don’t want to risk my career getting stained by someone getting nasty –I have noticed that even when I’m being careful to be kind, people can still get offended. I have also heard that some authors try to discredit the work of authors that they feel are a threat to their fan base by writing negative reviews, and I certainly wouldn’t want that happening to me.

I think it’s a culture thing. If it’s accepted that we all publish the bad along with the good, then we should feel safe in doing so. I want to know how you feel about this, so here’s a poll.

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Filed Under: Book talk Tagged With: Authors, book reviews, ethics, harrassment, helpful, negative, positive, review issues, targets

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Comments

  1. Wendy Bertsch says

    August 13, 2012 at 3:10 pm

    In the traditional publishing world, authors had to take their chances with the critics, and if we’re to be taken seriously, we have to be willing to do the same. I can’t answer the poll, because I don’t accept the concept that I ‘should’ do anything, one way or another. I do as I please. The decision, in this case, is an easy one for me, though. If a book is so bad that I’d give it one star, I won’t waste my time reading it through…and I don’t post reviews for books I haven’t read.

    • Tahlia Newland says

      August 14, 2012 at 12:55 pm

      I guess I meant those authors that already write reviews as a matter of course. Maybe I’ll change the wording on the poll to reflect that.

  2. Karen Charbonneau says

    August 13, 2012 at 4:02 pm

    I follow my husband’s philosophy: If he can’t get through a book, he does not give it a review. He gives reviews only to books he finishes. I have never read a review in the New York Times Review of Books (or other professional journals) in which the reviewer said, “I didn’t finish this book, but here’s my review.” I have one negative review on Amazon Kindle for The Wolf’s Sun by a person who claimed she couldn’t get into it, indicating that my book had somehow offended. During the month she “attempted” to read my book, she gave 18 one star reviews out of 27 books she reviewed. That’s “attempting” to read nearly one book a day. I believe anyone who sets herself or himself up as a reviewer should read the entire book before announcing an opinion for the world to see. Otherwise, it’s not being a conscientious reviewer – it’s simply blathering. P.S. I didn’t have the patience to get into Jane Austen when I was young — wouldn’t I have looked silly announcing to the world then, “This is boring. Why do other readers bother with this author.” Thank goodness I took her up again in my forties.

    • Tahlia Newland says

      August 14, 2012 at 12:57 pm

      I don’t post a review on a book that I can’t finish and I think that’s fair enough, but we could let readers know that we couldn’t finish it if it was for technical reasons, rather than personal taste.

  3. Mardel says

    August 13, 2012 at 8:06 pm

    I’m glad I’m not an author facing these seemingly unsolvable questions. I can understand the concerns on both sides of the question. As an amateur reviewer, I do not review books I don’t finish reading, and I rarely finish a book I’m not enjoying, therefore, most of my reviews end up to be three, four or five star reviews. I also feel that it’s not fair on my part to review a book I don’t finish. I never thought about that skewing the ratings on Amazon. I just figured that there’s enough people who work at finishing novels or who write one and two star reviews without me adding my two cents worth.

    There are also plenty of paid reviewers, so if one wanted a professional opinion, there are the magazines, or bookish sites that provide the pro reviews. I don’t follow those sites, because I want to know what ‘regular’ readers think of a book.

    All this boils down to, we have to follow our head/heart. If it doesn’t feel right to post about books that you don’t finish, then you shouldn’t do it. The books who haven’t had many mentions because they haven’t been widely read, are going to eventually have readers reviewing them. And the books that don’t seem to have many reviews because peope don’t finish them – well, those books don’t have many reviews for a reason, then.

    At any rate, reading a review – positive or negative – only plays a small part in my decision to buy a book. I also look at sections of dialogue, and open up to a random page towards the middle of a book to see if it’s written in a style that I’ll enjoy reading. Then I buy the book – and even then, I’m still disappointed once in a while. You just never know.

    🙂

  4. ccc says

    August 13, 2012 at 9:05 pm

    Too many one-star reviews are on the order of one I recently read where the only comment was that the reader felt cheated because the e-book she’d purchased was too short. Fortunately, another reader commented on her review; his comment being that the reader obviously didn’t read the book description, because it clearly states that it is a “short.” And that’s what “short” means.

    • Tahlia Newland says

      August 14, 2012 at 12:51 pm

      My only 2 star review for one of my short stories had the same complaint – and it was also clearly stated in the blurb. Sigh. We can do nothing about those kind of reviews, but at least anyone reading them should be able to figure out that they’re not helpful.

  5. ReaditDaddy says

    August 13, 2012 at 10:47 pm

    Absolutely! If for no other reason, it gives others that have reviewed a book highly the chance to pitch in and defend their opinions. So definitely always publish both negative and positive but more importantly don’t just read the score, read the reason for the score.

  6. Wendy Unsworth says

    August 13, 2012 at 11:03 pm

    It’s a tricky one and becoming a published author myself has made me a much more thoughtful reviewer, which I think is a good thing.
    Honesty has got to be the most important factor therefore I have voted ‘sometimes’ in the poll because I have felt on rare occasions that a low star rating is justified. That was when I felt that the content of the book was totally misrepresented on the cover and in the blurb.
    99% of the time I wouldn’t finish a book that I would rate 1 or 2 star and if I didn’t finish the book I wouldn’t post a review.
    There is a real case for saying that by not posting a negative review, when we feel it is deserved (having purchased a book) we are endorsing it by default and that is worrying. However, in most cases I personally would prefer to put a book to one side as ‘not for me’ and concentrate on works that I can enjoy and discuss with others.
    There will always be plenty enough people who are willing to ‘lay it on the line’ when they consider a book to be unworthy – maybe pure readers (as opposed to writer/readers) are best left to that job!

    • Tahlia Newland says

      August 14, 2012 at 12:59 pm

      I’m considering splitting my personality, into reader and writer. I wouldn’t post a negative review on my site, but the reader persona could make a comment elsewhere. It seems to me to be the only way to solve the dilema.

  7. Francene says

    August 14, 2012 at 12:12 am

    I’ve really struggled with this issue lately because I want to give honest reviews of books, but at the same time as an author you do make yourself a target for disgruntled authors if the review is less than glowing.

    At the moment I’ve only been publishing good reviews, but one way I’ve thought of to counteract this is to just leave reviews with no star rating, listing the things I liked about a book and areas for improvement. This gives the reader some idea of the strengths & weaknesses, helping them to decide if this is the type of book they’d enjoy. Goodreads allows you to leave reviews without a rating, but unfortunately Amazon doesn’t.

    IMO the rating system has become so compromised it’s almost pointless. I only look at reviews that have actual details about the books and completely ignore the ones which state that this is the best / worst book I’ve ever read without saying anything substantial about the actual book.

    • Tahlia Newland says

      August 14, 2012 at 12:53 pm

      I get the idea that a lot of readers are feeling the same, and therefore reading the reviews critically, and that’s a good thing. I’ll be addressing that in my next post on the subject.

  8. lauraleeauthor says

    August 14, 2012 at 11:36 pm

    My feeling is that a review is not actually an assessment of an innate literary quality of a book, rather it is a musing on the relationship of the reader to the book at the time he or she read it. When I write reviews of books on Goodreads I generally try to express it in those terms. Not that I can say whether the book was good or bad but how I reacted to it. Of course, I read a lot of books and I do not feel compelled to finish one I don’t like, so if I get to the point of reviewing one I generally liked it fairly well.

  9. lauraleeauthor says

    August 14, 2012 at 11:40 pm

    Incidentally, I think that negative reviews do not hurt a book as much as writers think, especially if the preponderance of reviews are positive. If a book has only five star reviews I think people tend to wonder if it is just the author’s friends trying to pump things up. When I look at a book to see if I should buy it or check it out from the library, I don’t just look at the star rating but whether the people who reviewed it liked it or disliked it for the same reasons I might.

    • Tahlia Newland says

      August 15, 2012 at 1:40 pm

      I agree. I look at the lower reviews but they don’t mean that I won’t buy it, only if they mention something that would drive me crazy – like a lack of editing. I think people do look at the overall rating though, and there’s quite a few sites that won’t list books that don’t have an average of 4 stars or more.

  10. Diane says

    August 19, 2012 at 11:08 pm

    I have had a strange thing happen to me on occasion, readers have read my work and written and told me how much they like it, have an enjoyed it etc and that they have given me a favourable review but that they have deliberately marked the stars down to make their review seem more genuine. I see what they mean and as an author I am grateful that they have taken the time and as I have stated the reviews are all good but isn’t it odd that we have to engineer things to make them believable in this way. I think that if a book is really bad then it is a dilemma because your soul wants to be honest but your writing heart wants to protect your own baby from vengeful reviewers – what a strange world. Nice blog by the way

    • Tahlia Newland says

      August 20, 2012 at 12:39 pm

      Gee Diane, that shows the state of the present culture around reviews. The only way to make it more healthy is for all of us to be honest (and polite)

  11. Melinda VanLone says

    August 27, 2012 at 1:21 am

    It’s always been my policy to only post the 4 and 5 star reviews. Those stars are a funny thing. In Amazon, a 3 or less pulls the rating down. If I liked the book, I don’t want that consequence. I also think the average person sees 3 as “bad”, no matter what you say in the text of the review. And since I make my living the same way the author I’m reviewing does, I don’t want the bad karma nor backlash of a 1 or 2 star review. I’ve watched it happen on Goodreads where an author, upset by a negative review, then launched a “hate” campaign on the other author and proceeded to create multiple log ins, to be sure the 1 star ratings stayed up at the top of the list on Amazon and Goodreads. Yes, it happens. A lot. Because some people never left high school.

    So I do worry about that. It’s the “if you can’t say something nice” thing that my mother taught me.

    For some reason, I have no trouble at all giving a bad review to movies though. I guess there isn’t the personal backlash like their is with authors? Not sure.

  12. Tahlia Newland says

    August 27, 2012 at 5:31 pm

    I don’t think that 3 stars is bad. For me it means that the book is good, just not to my taste, or has some small issues. I always had the same opinion as you until recently when i realised how not publishing those reviews is screwing the ratings unfairly for readers trying to get a handle on quality. I just hope no one asks me to review a book I’d need to give less than 3 stars for. Even when I do publish my first 1 or 2 star review, you can be sure that I will be polite.

    • Wendy Unsworth says

      August 29, 2012 at 1:17 am

      Tahlia – I agree, three stars is okay – especially if accompanied by constructive ideas about the plot, the characters or what didn’t work. It’s the nasty, often personal comments that I dislike. After all, the review is about the book not the author and even among mainstream authors I have often read one book I loved and another that I didn’t. For me, Rosamund Lupton is a prime example. I really enjoyed ‘Sister’ whereas, in my opinion ‘Afterwards’ had a weak and even ludicrous storyline. I know this author can write but, on this occasion, her work didn’t thrill me. It wouldn’t make me avoid her work in the future and that was what I said in my three star review.

      • Tahlia Newland says

        August 29, 2012 at 9:50 am

        You’re right. I’m trusting that since I always write polite well-considered reviews that I won’t become the butt of some disgruntled author. I treat all the authors I review as if I know them personally, so I don’t say anything that I wouldn’t say to their face.

Trackbacks

  1. Should authors publish negative reviews? | Awesome Indies says:
    August 13, 2012 at 11:35 am

    […] http://tahlianewland.com/2012/08/13/should-authors-publish-negative-book-reviews/ […]

  2. What’s in a star? | Tahlia Newland, author says:
    August 24, 2012 at 10:55 am

    […] The poll on whether authors should publish reviews of less than 3 stars was overwhelmingly in favour of publishing such reviews (when I last checked). The reason being that without such informed reviews, the reading public isn’t getting the information they need to make the decision of whether to purchase or not. Luckily, I am seeing less books in the 1 and 2 star criteria these days, because from now on, in fairness to readers, I will be leaving reviews for them on Amazon and Goodreads. I won’t put them here though, because I figure you really don’t want to hear about them. […]

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