Week Five Prompt Response

I think the "review game" is multi-faceted. When I read reviews, I only put a lot of stock into them for my personal taste if the reader is someone who reads similarly to me. A lot of theme choices and stylistic differences could lead one reviewer to say that they did not enjoy the book, and they might leave a one star review. Some people review-bomb debut titles by authors whose personalities they don't enjoy, or with subject matter they find offensive. Platforms like Goodreads and Amazon are great for taking the general "temperature" of opinion on a book--but only if that book has lots of reviews so a kind of consensus can be reached. 

Books that struggle to get reviewed, like self-published books, can have their debuts irreparably damaged by a few one star reviews. In the writing groups I'm in on Facebook and the like, there is at least a post a week by someone upset because a reviewer left a one star review of their book. (My personal opinion is that authors should not be reading the content of random reviewers to protect their mental health, and also because reviews are for readers, not authors, but I digress). The damage this does to a fledgling book could prevent it from getting into a library or bookstore in the future. Personally, I don't leave any reviews lower than three stars on Goodreads, but that's only because I know my taste is subjective and that a book might be someone else's favorite five star read. Genre conventions I don't enjoy might also influence how I would personally perceive a book for how frequent readers of that genre would see it. For instance, when I read It Ends with Us and It Starts with Us by Colleen Hoover. I rated those five stars because I think Hoover has a command of the contemporary romance genre, and writes well to her specific audience. Do I think they would be five star literary fiction? Of course not. But for readers of contemporary romance, I think they are five star.

My library has a generous collection development budget, and we will often purchase books with poor reviews if enough patrons request that title, or if that title is cheap enough to justify buying for one patron. We will often buy books by indie authors if a patron requests them. I do feel if a book is getting tons of positive press, we should be buying more copies of that than of random one star books, but those one star books might have an audience as well whose needs we can meet with those books. 

In regards to reviews like that for Angela's Ashes, if I were in collection development, reviews like those done by Kirkus would sway my opinion more than that of "random" people. Not that the average person's opinion isn't valid. But sometimes people get nitpicky and enjoy tearing down popular TV shows, movies, books, video games, etc., just because they are popular. I don't necessarily think that's the case here with Angela's Ashes, though.

I think it's fair that some books are reviewed to death and others are not. That might be controversial, but I think we have to provide more reviews for popular books versus unpopular books. Not that those who are unpopular should never get a chance, but why should we have one hundred reviews for a book that's only sold one thousand copies? As the market shifts, the flow of reviews will cycle around to different genres and authors. As a writer, this reality does intimidate me for when I eventually pursue traditional publication, but I think writers find ways to adapt, such as through finding street teams to promote their books and giving out free ARCs to laypeople.