How important are reviews? It seems in the 21st
century they are the way most small businesses are validated. The only
experience of reviews that I have is via book reviews and even that is limited
but how reliable is the review system?
It’s inevitable that if you have a small customer
base your reviews aren’t going to be plentiful but does a wide customer base guarantee
more reviews? It seems the answer to this is yes and no. If you Google big
companies they seem to have less reviews than small independent companies and
the same is true of writers. For example I wanted to buy a copy of a play by
Sam Shepard and when I went to Amazon was stunned to see it had only one 2 star
review. We are talking about arguably one of the greatest living American
playwrights here and yet if you Google any writer of commercial, disposable
fiction you can find anywhere up to several hundred 5 star reviews. I’m in no
way trying to detract from the pleasure derived from reading light hearted
romance or vampire books but there does seem to be a bit of a discrepancy here.
Does this discrepancy invalidate the review system
then? I don’t know. Before I wrote my own novels I never reviewed anything. In
fact, up until that point I had no idea that the world of reviews even existed.
If I wanted to buy a book I would just go to my local book shop and buy one.
The advent of self publishing however has blown the market wide open and lots
of novels are now only available online, which is the home of the review. I
would imagine that most reviews are readers’ natural responses to the books
they’ve read. It would seem though that this may not always be the case.
Self publishing a book is about so much more than
writing and lots of effort goes into garnering a readership and reviews and as
the world of self publishing has blossomed so too have blog sites dedicated to
reviewing books. Most of these sites are great, set up by book lovers who offer
honest reviews. However, alongside these sites are other reviewers who have set
up businesses where they review books in exchange for a fee. Likewise there are
companies who employ people to write reviews for small businesses despite never
having used their services. The world of reviewing like most things is
vulnerable to corruption.
Having said that I have found that I really like
reviewing books. I feel in no way qualified to set myself up as an expert
critic but enjoy offering my opinion on what I’ve read. It’s a bit like being
back at school doing English Lit – I mean when as an adult do you ever get to
write your response to ideas or writing techniques anymore? Review writing
clearly feeds my inner swot.
Even with the best of intentions though reviewing
is a thorny business. I personally don’t like the idea of marking someone’s
work out of 5 and would far rather simply express my own response. After all,
who is to say my response will be the same as someone else’s and reducing a
review to a score just seems so definite. I struggled for days recently over a
book I didn’t feel connected to because it wasn’t my kind of thing despite the
fact that it was well written, brave and original. Do your score on your own
feelings towards a book or how another potential reader might enjoy it. There’s
no way of knowing and if readers look at the score rather than the review then
they are missing all of the nuances a reviewer may want to express.
So what’s the point of this rambling post I hear
you ask? In all honesty, I don’t know. I was provoked into thinking about
reviews by two things. One was my surprise at Sam Shepard’s lack of them and
the other was a small plumbing company who my mother paid to install a bathroom
after reading glowing review after review about them online. The truth turned
out to be a little bit different and we’ve since learnt that none of the
reviews are genuine and there are lots of dissatisfied customers trying to get
their money back.
The power of the review then can be a mighty
thing. In the age of the internet it has replaced the old recommendation system
of word of mouth. This need not be a bad thing but how can we check the
authenticity of reviewers and how can we take seriously a system where a reader
scores To Catch a Texas Cowboy 5 stars but Jane Eyre 1.
