In what will resound through the world as a shock move, I divide this post in two to ask: when is a 5-star review not a 5-star review, and why should they be banned? Then I attempt to completely subvert the laws of physics by asking you for ADVICE. Pop something bubbly. This may never happen again.
Batman v Superman is proving that nobody takes a blind bit of notice of 5 star reviews. They are meaningless, and yet authors and filmmakers continue to chase them relentlessly. Why? And how do we make it stop?
For a blogger, there’s nothing quite as sweet as gaggles of people getting their knickers in a twist over something. (Those of you who don’t blog yourselves probably don’t know that the blogging equivalent of Natural Law is a list, called “Things That People Get Very Angry About On The Internet”. Whenever we’re stuck for an idea of…
Book reviews are the cod liver oil of the writing world. Writers need them, and they can do an awful lot of good, but they can also leave an incredibly nasty taste in the mouth. You can’t switch on the Internet these days without seeing an author giving out about book reviews and how unfair/mean/reprehensible/soul-destroying they are. There…
My post on the general uselessness of 5 star reviews generated a lot of interesting discussion, not least because of how passionately some people – both authors and reviewers – defended their 5 star reviews, and how violently other people – including me – dismissed them. But it does raise an extremely interesting point: what…
I’m having a bad week in the non-fiction world, so I’ve decided to take it out on something inanimate. And that something would be the 5-star book review. Look. Book reviews have never been more important. If we want our books to become bestsellers, good reviews are essential. We live in an age when reviews themselves are…
Those of us shopping for self-published e-books have very little to go on. Short synopses and sample chapters lie all too often. There isn’t even a proper book jacket to tempt you. So how do you make the decision to buy? We’ve come to rely on reviews. And reviews make bestsellers. 2 websites seem to have…
Tara Sparling writes 