My ‘Golden Rule’ of reviewing books
I don’t write a lot of book reviews for a couple of reasons: First off, I’m a very slow reader, and second, I spend most of my time researching and writing my own works. That said, when I do read another author’s book, I put a great deal of thought into any review I might write… and whether to leave a review at all.
In so doing, I’ve come up with my own personal policy regarding reviews on Amazon and elsewhere:
I don’t bother leaving Amazon reviews for established authors whose books already have thousands of reviews. There’s already enough information out there on those books for readers to make informed decisions about them. If I do want to state an opinion on these works, I’ll do so in my blog for my own followers to see.
That leaves books by lesser-known authors with only a few Amazon reviews. One thing I won’t do is leave a negative Amazon review about them. As an author with a limited number of reviews myself, I know how one bad rating or review can skew the overall star count. So, if I don’t like a book by an indie author, I won’t leave a review at all.
I understand that not all indie authors can afford the best editors, so I’m not going to add to their woes by pointing out every typo, grammatical error, or problem with sentence structure. If I spot a glaring problem, I might message the author privately and offer a suggestion about how to fix it. (One beauty of self-publishing via print-on-demand is that an author can make fixes on the fly, even after a book has been released.)
On the other hand, if I like a book by such a lesser-known author, I’ll make sure I DO leave an Amazon review highlighting the positive points of the book. I want to help out fellow authors as much as I can. But my reviews aren’t cheerleading or puffery: Whether they’re written for Amazon or my blog they’re all completely honest. I don’t write anything I don’t mean.
When it comes down to it, my reviews are as much for the authors as their readers—if not more so. It can be like pulling teeth for a lesser-known author to rack up a few precious reviews, and since I can relate to that, I’m all in favor of helping other authors out. What I’m not going to do is rain on their parade with a negative Amazon review that brings down their rating. As my parents taught me: If you’ve got nothing good to say, sometimes it’s better to say nothing at all.
It all comes down to this: When it comes to Amazon reviews, I follow a variation on the Golden Rule. I write about others as I would have them write about me.
