*sigh*
So... (ever notice how certain conversations always start off with 'So'?)
There's this 'author' who has been reviewing ALL of my books.
ALL of them.
Van Stry, Stryvant — all of them.
He's given almost every single book 3 stars.
On Amazon, 1, 2, and 3 stars are NEGATIVE REVIEWS. Says so, EVERYWHERE.
(And if you disagree with that, too bad. It's their sandbox, their rules.)
Now, I don't fault people for not liking my stuff. That's fine, to each their own, etc etc etc. I don't even respond to reviews unless they're just really off the wall, or they say something that's not true, and even then — rarely. (Well, unfortunately Amazon has taken down the ability to reply to reviews, which is sad, because it could be a lot of fun sometimes).
ANYWAY. I come across one of this person's reviews on another medium (and no, not naming them, don't want to call them out, they don't deserve that even if I ended up pounding my head against the desk). And I finally just had to ask, after like FORTY negative reviews: Why are you still reading me, if you don't like me?
They reply about how much they like my work and have almost always given me positive 3 star reviews....
THREE STAR REVIEWS AREN'T POSITIVE ON AMAZON!!!
Seriously, read the friggin' rules!! Especially when you're an author publishing on Amazon! There is NO EXCUSE for this kind of behavior. You want to be a pro? ACT like a pro! Read the damn rules; know what you're doing, then if you FUCK UP — own it!
All of this time I figured this guy had some weird hate boner going on for me. Especially from the way his reviews read (I read a couple trying to figure out just what the hell was going on and if I needed to be careful answering the door). I love it when people who aren't successful at my job try and tell me how to be more successful. Valens Legacy was my most successful series ever, selling about a million copies (if you count the audiobooks) and got me a lot of exposure as well as income. Hell, there are people in Hollywood still considering it for a series (fingers crossed).
So please understand if I'm just a bit ... hesitant ... to take advice from someone
who sells maybe a handful of books a week. If you want to be successful in any
business, the people you want to copy
err, emulate, are the people who are going gangbusters.
But really, if you want to leave me bad reviews, fine. But the worse thing you can do is leave over 40 negative reviews, and then when finally called on it claim ignorance.
As an author, I no longer leave negative reviews, even if I hated the book. I'm a bit hesitant to leave positive reviews on Amazon, only because I don't want to get in trouble with Amazon, who sometimes pitches a fit when authors review another author's works.
If I wasn't such a lazy guy, I'd make up a page with a list of all the books I loved and just link it from my website. I actually used to have one, but it just got too hard to keep up with.
So yeah. Head-desk. And here I thought all this time he was just trying to prove that he was a superior author/writer and was trying to lure people away to read his books... (hell, maybe he is, I don't know. *sigh* Welp, another mystery answered. Maybe. Sorta. Ah, hell...)
Best negative reviews or reviews by people trying to tell the author how to do things better are the ones that cant even get their spelling and grammar right. Some of those people could make a second grader wince.
ReplyDeleteWhere does it say in some Amazon rules that 3 star reviews are negative? I spends like 15 minutes just now searching for any such claim, and the "best" source I can find is random posts on forums. I am surprised to hear that someone would consider a star rating exactly in the middle "really worth reading", but as Amazon isn't giving any guidance at all to users on how to vote it's hard to handle.
ReplyDeleteI am always super irritated that authors like you who I would consider myself a fan of are 'hurt' if I give a review less than 5 stars, yet as a consequence of that I can't give specific books that stand out between "the really good books" anything more. If I could I would just downgrade everything by 1 star, but I don't want to risk hurting my favourite authors 😅 . Still though, some authors whose series aren't bad enough to drop, but not particularly good either I will happily give 3 star ratings fairly often.
Recently there was on another author's private facebook group a discussion about this and most seemed to take it that 5 stars was good and 1-4 was bad. My guess is that there is a real culture difference coming into play here as well. In the US for example straight A's are possible, so giving straight 5 is reasonable. In for example the NL straight A's is literally impossible, and a normal person gets on average a D and D to A is used to show 'how good' a person is. A Dutch person might thus rate "failing" books a 1 star, and then use the full range from 2 to 5 stars to rate from "just a pass" to "perfection".
I'm not personally 'hurt' if I get less than a 5 star review. I was only making this post because this guy has gone through EVERY single book I've written, and given every single one of them a negative review.
DeleteAnd I just had to know why he was reading me, if he didn't like my books.
Now, as for Amazon reviews, it used to say what kind of review you were leaving when you rolled your mouse over the stars. Also, if you look at 'all positive reviews' you only see 4 & 5 stars. 'All Critical reviews' and it shows 1, 2, and 3 stars.
Maybe Amazon has recently taken that down because they didn't like authors telling people that 3 stars was negative. But since the beginning of Amazon, 3 stars has always been a negative review. And they clearly communicated that to us authors. It was on the pages we use to look at reviews. And as this guy is an Amazon author, there was no way he could possibly have not known that it was a negative review.
I don't make the rules for Amazon. Amazon does. And for 20+ years now they've always said that 1, 2, 3, are critical (negative) reviews and that only 4 & 5 were positive.
Those are Amazon's rules. If they've decided to hide that from people, well there's nothing I can do about that either.
ah, here's a link to a product for all of it's reviews. As you'll see, the Three Star review, is considered to be a negative review by Amazon:
Deletehttps://www.amazon.com/Donner-Yellow-Fall-Vintage-Analog/product-reviews/B00GRRN2RI/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_show_all_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews
(personally I gave this pedal 5 stars, it's great).
And yes, to be honest, I don't think 3 stars should be considered a critical review. It has always bugged me that Amazon decided to do it that way. But they did, and it's their platform, so their rules.
DeleteAs for teachers who grade everything on a curve? Yeah, they're idiots. If you do all the work right, and ace all the tests, turn in all the assignments, that's an A. Period. Grades are supposed to reflect how well you did on the coursework. Not how everyone else did.
A 'D' isn't average, it's just squeaking by and at a lot of schools I went to, it often meant you still needed to retake the course if it was in your major.
For whatever it is worth, I think Amazon might have changed the terminology then, because at least for me that's showing up as "Top critical review" rather than any type of negative review. Note how the 3 star review from the pedal you highlighted is basically saying "it's fine, just beware of this one thing"
DeleteAs for education: In the Netherlands for example if anyone is acing a test it means the test was badly made as it didn't allow to fully capture the knowledge/understanding of the student. Similar to an outdoor thermometer that would max out at 25 degrees Celcius (77F). But that ties in to a more general difference in pedagogic focus on 'understanding' rather than 'factual recall'. I studied at a university in Belgium where factual recall is more valued in education, and as a direct consequence of that it's more doable to ace tests as there is a clearer set of facts the student is and isn't supposed to know.
Just reread my comment and wanted to also just say: Totally understand your frustration though. Making good rating systems is really really hard. And then sensibly interpreting the data is even harder.
DeleteA critical review is a negative review. You do understand that, right? By 'top' they mean the one that gets the most votes.
DeleteAnd I'm an engineer (BSEE), acing a test doesn't mean that the test is poorly done. The purpose of a test is to test knowledge, as in not just what you know, but how you apply it.
sw engineer here. i suspect from amazon’s perspective, the scale has nothing to do with ‘positive or negative’ reviews, even if the terminology reflects that. maybe they initially intended the score to follow some rubric, but i can almost guarantee you, now it is just a straight interpretation of what generates more purchases. amazon sees purchases correlating strongly with 4-5 star ratings and it falls off dramatically for 3 or lower. the guidance is just a reflection of those statistical realities, not a subjective assessment of ‘what 3 stars means’. it could be more effectively described as, ‘you want more people to buy this, give it a 4-5’.
ReplyDeletei rarely review a book unless i’m trying to pump the ratings to ensure i get another entry in the series, so it’s pretty much only ever 5 stars. in that context, i can see how someone could consider a 3 star review with a substantive comment more of a demonstration of appreciation for someone’s work, even if they misunderstood the impact of the action. foolish, really. they should just comb through the authors blog and leave an innane comment on a year old post.