This blog isn’t updated often. At the start, back when I was posting on Medium, I thought that it would be good to write something once per week, something I kept up for a couple of months before it gave way. I have just updated this as I’ve seen fit, and in the manner I want to update it; I think I’ve come to terms with the fact that though I enjoy writing, I am ill-suited to the kind of proliferation of written word that is required to see monetary success on a platform like this.
I’m okay with it. I’d rather keep the joy than chase the money (feel free to send me a tip on ko-fi if you like though…)
One of the things that I have been using the blog/newsletter for, and which I hope to continue to do, is for book reviews. I’ve reviewed a few books now, and they have usually started with some preamble about the way that I would like to conduct my reviews. I want to solidify those ideals, and talk more generally about my thoughts on the review landscape. So here we go. Hit subscribe if you haven’t and you can get tasty hot takes delivered to your inbox.
The Disk Horse
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, or if you’re particularly connected to the world of writers, but every few weeks there’s another set of discourse around the “correct” way to review things. There are a lot of discussions, from what an appropriate star rating is, to whether people should be required to review every book they read, but there are two particular refrains that I hear that I think sum up the tensions in the modern book reviewing space. They are:
“Reviews are for readers!”
“Once your book reaches 20 reviews on Amazon, it starts getting boosted by the algorithm!”
I’m going to talk about both of these, then talk about some other aspects of modern review systems that I find frustrating, and finish up with what I will be aiming to do with my reviews on this blog.
Reviews are for Readers.
This is the cry I see plastered all over twitter, all the time, and in a vacuum it is absolutely correct. In my opinion, a review should provide an indication to a prospective reader whether or not that piece of media would be something that they enjoy. In one of Hbomberguy’s videos, during an aside, he talks about a movie reviewer named Mark Kermode (no idea who he is), and Hbomb says “I disagree with him 90% of the time, but I know if I’ll like a movie based on what he says, so I guess that makes him a good critic”.
First of all, that’s a great joke. Secondly, I think it really gets at the point of reviews. It’s the same as the guy that always loses money when betting on the stock market; the opinion of someone who is always wrong, or who you always disagree with, is as useful as someone who you agree with.
The problem, of course, is that a lot of the time you don’t have a clue about the person who is doing reviews on sites like Amazon. Often enough there’s just a name, and if there’s anything written down (not a given when a lot of ratings are a star given at the end of an ebook) it can be quite perfunctory and not informative of the greater views of the reviewer.
This makes me really wonder what the point of a review by an unknown quantity is, outside of populism. If someone who has never enjoyed science fiction were to read one of my books, I wouldn’t necessarily expect them to be able to provide the kind of review that would help other readers decide whether or not to buy it.
So, while it’s true that reviews are for readers, I think that the relationship of the reviewer to the potential reader is an important one. Do people trust the opinion of the reviewer? Has the reviewer got a similar taste (or an entirely opposite taste)?
Opinions are deeply personal things, and they can be conflicting and confusing, which makes the next part of the messy web of the review space open up a whole new set of weirdness.
Once your book reaches 20 reviews on Amazon, it starts getting boosted by the Algorithm
Amazon are an evil company. I don’t think I need to do too much to support that argument. They’ve captured the ebook market quite effectively, with some absurd portion of ebook market share going directly to Amazon due to their (IMO) anti-competitive practices. In Chokepoint Capitalism, Doctorow and Giblin go in to some detail about the methods Bezos and his iniquitous toadies used to capture the creative market that they continue to have a stranglehold on. The thing I want to focus on now though is the way that they incentivize authors to seek reviews.
Now, it isn’t true that there is some magic number of reviews that will result in a book being boosted on Amazon, but it is true that an increase in reviews confers an air of legitimacy to a book that otherwise may be left by the wayside. In a world of independent and self-published works, legitimacy is one of the currencies you need to trade in, particularly as a groundswell of low-effort AI books have been churning through the market.
Though it’s a myth that your book gets “boosted” by the algorithm, it is a pervasive one, and the goal of writers to get as many 4- and 5- star reviews on Amazon as possible. As a result, one of the things that some inexperienced (or less scrupulous) authors do is go to sites that review-swap, or just straight up falsify good reviews.
It’s a really bad thing because it erodes the trust in the review space as a whole. How are you supposed to know that a well-reviewed book from an unknown author is actually that good, when lying about reviews is as prevalent as it is on the site?
This is the main complicating factor for reviews being “for readers”. In a place like Amazon and Goodreads, number of positive reviews is directly correlational to sales and therefore income. So, providing reviews, and good reviews, rather than being a service to readers, becomes an inescapable part of the marketing for a book. As a result, reviews themselves become less trustworthy as they become subsumed into the maw of market forces. I’ve seen it stated that anyone who leaves a review for a book that is less than 4 stars is an asshole.
Which, while obviously wrong, does show that there are real consequences to the thoughtless distribution of bad reviews for independent authors.
What am I reviewing again?
One of the other hand, there are times where I see people who don’t seem to understand what the review space for a book is actually for. Some reprobates use if to review bomb POC authors, which is an obvious and flagrant abuse of the system, but often I see reviews that seem to simply review the wrong thing.
For example, I have seen people using the review space for a book to review the delivery practices of the courier (The courier didn’t leave the parcel at the door and I had to collect it from the depot. 1 star), or the condition of the book (The book arrived and it was wet, 1 star), or the customer service of Amazon itself (Delivery was late and customer service was rude, 1 star).
All of these have nothing to do with the quality of the work in question, but these reviews are treated as just as legitimate as those who do discuss the quality of the work. As a result, the rating of a book can get dragged down by legitimate concerns about the operation of the business that the author has absolutely no control over. So the delivery service and the customer service get away unscathed, and the poor author has a material disadvantage foisted on them.
All in all, the review world tends to get extremified: 4 and 5 star reviews dominate from review practices, and 1-star reviews are from people who disagree with a work’s politics, or who have a problem with some other aspect of the book’s delivery that on the whole is not the fault of the author. Amazon is not good at policing the legitimacy or otherwise of these reviews, so on the whole there’s a lot of “oh well, suck it up” that has to go on.
I give him a 42, but I can’t dance to it
More than that though, there’s the obvious and oft-repeated refrain that “art is subjective”. A few years ago there was a bit of a trend on Youtube for “objective reviews”, where each section of a movie (plot, character, vfx, etc) would get reviewed independently and then a weighted “objective” score would be given at the end.
I don’t need to mention the fact that this is reductive, and that any weighting or indeed score given to these values is inherently arbitrary.
Art, for me, is supposed to make me feel something, and my emotions don’t come on a scale. Hate is not a more legitimate form of emotional response than contentment, and trying to map them on any axis is to lose the unique qualities of both.
I don’t think it’s possible for me to reduce a novel or a piece of writing to a number, and I think it’s impossible to try. So on my blog, I won’t. I will talk about how it made me feel. It’s up to others to divine if they feel the same.
I didn’t go to the Eras tour
I don’t mind Taylor Swift. She writes serviceable pop tunes, and every now and then I hear an absolute banger come out. I bought “Red” on vinyl, and I went and saw her Reputation tour, which was pretty fun after a couple of fruity cocktails.
When the Eras tour happened, I honestly didn’t understand what the hell was going on. In Melbourne, entire radio stations were dedicated to her for the weekend, her picture was plastered all over buildings, and my Instagram reels (tiktok for millennials) were full of her for weeks.
I didn’t get it, but then I’m a 35 year old man who listens to Progressive Metal and Jazz Fusion. I don’t have to get it. It’s not for me. I can simply nod along while people talk excitedly about the experience. The joy they experience from viewing that performance isn’t any less real than the joy I got from seeing Sungazer making jokes about time signatures a couple weeks ago.
The same goes for a lot of writing. I don’t connect, particularly, with a lot of YA, or a lot of noblebright fantasy. Brandon Sanderson’s particular style of science-ifying magic systems doesn’t do it for me. That doesn’t mean I don’t come across some absolute bangers from time to time, but it means that if I read them and don’t enjoy them, I just need to recognise that they aren’t for me.
To do a review of these, then, would be to do a disservice to the authors and their potential readers who, at the end of the day, aren’t writing for a sci-fi/cyberpunk/horror guy. If I don’t connect with a work, I’ll just quietly move on: there are plenty of people who loved the Eras tour who are far better placed to talk about it than I am.
My reviewer guidelines
My opinion on how to ethically perform book reviews, then, is slightly complex. However, I think that if I try to keep myself away from what I perceive as the negative incentives, I can provide book reviews in a manner that provides guidance for readers, and allows me to consider the aspects of the books I liked. So here are my self-imposed rules.
I will only review books I like: If you see me write about something, It’s going to be positive. I’ve got better things to do than shit on works I don’t like.
I will disclose if the book I have received comes from an Advance Review Copy or other relevant source close to the writer or publisher: I like being able to help out some of my fellow writers, but I think this toes the line of perverse incentives. I’ve accepted a couple of ARCs that I’ve not finished and I haven’t reviewed, and I hope that I can have enough trust with my audience that they know I’m not merely doing friends favours.
I will not provide star ratings: I think it diminishes a work of art to reduce it to numbers, and I would hope that a discussion of theme, plot, characters and the feeling the work provoked in me would be enough for prospective readers to understand whether or not they might enjoy the work.
I will do my best to disclose any potential triggers for reviewers: I read horror. I read science fiction. I read a lot of stuff that contains a lot of stuff. If I read something that may cause distress for readers, I’m going to let people know. I’m not perfect - sometimes I don’t find things distressing, or I get careless. But I will endeavour to warn people if I think it necessary.
I will provide context as to why I feel the way I feel: I want to integrate my worldview into my writing. All art is political, and I think that including some colour on the reason I connected with a work, whether it be social, political, personal, or otherwise, may help prospective readers decide whether a book might be for them.
Most importantly, my goal with my reviews is to shout about things that excite me, and to spread the word about the pieces of art that I read that resonate with me. If you think that you think like me, maybe you can grab a copy of the books I yap about and you can enjoy them too.
If you’ve got a book you think you might like for me to read, feel free to get in touch. all my stuff and contact is available on my Linktree
Until next time.
Henry