Are Stars The Best Rating Method?
I’m going to start out saying I have no answer. We love stars, 5-star means something to us, we equate that with greatness. What does 1 star mean and who gives 1 star? I would argue that only products that don’t work should get 1 star. I think that subjective content, movies, videos, prose are harder to evaluate and should be. I am one of the most critical people I know and before starting this indie author journey I would easily give a book a poor rating without thinking twice about it. Now I know, now I know. Someone much wiser than me said, “the author writes the book, what the reader does with it is entirely their business.” The readers rating is theirs, it is their way of communicating their happiness with the story or their displeasure.
I had an interesting experience recently reading, His Name Was Zach by Peter Martuneac. Peter, like me is an indie author just trying to make his way. His book is a post zombie apocalyptic story that follows a veteran, Zach make his way through this world while caring for a teenager, Abby, who he “adopted” during the crisis. The story was good, well thought out, a little slow in some places but I was interested enough in the characters to keep going. Then the story ended, in a happy type of the world is going to be ok kind of way. So what happened next? I wouldn’t say this is a spoiler but just in case you want to stop here go ahead ….
Something I have never seen in a book before, Peter, added in a paragraph that tells the reader, that the story doesn’t end here in this happy place that its about to get much worse. And then it does …. it was like an epilogue but for 8-10 chapters. My knee jerk reaction was to hate it. This was not how books are written, this is now how stories are told. This is not how its done. Then I thought about Peter, how he wrote this book, how he probably looked for a publisher and didn’t find one. How he must be a reader too and maybe he saw this type of thing somewhere, maybe he didn’t. The point though is, in this environment of publishing where the entire industry is in relative crisis because they don’t know how to keep up with the MJ Fleming’s and the Peter Martuneac’s whose to say that this isn’t brilliant. Why can’t it be this way. I enjoyed Peter’s story, I think he did a good job with the characters. I had my criticisms, like bandanas that take flight (read the book, you’ll understand). BUT … it was a book, a real deal book and it deserves praise for that.
His Name is Zach got five stars from me and I think that if I ever give a bad review it will be three stars and no lower than that. If you put a cohesive story together and you do a good job with character development and with character arcs I’m on board. Put it this way, I got choked up at the end. There’s no way to manufacture that.
I don’t know if stars is enough information for people to truly understand motivation behind a rating and I don’t love that you can give stars without then explaining the rest. Some books aren’t your books, some books just are not going to move you. So three stars in those scenarios with an explanation, “I don’t really love romance novels but I decided to give this one a try and, yep, I really don’t like romance novels.” totally makes sense. 1 star for the romance novel that you weren’t sure you were going to like in the first place seems harsh. I’m just the person obsessively reading your reviews though trying to figure out why you don’t like it … that’s normal right?
I also have decided I am going to more exclusively read indie authors and I’m going to work on coming up with my own rating system. I’m sure there will be a star or two involved, don’t worry. Maybe that will be my youtube channel. Don’t forget to tell your friends! Like, share, tweet, subscribe, download, rate, instagram … go for it … thanks everyone!
