No I’m not talking about elections, especially since politics is at the very top of my list of topics that I like to stay away from. Instead what I’d like to discuss for a bit are the sites out there that provide a water cooler of sorts for readers to gather and discuss books, and how the ratings seem to be a bit skewed at times.
I have a very OCD brain, so when I discovered LibraryThing a few years ago it made me insanely happy. Perfect, I thought to myself, a place online where I can create a catalog of my books so I can cross reference what I have and group and sort and just revel in the list of my thousands of ebooks. And I’m not joking when I say thousands, but then I’ve talked about that here before. LibraryThing has a very spreadsheet-like layout which works really well for me and I simply adore it. At the time I didn’t know about Goodreads but I’ve also started to use that as well. There’s yet another site called Shelfari that I don’t use but it’s the same concept and I’m sure there are others out there. All of the sites are used by readers to create a catalog of books they own, read, want, need, love, etc.
In addition to creating lists upon lists, readers are able to provide ratings of books and their own reviews. In general, all of the sites have become a great resource for readers, a place to gather and discuss books in all their glory. Goodreads in particular has really taken off in this area, and there are groups and a plethora of interesting conversations going on through the site among readers from all over the world.
The ratings in particular are quite useful, from my perspective. Not many readers want to sit down and write a review, but a lot more are willing to put a star rating on a book with just a simple click. And some even jot down a few quick thoughts to let other readers know what they thought of a book. Just like with review sites, the ratings are always subjective and each reader is very different. Similar to on Amazon, all ratings are combined together to create an average score for a book that any reader will see at the top of the information about a book.
Along with readers, there are also a lot of authors that are active on sites like Goodreads. This makes sense of course since authors are very often avid readers themselves. By adding their own books to the site catalogs, authors gain a promotional tool and provide readers with information about their stories. However lately I’ve noticed an interesting trend. Many times I see an author add their own work to the site, and also provide a rating. Now, authors put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into their writing and most of the time feel that their published work is deserving of a high rating, and rightfully so. But when it comes to a site where readers are rating a book that they’ve read, is it fair for authors to be providing a rating of their own work? Of course an author is going to give their own book 5 stars, but what does that then do to the rating overall? Do readers realize when they are looking at an average score, that it could be based on a few reviews from readers as well as a rating from the book’s own author?
I’ve heard that some authors feel it just doesn’t look right not to have a rating for a book in their catalog, so they rate their own book as well using the 5 star rating. I don’t recall ever seeing a site provide the option to say, “I can’t rate this because I’m the author” or “I’m the author so I’m going to rate this but don’t include it in the average rating.” From an author’s perspective, they really aren’t given an alternate option on these sites. Of course, since the sites really are designed more for readers that seems fair. I find it interesting when I see a book with a 4.5 overall rating but then when looking into more of the detail find that most of the ratings are 3 stars or lower but with the 5 star rating from the author the average stays up high. I’ve learned to always take the average rating with a grain of salt and pay more attention to the details, but not everyone takes that time.
Do you think it’s fair for authors to provide 5 star ratings of their own books? Do you look at the overall rating of a book on these sites? Would your desire to purchase/read a book be affected by the overall rating? Should these sites provide an alternative for authors?
*And for those that might be curious, the picture above is indeed an iPhone but it’s not *my* iPhone and yes, it really does ask you to rate an app when you are deleting it from your phone. Crazy, I know.
