I like your honesty, Emma! I, too, struggle with saying something new or clever in book reviews. I used to do a lot of book reviews, actually, but I tend to be a little too critical and honest, then swing to the other extreme and give five stars to books that really don't merit it. It's mostly because I'm querying, and I don't want a bad review to come back to bite me; I also am VERY mindful of how much work goes into even a crappy novel. (It occurs to me that this could be a good substack post. LOL)
Anyway, one thing I figured out is that almost no one is saying anything original or clever in their reviews ... and that authors don't necessarily care, as long as they get a decent 4 or 5 star rating and have their number of reviews boosted (hence driving it up in Amazon's algorithms). Read enough reviews and they all start to sound similiar, to be honest. (Especially the one star reviews, which are often so similiar that I think they're written by the same person under different AMazon accounts, but that's a completely different topic!)
Thank you for the kind comment! I'm so glad you like the honesty, I do too. Which brings me to say that I would love to read your honest reviews. When you say 'critical' do you think you were being judgemental or noting the author's decisions that you don't think worked. I do absolutely agree that EVERY book is a huge labour of love and it feels wrong to say anything negative about any of them. I try to think of it in terms of 'who is this book best for?' or 'why didn't this book work for me?' I hadn't thought about the fact that when you're querying you feel like you need to be careful!! That's so interesting. I'd love to hear more about how querying feels around really.
When I say “critical”, I usually mean that there are really obvious flaws in the novel, ones that should’ve been caught by an editor at some point: editing issues (spelling!!!), huge plot holes/reasoning gaps, and lack of research on the author’s part, such as a police procedural that ignores real life police procedures. (Given the amount of information available on such things, there’s really not a huge excuse to get big things wrong.) These typically but not always, happen in self-published or small press published novels.
I try to note if I think I’m not the target demographic for the book (such as romance or horror) and if the issues is that the book just isn’t my type of book.
I really try to rate based on how well the author did in any common element of writing in as objective a manner as possible: characterization, plotline, etc. I do hold a master’s in literature, so I’m decent at this. I’ve gone back and changed a star rating before and noted this in the review. (Such as, upon reflection, I was too hard on this book and the author actually did thus-and-such well.)
I agree that going back to amend ratings is helpful because it allows for how we change as readers and perspective. I do get annoyed at some of the huge flaws in some novels- I can only assume that time constraints meant they couldn't be edited as they needed??
Haha, oh god, I hope it's a bot and not a person. Otherwise we might have to hate that person for spending their life writing negative reviews 😳. I think you're totally right that no one is saying anything original and some of the pressure I feel is to be original, which is very arrogant! That's why I thought the 'say 5 things you see' tactic might strip away some of the complicated (and totally unnecessary!) emotions going on.
The negative spam-like reviews are a HUGE problem on Amazon and Goodreads. There have been scandals about an author creating multiple accounts just to negatively spam-rate a "rival" author's book. Seriously. It's crazy.
Another thing I did when I reviewed was give a section on "what I liked" and "what I didn't like" with bullet points under each. As long as I kindly worded the dislikes, authors didn't seem to mind very much. (Two indie authors told me that they appreciated the kindly-worded feedback and that it actually helped their writing!)
Oh boy, that sounds awful. I can't imagine how horrible the author must feel if they are negatively spamming a 'rival' author. The scarcity mindset has a lot to answer for. I love your bullet point sections! I'm going to try that next.
That author was under contract for their own novel and I believe the publisher actually dropped the author and didn’t publish her book. What I do know is that the author was panned by bloggers and commentators. It basically ruined her career.
I like your honesty, Emma! I, too, struggle with saying something new or clever in book reviews. I used to do a lot of book reviews, actually, but I tend to be a little too critical and honest, then swing to the other extreme and give five stars to books that really don't merit it. It's mostly because I'm querying, and I don't want a bad review to come back to bite me; I also am VERY mindful of how much work goes into even a crappy novel. (It occurs to me that this could be a good substack post. LOL)
Anyway, one thing I figured out is that almost no one is saying anything original or clever in their reviews ... and that authors don't necessarily care, as long as they get a decent 4 or 5 star rating and have their number of reviews boosted (hence driving it up in Amazon's algorithms). Read enough reviews and they all start to sound similiar, to be honest. (Especially the one star reviews, which are often so similiar that I think they're written by the same person under different AMazon accounts, but that's a completely different topic!)
Thank you for the kind comment! I'm so glad you like the honesty, I do too. Which brings me to say that I would love to read your honest reviews. When you say 'critical' do you think you were being judgemental or noting the author's decisions that you don't think worked. I do absolutely agree that EVERY book is a huge labour of love and it feels wrong to say anything negative about any of them. I try to think of it in terms of 'who is this book best for?' or 'why didn't this book work for me?' I hadn't thought about the fact that when you're querying you feel like you need to be careful!! That's so interesting. I'd love to hear more about how querying feels around really.
When I say “critical”, I usually mean that there are really obvious flaws in the novel, ones that should’ve been caught by an editor at some point: editing issues (spelling!!!), huge plot holes/reasoning gaps, and lack of research on the author’s part, such as a police procedural that ignores real life police procedures. (Given the amount of information available on such things, there’s really not a huge excuse to get big things wrong.) These typically but not always, happen in self-published or small press published novels.
I try to note if I think I’m not the target demographic for the book (such as romance or horror) and if the issues is that the book just isn’t my type of book.
I really try to rate based on how well the author did in any common element of writing in as objective a manner as possible: characterization, plotline, etc. I do hold a master’s in literature, so I’m decent at this. I’ve gone back and changed a star rating before and noted this in the review. (Such as, upon reflection, I was too hard on this book and the author actually did thus-and-such well.)
Querying … well, that’s a post unto itself!
I agree that going back to amend ratings is helpful because it allows for how we change as readers and perspective. I do get annoyed at some of the huge flaws in some novels- I can only assume that time constraints meant they couldn't be edited as they needed??
Haha, oh god, I hope it's a bot and not a person. Otherwise we might have to hate that person for spending their life writing negative reviews 😳. I think you're totally right that no one is saying anything original and some of the pressure I feel is to be original, which is very arrogant! That's why I thought the 'say 5 things you see' tactic might strip away some of the complicated (and totally unnecessary!) emotions going on.
The negative spam-like reviews are a HUGE problem on Amazon and Goodreads. There have been scandals about an author creating multiple accounts just to negatively spam-rate a "rival" author's book. Seriously. It's crazy.
Another thing I did when I reviewed was give a section on "what I liked" and "what I didn't like" with bullet points under each. As long as I kindly worded the dislikes, authors didn't seem to mind very much. (Two indie authors told me that they appreciated the kindly-worded feedback and that it actually helped their writing!)
Oh boy, that sounds awful. I can't imagine how horrible the author must feel if they are negatively spamming a 'rival' author. The scarcity mindset has a lot to answer for. I love your bullet point sections! I'm going to try that next.
That author was under contract for their own novel and I believe the publisher actually dropped the author and didn’t publish her book. What I do know is that the author was panned by bloggers and commentators. It basically ruined her career.