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F is for Four stars or five? #atozchallenge

Day F of the 2013 Blogging from A to Z April challenge. Today’s topic: four stars or five?

Last summer, I put out an ebook on Amazon. I opted into the Kindle Select program and was able to give away a bunch of copies for free, which netted me a bunch of reviews.

Here’s the breakdown of reviews of “Tim and Sara” to-date:

(And there’s also another 4-star review on Amazon.ca).

Most writers I know want as many five-star reviews as possible. But I actually prefer having four stars mixed in.

The reason is simple: no book is perfect. Let me repeat that. No book is perfect. Not yours, not mine, not any bestseller or Nobel prize winner. So when a book has only five-star reviews, that sends up serious flags for me because it means someone is lying.

Maybe I’m too cynical. But when your reviews come from your mom, your friends, your aunt who doesn’t even read in your genre, and your writing group members, do they really think that your story is the best thing ever written, or are they just saying it to avoid hurting your feelings? What do strangers and those who have nothing to gain actually think?

I use Goodreads to track what I read, and one of the things I look at is the reviews. I actually won’t read something with all 5-star reviews, because that tells me the reviews are exaggerated.  Because if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

As a writer, how do you feel about 4 stars vs 5? As a reader?

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