Ah, star ratings... Those wonderful marks out of five.
We're asked to leave them as a form of quick glance reviews for everything nowadays, aren't we?
You do grocery shopping online? Rate your fresh carrots! (True story.)
Buying clothes? Rate them!
Day out at a theme park or museum? Rate them!
Watching a movie? Employing a plumber? Eating at a restaurant? Staying at a hotel?
Rate it!!!
Books are no exception to the star rating mania and that's what I'm talking about today.
Do star ratings affect my book buying? For they will - and do - affect other areas of my life.
The very very short answer to this question is no.
However, it's not quite as simple as that... Nothing ever is!
You see, if I want to hire someone to come and repair my boiler, or repair my roof, I'm going to be checking feedback from previous jobs, professional credentials and lots of other things before I hire them for the job because I want those things done properly with little room for error and the feedback is likely to be to the point and less subjective than for other things - for example: turned up on time, did job and did it well, tidied up after themselves, were polite/considerate etc.
For a book?
There are no set criteria for marking. Everything is subjective.
What annoys me, may not annoy you, what I like you may hate, and vice versa.
The number of stars a person gives it is a quick indication of what that person thought of the book but it is not an indication of how I'm going to feel about a book.
I care more about what a person says about the book than the rating.
If someone lists all the things they think was so wonderful and I read those things and want to kill it with fire then I'm not going to read the book.
If someone's hate-filled rant has me giggling because I would probably like all they disliked then I'm 1-clicking that sucker.
People like different things.
There is no one size fits all when it comes to a book, nor when it comes to anything really...
Plus, people are really freaking strange.
I've seen reviews where people have 1-starred a book because they didn't like something the author did/said online but "it hurt them to do so because they loved the book."
WTF now? That's a star rating for the author's humanity then, isn't it? Not the book. Controversial opinion, maybe, but how about you keep your personal opinion of the author out of it?
I've also seen books 1-starred as soon as they're announced. I've seen books 5-starred as soon as they're announced. None of those people will have read the book yet but it doesn't stop them from giving an opinion on it and it has the potential to really skew opinion.
People deduct "stars" for poor editing when the book breathed passion and fire into their soul.
People give boring pieces of literary might all the stars because it was superbly written even though it was a thing of misery... People are weird but each to their own!
As I said, we like different things and that keeps life interesting but we need to account for that when taking things like star ratings into consideration.
No one died because they took a chance on a book with a low star rating. A high star rating is no guarantee you'll like it.
You need more information and you need to keep an open mind when hunting out your selections always remembering that star ratings are a highly subjective quick glance indicator of mood... Not a statement of fact.
When I give star ratings, I rate mostly on how a book made me feel.
It could be an absolute trash fire but if it made me feel all warm and fuzzy who is anyone to judge me and my five-star read?
Me... I'd totally judge me, especially if I re-read it years later and it had me questioning my life choices but that's not the point! 😜
The point is that ratings are too subjective to be trusted!
To me, they're snapshots of what I felt about something at that time. They're not necessarily enduring and that's why I don't let star ratings affect whether I'll buy a book.
What
can/does affect my book buying is the opinion of people who I trust on the subject, book covers, blurb, price and past experience of the writer.
They're much more important, imo.
So I ask, what do you think? Are star ratings useful? Do they influence you?




