Creative Reviews discussion

Or should I take it on the cuff and accept it as part of the cost of being a public figure (an Author)?

I got my first 1-star "rating" from someone who JUST joined Goodreads and already, miraculously, has hundreds of books "read" and rated, most of them 1-starred, some 3-starred and a rare one or two (indie) 5-starred. The user is named "Rain" and has set up a profile with zero information (not even gender, could be male, could be female) but a URL of "rainsinger" not that that is likely to be a real name.

Of their 196 "read" books, most of the 1-starred titles are by Science Fiction authors while the 3-stars are by well-known fantasy authors and the Indie Authors who seem to have the 5-star titles appear to be writing fantasy and paranormal genre. So this person sounds very young to me.

The Hugo and Nebula award winning authors who've written the other 1-star titles (some of them being the titles which won the awards) include hefty names such as Lois McMaster Bujold, Orson Scott Card and John Scalzi. Oh, and now me. :-(

I seem to recall a little ways back that there was a "tween" doing this deliberately, rating hundreds (over a thousand by the time it was mentioned here?) books 1-star just to "stilt" their perfect 5-star ratings, like the person was seeking out anything 5-star and voting it down just to make sure the scales were weighted "in their favor" as though that would do it.

The whole thing seemed silly to me at the time but now that I'm a victim of it, I feel the pain of seeing my perfect 5-star rating gone, especially, given I just released Conditioned Response and haven't even gotten its initial reviews in yet (ETA May 20th). Should I write to the Gooderads admins or just take it as a compliment that I am classed alongside the likes of Lois McMaster Bujold ? I mean, she's won more awards than any other SciFi author except Robert A. Heinlein. Can't get much better than that, right? And her books were rated 1-star, across the board, by this Rain person.

I am 99% convinced they didn't read any of the books, just searched for the ratings, maybe didn't even read the descriptions, just looked at the genres and deliberately rated SF as down and F as medium and paranormal as up, like they thought they coudl stilt the genre scales with their individual vote.

Anyone else here been hit? Think I should write Goodreads? Think I should forget the whole thing happened and accept the "broken" 5-star rating as a cost of doing business?

-Friday :-(
@phoenicianbooks

Hi, Deb,
Sadly there are people out there who just are up to no good. I review for ReadersFavorite online and I almost never give a 2. A 2 is for a book that should be rewritten, has extreme inaccuracies. Someone anonymously reviewed my kindle "Folksinger" and gave it a single star, probably because anonymous didn't like gays.

I'm not sure of the guidelines for people opening accounts and posting reviews on Goodreads. Is there some sort of minimum a member has to reach? Eg. Have been a member for x amount of time, made x amount of comments before they can add a review? If not, it's open to this kind of abuse.

Sadly this has happened to a lot of authors I know. They have gone the route and voiced their concerns and backed it up with data. Nothing has ever been done about it. This site does not monitor or have consequences for abuse by reviewer/rating system members.
It should get reported in case possible action if Goodread hierachy has enough to take action but notoriously that profile disappears and a new one pops up and the cycle repeats itself.

Alice wrote:
"Sadly there are people out there who just are up to no good. I review for ReadersFavorite online and I almost never give a 2. A 2 is for a book that should be rewritten, has extreme inaccuracies. Someone anonymously reviewed my kindle "Folksinger" and gave it a single star, probably because anonymous didn't like gays."

Alice, it's interesting you said this. I immediately noticed that Lois McMaster Bujold's Ethan of Athos was given a 1-star like mine. And other books that mention gay characters in a positive light. I was trying to pretend that the homophobe possibility was unlikely. Do people really do that kind of malicious sabotage of anything depicting gay characters in a positive way? Do they really think that will make us authors stop writing them that way? Talk about insane.

I'm glad to hear I'm not alone in this kind of attack and yeah, I'm getting the sense I need to just take it as part of the cost of doing business as a public figure.

-Friday
@phoenicianbooks

Supposedly everybody likes the idea of being able to rate anything anytime anyway you want to. So long as what involves your realm of involvement looks good to you, it tends to look okay to you.

But there is another name for this, it is called mob rule. With mob rule there is no real policing. Why no policing on the internet? Simple, it's free data and everyone likes to use free data to make money with. So if there is bad data, tough luck. it generally takes a lot of time, effort and money to fix bad data. Your time, Your effort, your money. This is the bottom line, if we don't demand that the bad data gets fixed for everyone everywhere for everything, and we don't demand that the people using the bad data to make money shoulder the cost to fix the bad data, then there will always be bad data in the system.

Perhaps someday there will be bad data insurance you can buy to fix things like this. Yeah, right, there probably already is.

The bad data has to be fixed in every avenue of use or it won't get fixed anywhere. It's called divide and conquer. If we stay divided by not supporting everyone's right to have good data sold about them without their permission then we will always have bad data to deal with. Individually we can be beat all day long by the powers to be by their saying, nope, we can't fix it. Translation: that would cost us money.

The other side of the coin is that we should be paid every time data about ourselves is used to make money for some one else.

Well I mean if it was a 5 star rating would you still have written this? lol. Not saying its still not right either way, I myself just got a 5 star rating and i dont think the person read my book and it kinda upsets me but then again I dont know, I do know that since it's a 1 star and you said this person put 1 stars on other works and they just became a member on here I would report it, they are just being immature and its not right to toy with authors, we really look to good and even bad reviews and ratings but a line is there and i think its been crossed..I say you report them so no one else has to go through this with this member

Ironically, Justin, I did actually post a comment (in the public stream on the person's feed) telling someone who rated the book 5-stars as soon as they had shelved it "to read" that they really should read it before rating it. I also thanked them for their implicit endorsement but that I'd like to earn my ratings on my book's merits.

I think the person in this case was being abusive, immature and "wrong" but I'm still not convinced reporting them will do any good. Well, other than making ME feel better! ((grin))

-Friday
@phoenicianbooks

I think if you're a four/five-star book, your distribution will clearly mark this person as an outlier rather than the general sentiment. I would ignore him.

I would ingore the troll, no good will come from giving them satifcation...

Marjorie wrote: "Or should I take it on the cuff and accept it as part of the cost of being a public figure (an Author)?

I got my first 1-star "rating" from someone who JUST joined Goodreads and already, miraculo..."

Do you remember what it was like when you first joined Goodreads? I do. After creating my account, Goodreads kept showing me screen after screen of books, to see if I had already read them. For each of those books, I could mark it to-read, currently reading, or read. If I marked it read, Goodreads asked me to give it a star rating.

So, when I first signed onto goodreads, I racked up over 100 books with various ratings across the spectrum.

This person doesn't sound very different. They just like paranormal, think fantasy is OK, and they hate sci-fi. Some people never fill out their profiles. They want to use the site to find books, but don't care to let other people find them. Others can't be bothered to take the time.

I'd ignore it.

Doc

Doc, thanks for this interpretation. No, I didn't recall that experience; I didn't have it. When I created this new Friday account a few months ago, Goodreads asked me to do all that and I just said NO :-)

I did, however, rate an inordinantly high number of books a few weeks or a month ago--all Heinleins and Asimovs, all kinds of ratings and poof, overnight I have "read" almost a hundred books. In reality I've read closer to 10,000 but no way I'm wasting my time inputting all those! So yeah, I'd neglected to consider the many and varied ways in which different people can use Goodreads. Thanx for reminding me to be more open-minded about the possibilities.

-Friday
@phoenicianbooks

I know many people who use GR as a way to catalogue their actual, real-life bookshelves.

If you're a person who buys books often, having a look at what your 'owned' shelf, can certainly help you avoid buying duplicates of books. I know this has happened to me in the past quite a few times.

I'd say ignore - and actually, in a weird way, it validates the 5* ones when people see that you're not kicking off about the lower ones. Let's not forget that there are some people out there who automatically assume that anything with solely 5* reviews is too good to be true and the reviews must all be fake.

Besides, once you have ten other reviews, the impact it has on your average will be negligible, and that's the first thing people see on Amazon. Ignore and move on...apart from anything else, if they have got some sort of beef, you don't want to furnish them with ANY opportunity to paint you as the bad guy in the style of that woman who went off on one to Big Al last year.

JAC

You're right, JAC, of course that the more reviews I have, the less impact this person's will have overall. Thanks for the additional endorsement, JAC :) I keep thinking of my character now, Joshua Andrew Caine. You never thought you'd be mistaken for a fictional man, did you? LOL

-Friday
@phoenicianbooks

Heheheh. Well fictional is new, at least.... but I answer to pretty much anything, me.


My personal fave was the time my Mum called me Rastus. That was the dog's name - wouldn't have minded but it was the male dog....

Regards;
Rastus.

arf arf!!

J.A. wrote: "I'd say ignore - and actually, in a weird way, it validates the 5* ones when people see that you're not kicking off about the lower ones. Let's not forget that there are some people out there who a..."

I agree with this one.

On the topic of rating the list of books when you join Goodreads...I think it looks a little strange when I get a friend request from someone with 2000 friends and 1 book on their 'read' shelf. I think of Goodreads as a place for readers, and anyone without books on their shelves is just there to promote his/her own book. So you might take that into consideration!

I have 3 five star ratings and as much as I would like to believe that the people have read my book I dont think they did. As much as I appreciate the ratings I feel like I would appreciate them more knowing they had read my book. It especially hurts me because 1. My book hasnt been purchased very much so Im pretty sure those people didnt buy and 2. I have pending reviews still and these other people are just like hmm looks good boom 5 stars..its a good feeling but then its not.

I'm confused as to why someone would give your book a 5-star rating (or any rating) without reading it.

I'm always a little cynical if a book is solely 5-star rated so having a range of scores adds some credibility to the existing 5's. Also, it's generally bad form to 5-star your own book.

Lena wrote: "I'm confused as to why someone would give your book a 5-star rating (or any rating) without reading it."

Because some people are like that. Some people come on here and just feel like rating and ranking books so they can boost their own numbers..its dumb I know but unfortunately people do it..

J.A. wrote: "Heheheh. Well fictional is new, at least.... but I answer to pretty much anything, me.


My personal fave was the time my Mum called me Rastus. That was the dog's name - wouldn't have minded but it..."

arf arf? so you're a little yip-yip dog JAC?

woff woof! I'm a Tibetan Mastiff ahahaha

-Friday
@phoenicianbooks

Stephen wrote: "I'm always a little cynical if a book is solely 5-star rated so having a range of scores adds some credibility to the existing 5's. Also, it's generally bad form to 5-star your own book."

So what rating should you give your own book?

Doc

haha, Doc, that's what I thought but didn't want to say it. Thanks for saying it for me :)

I guess some people figure if you rate your own book 5-stars, you're too full of yourself? Maybe Stephen thinks you should hunt down and identify some flaw in your book that makes it a 4-star? I have no clue. IMO if you don't think your own work is a 5-star product, it's not ready to be published.

Also, I've always loved reading my own books (I wasn't the only reader for the past 30 years but I definitely was my own biggest fan). When I love reading a book again and again, I typically give it a 5-star rating. That's me. Obviously, Stephen's mileage varies. I'll be interested to hear the rationale for decidedly NOT rating one's own work as good as it could be. It sounds too much like saying "I know I made mistakes and it could be much better but I wanted to publish it at 80% of its potential." ((scratches head)) yeah it sounds even stupider when I verbalize it more. Anyone who wouldn't give their own book a 5-star rating really shouldn't be publishing that book (yet). An author's exuberance for their own work is one of the author's most potent sales tools. Excitement is definitely contagious.

-Friday
@phoenicianbooks

Marjorie wrote: "Or should I take it on the cuff and accept it as part of the cost of being a public figure (an Author)?

I got my first 1-star "rating" from someone who JUST joined Goodreads and already, miraculo..."

I'm not sure but I just looked at the profile of Rain and s/he did give a number of 4-5 star ratings to science fiction as well as works with lgbt theme (Joanna Russ, Le Guin etc.) imho there isn't a published book in human history that can please every reader, even if it has won every major literary awards or is in the reading list in every school. I guess its effect on your average rating would be negligible as more and more ppl are rating your book :) Personally as a reader I care more about the number of ratings than the average rating of a book.

Marjorie,
on authors reviewing themselves:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/8...
I am my own biggest fan, but I'm not rating my own books! ;-)
Hugs!
Barb

Marjorie wrote: "arf arf? so you're a little yip-yip dog JAC? "

Well... Rastus was half-lab half-German Shepherd, and not the smallest of beasts.... If you think kind of like a cross between The Moog and a wild boar, but with the temperament of The Moog and the intellect of a small teapot, you're about on course.

Always assuming Willow The Wisp got across to you guys? (And if not, you missed some QUALITY surrealism...)

Barbara, interesting thread. TBH I prefer the idea of commenting with a link to where the reviews are.
JAC

I've read several thousand books myself (or close to) and on my first few weeks here I actually had a blank profile and over a hundred books rated. My main problem is that I don't own most of the books I've read so I can't remember all of them nor can I be bothered to rate everything. I've only added more info after become more attached to Goodreads.

I don't really see a problem with his 1 starring you. It's his choice. An author arguing with a reader (with regard to a rating or review given) is seen in a very bad light by the reviewer community and will provoke a significant backlash and a possible boycott of your books. That's a free piece of advice from me, never argue with a reader/reviewer. Do not use social media to bash them. Not everyone who follows them will agree with their opinion. However, not everyone who reads your books will like it and you probably won't be able to change their opinion even if you were to try. Just ignore them even if they post negative reviews. It's not exactly fair, but I've seen plenty of people automatically turn on an author despite not having read their work, for bashing a fellow reader or being seen arguing with one.

Barbara wrote: "Marjorie,
on authors reviewing themselves:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/8...
I am my own biggest fan, but I'm not ..."

If authors were allowed to review/rate their own work, they should only be permitted to give 3 or less stars.

Martin wrote: If authors were allowed to review/rate their own work, they should only be permitted to give 3 or less stars.

Wahaha! I second that! :-D
(I'm not going to review my own books EVER! And as I write under pen-names, I might do it and you'll never know, but I won't because I don't care, I'd rather have genuine good/bad reviews than throw my two cents on the matter. The fact that I published them means I feel they're ready to go out in the world, and that's enough recognition, right?)
Phew. Life is hard for authors! :-)

Doc wrote: So what rating should you give your own book?"

You shouldn't give a rating or review of your book. Let your readers do that. There's nothing worse than seeing a book with the only 5-star being the author's (not that this is the case for Marjorie's). Of course, this is my opinion. Whether you choose to rate your book is your choice.

J.A. wrote: "Heheheh. Well fictional is new, at least.... but I answer to pretty much anything, me.


My personal fave was the time my Mum called me Rastus. That was the dog's name - wouldn't have minded but it..."

That's hilarious! I always wondered why my mom would get my brother and I confused name-wise ("Hey, mom, you named us, remember?"), and then I had my kids. They're bloody lucky I don't call them by the dog's or rabbit's name!!!

Marjorie wrote: "J.A. wrote: "Heheheh. Well fictional is new, at least.... but I answer to pretty much anything, me.


My personal fave was the time my Mum called me Rastus. That was the dog's name - wouldn't have ..."

Am close to finishing 'Conditioned Response' - definitely not worth a 1 or 2 star! And I think silence is the best response to nastiness.

Stephen wrote: "Doc wrote: So what rating should you give your own book?"

You shouldn't give a rating or review of your book. Let your readers do that."

Definitely! :-)

Stephen wrote: "Doc wrote: So what rating should you give your own book?"

You shouldn't give a rating or review of your book. Let your readers do that. There's nothing worse than seeing a book with the only 5-sta..."

Personally I agree. No self-ratings for me.

Vered wrote: "Am close to finishing 'Conditioned Response' - definitely not worth a 1 or 2 star! And I think silence is the best response to nastiness. "

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Vered, and your advice. You're a very sound-thinker, I've found, having read many of your comments and reviews for a few months now. I do practice silence well most of the time :)

I can't wait to read your comments on the book and you betcha I'll comment on them! No silence on a review (at the very least, a thank you for your time is required! :)

-Friday
@phoenicianbooks

Thank you for your help and advice!

You'd be wasting your effort. GR doesn't remove reviews just because a person doesn't like it, unless it breaks one of their rules.

Marjorie wrote: "Alice wrote:
"Sadly there are people out there who just are up to no good. I review for ReadersFavorite online and I almost never give a 2. A 2 is for a book that should be rewritten, has extreme ..."

I initially find it hard to believe that someone would rate a book low just because of bigotry, racism, sexism, or something of that nature, but then I remember that many teens/kids have free reign of the internet and immaturity is often a characteristic of that age group. I'm getting old I guess.

Flu wrote: "Someone recently joined GR to 1-star my book, saying I stole cover art. I didn't feel like waiting for the artist's reply, and my book was free so it qualified as fair use (like on blogs and stuff)..."

Flu, it's good to see you're willing to admit you were in the wrong but don't assume anyone will think anything--good OR bad.

You are allowed to "review" your own book, just not allowed to pretend you are not the author when doing it, so here's my suggestion: write a "review" for your own book and explain--in FAR LESS DEFENSIVE terms than you used here--that your original artwork (removed) was created using copyrighted material for which you had failed to purchase rights; therefore, you've replaced the cover art and hope your readers will appreciate the new look. Leave it at that. Leave it as an explanation of your cover art, NOT an explanation of a 1-star review. Then leave it. Just let it go.

Focus instead on getting more reviews and letting the writing warrant better ratings than a 1 star out of 5 stars. If you need to give the book away to get reviews, do that, but garner more reviews and the 1-star you got will be "drowned out" by the 4- and 5-stars you get (assuming your story is going to earn 4- and 5-star reviews?)

Since I started this whole discussion and have continued to remain quiet on the subject after coming to my own decision, let me just report that I took my own advice here, got more reviews and in fact, the 1-star a-holes are still there, still annoy the living crap out of me but are definitely "drowned out" by the higher ratings I got in larger numbers. The bullies and mean people out there are mean not because they hate YOU, but just because they hate. Period. Let it go. You cannot battle hate with hate, only kill them with kindness. It actually drives trolls crazy NOT to get a rise out of you so saying NOTHING (no review of your own explaining the artwork, just NOTHING) will kill them even more :)

-Friday
@phoenicianbooks

This person you talked about has the right to mark something as one star even if the author has sold millions of books. For example I thought Catch 22 was the worst thing I've ever read but lots of people love it. I'm not bothered my their opinion of the book and they shouldn't be bothered by mine. We all like and hate different things and should rate them how we want even if it upsets fans of these authors and books. It sounds a bit unfair to name and shame and accuse this person of doing something wrong on the basis of not enjoying books/authors you like and rating yours as 1 star. As has been mentioned before, reviewers don't like to see fellow reviewers challenged on their rating by irate authors.

Also, calling someone an a-hole or a bully just because they rated your book 1 star is rude. I've given books 1 star before that I hated, despite other reviewers saying it was the best thing they'd ever read. The author of one actually called me out and said I was ignorant and rude and he couldn't believe he wasted so much money sending me a book I hated. It's called, I read your book and I didn't like it so I told people I didn't like it. It's not the end of the world. Not everyone is going to like your book, that's the risk you take, and instead of calling someone who doesn't an a-hole, you should accept it and move on.

(And yes, I realize this topic is almost 2 years old.)

Megan wrote: "(And yes, I realize this topic is almost 2 years old.)"

But still relevant!

Actually, as a writer and a reader, my only issue is if someone puts a 1 or 5 star but no comment on why! I want to know why someone thought a book was horrid or brilliant. That influences me more than the number of stars a book gets.

Also, when I see a book that has only 5 stars, I start to suspect that the writer has asked all her family and best friends to rate it. Having a few lower ratings (with comments on why they rated it lower) actually looks more real.