Your strategy is “author-centric”. Look at the words that you choose: “make the author feel bad” & “commenting on someone else’s work”. This is exactly what a reviewer should NOT do. A reviewers responsibility is to the people that trust their opinion. The author doesn’t come into play.

As a reviewer, if you’re going to pick two arbitrary numbers like that, you’re better off picking ‘5′ and ‘1′, because at least that tells your readers something about what you thought of the book.

Rick,

Great suggestion! It’s a partial solution only, since people sometimes skip the review and simply read the stars, but it goes a long way towards clearing up reader confusion when they read a review of a 5 star book that they know doesn’t merit five stars (maybe because they’ve read it). It would also make Midwest book review a more reliable reviewer in their eyes because Midwest would acknowlege that a particular book doesn’t necessary merit a flawless rating.

Jim,

This thread has been greatly enlightening. Thank you very much for your contined contributions about Midwest. I’m definitely going to be posting links in the various writing forums I visit. You’ve completely changed my mind. I’ve gone from suspicious of all those 5 star ratings to really appreciating the job you guys are doing over there. Keep up the great work!

Mr. Cox, after ‘reviewing’ your list of Other Reviewers’ sites, I would like to suggest a few specific to the fantasy genres:

Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist at http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.com/ and
Fantasy Book Spot at http://www.fantasybookspot.com/

As I am not sure whether you require sites to be review-specific, I will advise you that both offer far more than reviews, with commentary, interviews, contests, and other features posted almost daily.

In regards to my own blog reviewing, after reading your article “How To Spot A Phony Book Reviewer” I must offer a small disclaimer: I do not review for the publisher - I review for the reader. Quite simply, my intent as stated on my site is to save people time.

I support small publishers and would hope my endorsement of their services, personnel and products (regardless of the individual specific review) benefited them in some fashion. I support large publishers and self-publishers as well. I consider myself equal opportunity in the material I will read and review.

Which brings me to my intent. The original intent of my blogging was for self-consumption with simple documentation on the books I read. I plan to post commentary on every book I read whether it is ‘reviewed’ for someone else or not.

Due to some small attention, my blog has eventually led me into doing reviews for SFReader (http://sfreader.com/). At one point I was also offered the position of Fantasy Reviewer for a new magazine that eventually never reached publication.

I mention all this simply to say that whether I receive another ‘free’ book or not, my reviews will not disappear. It was not why I began doing this, nor why I continue doing it. I consider it a nice benefit, but I also consider my obligation to read the books I ask to review a duty I will not forgo. I pride myself on finishing that which I begin.

I also do not take my comments lightly. As my reviews have become much more public than orginally intended, I have become attuned to the world of the small press, for-the-love markets, short story writers and genre novelists. I spend far more time agonizing over the wording of my reviews than I believe most reviewers do. Just ask my wife!

While I generally agreed with most of your comments and the content of your article, I would like to point out that there is another category of reader (myself included) out there. We are the readers who desire a bit more sustenance than typical library reviews offer while also desiring less revelation of content that typical ‘professional’ reviews seem to provide. In other words, give me more than the back of the book does but don’t tell me the nitty-gritty.

Tell me if the author wrote to his intended audience; tell me the thematic elements of the story; tell me about the presentation and quality; tell me how it compares to similar authors or stories. Just don’t tell me particular events or information that - even if it’s easy for me to surmise - I wouldn’t have known without reading the book myself. Too many reviews ruin the chance of experiencing even momentary reading delight.

As I said, my thanks to both Jordan and yourself for the opportunity to read your comments and offer my own. I appreciate the obviously professional efforts of Midwest Book Review and plan to add your link to my ‘Recommended Sites’ column.

I’m going to have to give serious thought about Copple’s recommendation that a ratings disclaimer of some sort be automatically attached to the end of any posted review as a possibly useful as a counter-weight against having to rate a posted review with Amazon’s arbitrary numbering system. Currently I rely on that sentence or two of specific recommendation commentary that is a part of the review itself to identify as to just who is being advised that the book in question is worth their time.

Since this blog topic is primarily of interest to writers and publishers, I would like to draw your attention to several articles I have written over the years about book reviews, the book review process, what to do with a book review once you’ve got one, etc.

The first article I ever wrote for the publishing community (it was the basis for a speech I was asked to give to a publishers association) is called “How To Spot A Phony Book Reviewer”. You will find it and the rest of my book review articles archived on the Midwest Book Review website at http://www.midwestbookreview.com in a section called ‘Advice for Writers & Publishers’.

This particular article was specifically written to help writers and publishers distinguish between legitimate reviewers and review publications from the scam artists that periodically plague the publishing industry.

We are basically an educational institution. Therefore another section of the Midwest Book Review website is called ‘Other Reviewers’ and is an extensive list of links to freelance book reviewers, book review magazines and publications, book review websites, etc. that I have personally vetted for their legitimacy.

It also has occurred to me with further reflections on this discussion thread that in my Q&A session with Jordan that I didn’t go on to explain how the Midwest Book Review is financed since we don’t allow authors, publishers, or publicists to make financial contributions because of conflict of interest issues.

The Midwest Book Review is financed by two annual foundation grants and the sale of review copies to local libraries and local bookstores.

We do not sell books on the internet. That decision is based on our being ‘content providers’ for Amazon, as well as the other online databases I’ve mentioned previously, and I just didn’t feel right about disposing of review copies with them or anyother online bookseller because of possible conflict of interest issues.

In conclusion, I will now share the deep dark secret of how to financially support yourself as a professional book reviewer — marry rich!

Jim Cox
Midwest Book Review

Seems to me if the motivation is as you say, a disclaimer at the end of each review would state to ignore the rating you have given, because you don’t agree with them and give all a 5 irregardless, but use what is written to inform if this is something you will enjoy reading or not.

Interesting discussion.

I’d like to add something not covered in our interview that I think readers of Jordan’s blog might find of interest. There are basically two different audiences for book reviews:

1. Librarians and Booksellers

These folks like their reviews succinct and brief because of the time constraints of their jobs and the sheer overwhelming volume of books being published and brought to their attention virtually every working day.

2. The General Public & Academia

These folks tend to like their reviews to be extensive, comprehensive, and detailed.

The Midwest Book Review (founded in 1976 as a weekly radio show in Madison, Wisconsin) began publishing monthly book review newsletters in 1980 when Ronald Regan and his Republicans (in an unholy alliance with Blue Dog Democrats in the congress) drastically cut federal funding for community and academic libraries. One of the results of the draconian reducations was that the small and midsized libraries had to terminate their subscriptions to such expensive magazines as Publishers Weekly and the Library Journal.

So the Midwest Book Review started producing a book review publication that was distributed to library systems for free. It was a big hit and has grown over the years to what you will find archived on the Midwest Book Review website at http://www.midwestbookreview.com

This little bit of history might give you some further explanation as to why so many of our ‘in-house’ reviews are still following that succinct, brief, summary form that you see so much under our name on database websites such as Amazon.com. While reviews in the two of our publications comprised soley of reviews from freelancers and volunteers are often much longer.

Incidentally, our reviews are also to be found on other online databases such as Lexus-Nexus (used principally by jounalists and academicians), Golaith, and the Book Review Index (used principally by academic, corporate, and community librarians.

I found Jordan’s blog to be of great interest and will be installing a link to it on the Midwest Book Review website in the section devoted to “Book Lover Resources”.

Thank you Jordan for your continuing and invaluable efforts to provide a place for commentary and conversation about books, writing, and publishing. In a world where shouting is what passes for discourse, it’s a genuine and informative pleasure to find reasoned discussion presenting diverse (and differing) views on controversial subjects, opinions, and policies.

Jim Cox
Midwest Book Review

I’m on a number of sites that allow raitings on all sorts of things, from online games, to art to written work. I have never, ever seen a numbers rating system work well. What I have seen is that the numbers rating system is fraught with problems, regardless of how it’s implemented. It’s extremely easy to cheat and get high ratings. People will also cheat and force false low ratings on other people they have a vendetta against or just to make their own (or their friends) entries look good. I hate them, I encourage everyone to stop using them.

When commenting on someone else’s work, if forced to use a rating system I will give the highest rating if the work is perfect (in my opinion) and the next highest if it needs work of any kind. I never use any of the lower ratings.

I do this specifically because either the piece needs work or it doesn’t and I don’t feel a need to use more than 2 numbers to signify that. I use the highest ones avaialble because I also don’t feel a need to make the piece look bad in the eyes of other visitors (which low numbers do, regardless of whether they should or not) or to make the author feel bad (which low numbers also do regardless of whether that should be the case or not).

That said, I have to also state I completely agree with Midwest Book Review’s 5 star policy. I would prefer that no raitings at all were used, just reviewer comments and I personally ignore the number of stars, but others don’t.