Honesty in Book Reviews, a Post by R. Clint Peters

In my recent post, “Have I learned Anything About Writing, You Can Let Me Know”, I included the following thoughts about becoming a published author:

As I said, the Internet is a curse for new authors.  Why?  Because it gives everyone the opportunity to be published without knowing how to be an author.  For The Alberta Connection, I used CreateSpace.  I created the cover, I did all the page formatting, I did everything except have the novel professionally edited.  And that’s the curse of the Internet.  If an author doesn’t know how to write but is given the opportunity to write and be published, albeit by their own hands, without the guidelines of legitimate editing, the results will be the books that are flooding the reading market — pure garbage.

I went on to describe the results of my friend’s suggestion to read, read, read.  I have gone back and have taken a look at the book reviews of the 20 or so books I have read in the past four months.  Not one had a review of less than 4, and many had a review of 5.

I have been keeping track of the books I have read and have given them a review number.  Here’s how they would have fared if I had posted the review on Nothing But Book Reviews::

5-stars —- 3 books 4-stars —- 2 books 3-stars —- 9 books 2-stars —  5 books 1-star —- 3 books 0 stars —- 2 books

Remember, each of these books received a 4 or 5 star rating on Amazon, GoodReads, etc.

I would like to thank D. A. Cairns for the comments submitted to The Book Reviewers & Authors Club blog about honesty in book reviewing.  I have include them here (directly from the comment section of the blog):

No question there are a lot of bad writers out there, and that is good for them but it muddies the water for those good writers who can’t break through. Re reviews, you are dead right. I cannot believe how many 5 star novels are out there. it is literally unbelievable! I review books and I do it honestly. If it’s really bad, I contact the author and let them know what I think of their work privately, and diplomatically. It’s a bit like the bad auditionees for American Idol, right? They actually think they can sing! Someone should have told them, and convinced them, that they can’t, and therefore shouldn’t. Can I get an amen? Keep up the good work there.

Are dishonest book reviews the result of the reviewer attempting to shield the author from the truth?  Or are they an attempt by the reviewers to cash in on reviewing books, and the reviewer knows they will not get the clients if they provide honest reviews?

I heartily agree with D. A Cairns that not all books are 4 or 5 star books.  I have discovered several website that do reviews but post only those reviews of 4 or 5 stars.  Are they reading every book they are asked to review?  Probably.  So why do they only post the reviews of less than a quarter of the books they review?

Take a good look at my list.  Only 20.8% of the books I read were given 4 or 5 stars (by me).  That’s barely 1 in 5.  To look at it another way, if a website reviews 50 books, all with 4 or 5 star reviews, there are 250 other books that didn’t get posted.  Those other 250 authors are wondering why they aren’t selling their books, why some Hollywood producer hasn’t called to buy the screen-rights, or their novel hasn’t made it to the New York Times best seller list.  Let’s be honest, they might do better as a contestant on American Idol.

Note:  I am not a professional book reviewer.  The books I read were evaluated on the very limited criteria of what I was in the process of learning or had learned about being an author.  That may have been a far more inflexible evaluation system than other reviewers.  However narrow the focus of my review criteria, the books with less than 4 stars were lacking in many writing details.  Honesty is sometimes painful.

#DACairns #RClintPeters #TheAuthorsClub