Flattery and Fault-Finding

An Author’s Guide to Goodreads Reviewing

Today, a topic to which I have been giving a lot of thought, which is: Reviewing books on sites like Amazon and Goodreads. And anywhere else books are reviewed, I guess. But mainly those places, as those are the ones with which I am most familiar and, I suspect, the places with the most aggregate reviews. Specifically, today’s article will address leaving reviews of books when you, yourself, are an author of books as well. Along the way we’ll consider the skewed star scale, review swapping, and who reviews are really for, anyway. There’s a lot to this topic, which is why I’ve been thinking on it for a while before writing.

Every now and then I think before I spew words.

Crowdsourcing product reviews is a new thing since the advent of the internet. We didn’t used to have a universal repository for everyone’s thoughts on the things they’ve purchased. What we had was Consumer Reports magazine and that genre of publication, which would buy up products and have a writer use them for a while and then write an article on the product. If they hadn’t reviewed the product you wanted to buy, then you were out of luck. We also had infomercials, which would sometimes have “users” of the product on to talk about how great they were, but I suspect those were all fake users.

But now! You can see hundreds or thousands of user reviews for just about anything before you buy it. Every major retailer online has reviews, and for products that are more obscure or not sold at major retailers you can look for reviews on YouTube, TikTok, or consumer blogs and find detailed reviews. The internet has given rise to a whole new understanding of what reviews mean—think of how damning it is to find a product on Amazon with no reviews, or only a few. 

The fake users from the infomercial days are still around, though, in the form of purchased reviews. Anyone with a little money and less conscience can hire gig writers to review Amazon products. You can even buy “verified purchase” Amazon reviews. If you’ve ever heard about un-ordered Amazon merchandise showing up at someone’s house addressed to them, that’s what’s happening. Someone, somewhere, has paid for “verified” Amazon reviews so the product is purchased and shipped out to a real address so it can be fake-reviewed with a verified purchase attached. You can even buy upvotes for your Amazon reviews so the positive ones get more visibility (or the negative ones, I guess, if you’re the vindictive type).

All this to say product reviews are now ubiquitous, and in fact a necessary component of marketing, and we as a culture are in process of recalibrating how we scrutinize reviews for trustworthiness.

I, a sometimes-avid reader, have been rating and reviewing books on Goodreads for fifteen years this summer. I have 600-plus books in there, though not all of them have ratings and fewer have reviews. I don’t review every book I read, although I try to be diligent about at least leaving a star rating. I have a system I faithfully adhere to, wherein one star is awarded to a book so bad I didn’t finish it; two stars to a book that I disliked but finished; three stars to a book that was okay to good; four stars to a book I really liked; and five stars to only the best of the best of books—the books that knocked my socks off.

I have come to understand, however, that among indie authors a four-star review is sometimes considered a slap in the face—especially when it comes from a fellow author. A quick trip through indie-pub Twitter on the topic of book reviews was eye-opening.

Before I go on I want to state, unequivocally, for the record, that writing a book review or rating a book is not a service that readers provide to authors. It’s a service we provide for other readers, to help them determine whether or not they will like a book and decide whether to read it. But when you are an author and you’re reviewing a book, the stakes are a little different. You’re still providing information for prospective readers but you are now writing from the perspective of a peer of the writer, not a peer of the consumer.

The consensus seems to be—among the twitterati whose thoughts I read—that if you don’t have something positive to say in a review about a fellow author’s book, you shouldn’t review it at all out of professional courtesy. This is a sentiment I can support, but it does occur to me that by reading a book, and then not rating or reviewing, an author may appear to tacitly say, “this book was bad but I’m courteously not writing a review to say so.” This has got me thinking I ought to be more careful about neglecting to write at least a brief review or leave a positive star rating for the books I read and enjoy.

I don’t think anyone is suggesting—I hope no one is suggesting—that authors should write fake, positive reviews for books they read and genuinely thought were bad. I feel like the honest review of something you’ve read is a sacred trust between readers; I would never recommend a book I didn’t think was good, no matter how much I like the author as a person and want to see them succeed. Just like I would not recommend a terrible lawnmower to my neighbor even if I were buddies with the lawnmower manufacturer.

I literally have never operated a lawnmower in my life but I assume lawnmowers can be good or bad just like every other kind of machine. Good Terminator, bad Terminator. And so on.

A familiar example and cautionary tale hails from the working world—never falsely recommend someone for a job; that is, don’t recommend someone if you don’t truly believe they’d be good for the job. If you do, it can come back to bite your reputation with your peers. 

It’s commonplace, though, for authors to review swap: They read one another’s books and then write honest reviews on Amazon and Goodreads for each other. This mirrors the practice of big-name authors endorsing each other’s books prior to publication—when you see a prominent author’s name on the jacket of another author’s book with a comment that they loved it. But for indie authors this can be treacherous: I’ve read horror stories of swap arrangements gone bad, with authors falsifying bad reviews to punish their swap partner for not liking their book enough, or authors soliciting as many swap partners as they can for good reviews and leaving token copy-paste reviews as their end of the bargain.

There also exists the upsetting phenomenon of review extortion, where someone contacts an author (usually an indie author who does not have the support of a large publisher to back them up) and offers good reviews in exchange for a fee. If the author declines, their title receives a deluge of savage one-star reviews instead.

I have to say, from the perspective of a reader, I did not realize there was so much drama and politics involved in book reviews. I always try to leave honest and insightful reviews of the books I read so my friends and anyone else who happens to stumble on the reviews I’ve written gets a truthful account of my thoughts—and this is especially true in cases where I feel the book in question does not have reviews already that are representative of my thoughts. For instance, if many reviews for something are negative and I liked it, I make sure to say so. If many reviews for something are positive and I just couldn’t get into it, I’ll say that too (with specifics on why, so others who like the same type of stuff as me can judge whether to skip the book). And if a book has few or no reviews so far, I try to leave a review so the next person to come looking for advice on whether to try the book or not has something to go on.

If you’re an author, or an aspiring author, you may want to be extra careful with your online book reviews, since the authors you’re reviewing are your peers and their works are your competition. Additional diplomacy is warranted. Here’s my advice, in three parts.

Do Unto Others

The golden rule: Do unto others as you’d have them do to you. This doesn’t mean, “if I’d like to receive only good reviews, I should write only good reviews.” Remember, you have to “do unto others” as a reader, too. You should write honest reviews, but do write them judiciously and with kindness. If you have something critical to say about a book, that’s fine—no book is perfect. But make sure you’re not harping on the critical, that you’re not only making critical comments, and that you leave a fair and balanced review that discusses the merits of the book as well as the faults.  If it so happens that the book you’re reviewing had nothing meritorious about it? Well, then see the next section.

Many Goodreads users apply the one-star rating to flag a book as a “DNF” (a “did-not-finish”), which is a serious blow for the author. By all means, if you set a book down and didn’t finish it because it was terrible, then a one-star review may be in order. But if a book just didn’t appeal to you and you don’t feel you read enough to review it fairly, you can create an exclusive shelf “Did Not Finish” and put the book on that shelf without giving it a star rating. Moving a book to a “Did Not Finish” exclusive shelf will take it off your To-Read, Currently Reading, and Read shelves but doesn’t force you to rate the book. (Instructions on creating an exclusive shelf can be found here.) 

Nothing Nice to Say

When you just have absolutely nothing nice to say about a book, you have the option to just say nothing at all. This means don’t give it a star rating at all and don’t leave a review. Goodreads users do not have the option to make their reviews private; although you can make your profile private and set your reviews to unfollowable, you cannot make the reviews themselves private. They will always be publicly viewable. 

If you see yourself publishing books one day, be aware that not every author is a consummate professional. There are plenty of authors out there who are petty and immature and will take the opportunity to get back at you when your books are available and can be reviewed. One way to avoid that unpleasant situation is to just not leave negative reviews; the other way brings us to the final section.

Secret Identity

If you’re not willing to forswear your sacred duty of bringing your honest book opinions to the readers, then consider using a different name than the one you write under. That’s it. If you publish under a pseudonym, use a different pseudonym or your real name for your Goodreads and Amazon reviews. If you publish under your real name, use a fake name on Amazon and Goodreads. Make sure you use a fake picture too so you don’t give yourself away. Claim your Goodreads author page under a different account than you keep your read list and reviews. No need to cross the streams.

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