The Star System

Admit it - based on the title of this post, you thought I was going to talk about the "star system" among mystery writers ... i.e., the way the big names sell all the books and make all the money, while the majority of practitioners have to supplement their income by waiting tables.  Good guess, but no! (Though maybe it's an idea for a future post.)

What I've been thinking about lately is the way readers/reviewers rank books on Amazon.com and BN.com. As readers of Mysterious Matters know, I am a pretty big fan of Amazon (though not an adoring one, as they do strange things every now and again, and I think their Vine reviewer program is extremely problematic).

One thing I really LIKE about Amazon is the way it serves as a reading community. As far as I can tell, fair reviews are permitted and encouraged; I don't know of too many cases where Amazon has taken down negative reviews, except in cases of foul language or other exceptionable content. I've seen many an author screaming about what they perceive as unfairly negative reviews on Amazon, but that's part of the game - You put your stuff out there, and you wait to see what people say about it. And I've seen just as many "unfair" or scathing reviews in professional review journals as I have on Amazon. So, on balance, it has always seemed to me that Amazon can be enjoyed as an ongoing conversation about particular books and reactions to them, even when some reviews are inane. Intelligent people, I think, know the difference between a bad review written by a lunatic and a bad review written by someone who offers intelligent, valid criticism.

That said, I do think there's one major flaw in Amazon's rating system, which is the inability for reviewers to assign half-stars. (Goodreads, in contrast, allows for this.) There are so many books that are better than 3 stars but not quite 4; plenty, too, that are too good for 2 stars but not good enough for 3.

For a while Amazon was trying a system in which it provided guidelines for the number of stars a reader should give a book. This must have been controversial, because Amazon doesn't seem to be doing it any longer. The system proposed by Amazon did seem weighted toward people giving very high rankings to books they liked (if I remember correctly, 4 stars equaled "I liked it," and 3 stars equaled "It was OK.") Now, of course it's in everyone's business interests for books to have high rankings, but if we look at this from the point of view of literary criticism, then (at least to my way of thinking), this system didn't allow for the gradations and continuum that many of us look for in a ranking system.  

I keep a book journal of everything I've read, and I rank on the traditional school system of A, B, C, D, F, with those wonderful pluses or minuses to make my score as true to my thoughts as possible. For instance, I give A's only to those books that I would have acquired. Most of the books I read get in the B+/B/B- category; these are books that I've enjoyed, as well as books whose acquisition I understand and respect.  A C means a book that really is just average. If we think in terms of the bell curve, the most books should fall into this category, and yet I think it's testament to editors' abilities that I assign more B's than C's. Fortunately, D's and F's are rare. (I blogged about a D book and F book a while back - still recovering from those horrific experiences.)

So, herewith the system I propose for reviewing books on Amazon:

5 stars:  For me, these books are going to be in the Top 10 list in any given year. They need to fire on all cylinders: plot, characterization, originality, writing. I reserve this ranking for the Best of the Best. And you may be interested to know that I wouldn't rate all of the books that I personally publish as 5-star magnum opi. I'm trying to reach a mass market, and a 4-star book (or even a 3-star book sometimes) probably achieves that more easily than a 5-star book. 

4 stars: This is a book that I very much enjoyed. I looked forward to picking it up, was sorry to see it end. I was impressed by at least a couple of the book's elements - or thought that it worked with formula extremely well. The fact that it's not assigned 5 stars doesn't mean it's not very good or even excellent; it just means that I'm a pretty tough grader.

3 stars: Here's where Amazon and I part company. I like most of the books I read and can find something good in almost all of them. A 3-star book is one I would have no trouble recommending to someone. A lot (and I do mean a lot) of mass-market best-sellers fall into this category; I don't think I've read a "thriller" in years that I'd give more than 3 stars, simply because the plots are so often hokey and the characters often so stereotypical. But that doesn't mean that these books aren't enjoyable airplane, subway, or beach reads. Or that they're not good escapism when I'm in the mood for something lighter or faster. Reading some of the listservs and following some threads here and there, I see a tendency for a lot of authors to feel quite put out by a 3-star review, as if it is something to be ashamed of. In my world, it isn't. A 3-star book meets its expectations for the most part and is imperfect, as are so many artistic works. 

2 stars: OK, here's where we get into the dangerous ground of a book that's below average. At the end of the day, it's disappointing to the reader, who wonders what exactly happened to make the book go so wrong. Maybe characters do crazy or stupid things; maybe the plot is a rehash of something that's been done a million times; maybe the author just can't write or phoned it in. To me a 2-star review is an indictment of both author and editor: Someone was asleep at the wheel. Yet the reader can still find something to like in the book, if only a character or a setting. My wife and I give away our two-star books at garage sales.

1 star: There's an anger associated with a 1-star review that is justified. A 1-star book has been a profound disappointment, a misfire from the word Go. It's one that is truly a waste of time, one that shouldn't have been published. I wish I could name a few of the 1-star books I've read in the last couple of years, but the rules of Karma prevent me from doing that. Some of these have been by authors whose previous work I enjoyed greatly, which makes a 1-star book even more disappointing.

One thing I wish Amazon reviewers would do more frequently is try to review within the context of the book and its intended audience. To read a vampire book and then give it 1 star, saying "I hate vampire books" seems unfair to all. Couldn't you have said, "OK, since I have decided to read this book, let me at least give it a fair shake?" Ditto for 1-star reviews because the author did something you don't approve of, like kill off a character you like or hurt an animal. I'm not saying that these are good things, but shouldn't a review look at a book as a whole, rather than being rated on one sole criterion? Of course, when politics/belief systems get in the way, we watch as everything gets skewed: Any book by Rush Limbaugh or Paul Krugman is going to get as many 1-star reviews as 5-star reviews, with many of the reviewers expressing either support or hatred via the ranking. 

My single greatest pet peeve is a review based on a partial reading of the book. "I'm 50 pages into this book and I hate it so far, therefore I'm giving it 1 star." Well, I can think of many great books that are slow to start but end up rewarding the reader over the long run. Just as bad is "I just read the first chapter of the book and it's great! 5 stars!"  Believe me, for every book that starts out great and goes rapidly down hill, there's about 100 manuscripts that do exactly the same thing and don't get published.

 

Comments

[Chris]

You are a rater afer my own heart. It's nice to know that you haven't caved in to grade inflation like most Americans have done. Average means adequate, sufficient, gets the job done. Nothing wrong with it, just not exceptional.

As an aspiring writer, receiving a 3-star review, if honest and accurate, would be fine. To me it means I am actually competing with established writers and holding my own. That's all I can expect until I've got several more books under my belt.
You can review my work any time ... if I ever get published. ;-)

[Pepper Smith]

Actually, my first thought was of astronomy, and my second was that that didn't make sense in the context of this blog.

Too often the assignment of stars seems, from what I've seen, to be political in nature--the other merchants who sell through Amazon send out emails asking you to rate them, and they want those five stars or it's viewed as a vote against them. Probably the same thing gets applied to all other products on Amazon, including books. Five stars is good, everything below that means you found fault with it.

As authors, we all want our stuff to be viewed as works of genius. It can be hard to accept that we're maybe just average...

[Jersey Jack]

Agatho gets five stars from me.