Today I am deviating from my theme – nostalgia, apologies, if you were expecting it!
A recent conversation with a friend lead to the topic, why book reviews are important and here is my personal, non-researched view on that question.
I’ve been reading books for years and still haven’t bothered with reviews until the past few years.
It was when I started picking books myself rather than read what’s recommended by dear and near. When I started exploring the plethora of categories and titles, I was literally confused on what would suit me and what wouldn’t.
So, I started searching for the title in Wikipedia, to get a gist of what is awaiting in the content. But that wasn’t a helping, when I started picking up books that aren’t very famous. And thus I stumbled upon Goodreads.
Until, I was part of publishing a book, I didn’t realise the impact of reviews completely.
Now my perspective of reviews are much different than what I started with..
I feel the reviews are important because of these points.
- It conveys the emotion of reader.
- Helps a new reader to pick a book more often than a book without reviews.
- Constructive criticism helps the author improve their writing.
- And honest positive review is to the author, what the sound of first clap to a live performer is.
There are few downfalls as well to book reviews.
- Reviews by amateur/immature readers, doesn’t give an objective review.
- Also, when the reader is not familiar even with popular books of the same genre, they couldn’t identify the inspiration/theft of ideas from other sources. (And it’s really disheartening to read huge praises being misdirected)
- Paid reviews – it’s true that it’s very very hard to get genuine reviews for new books by persons, yet to become famous. But considering an author famous, only based on paid reviews is totally unfair.
So I do believe that avid readers must come forward to write honest reviews and create a trusted platform for new authors and help the growth of genuine creativity.
And Blogchatter’s platform to bring them together is a right move in that direction. The details of the program are here.
Ripples 
You missed a very important aspect of a book review. It is very important in today’s literature because of the ability to publish without seducing a publisher. i.e. Indie authors are highly dependent on reviews to sell their books so, to everybody reading this …. if you really enjoyed reading a book, please DO write a review. You are helping potential future readers make a decision, and you are helping the author write more books!
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Very true! Too many books to read and not enough highlight on really good content out there..
Thanks for adding that very important point.. 😊
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And my sincere apologies for not yet writing my book review for your book, “Just thinking”, which I very much enjoyed.
I know it’s overdue more in terms of year than months.. The book is still on the top of my desk, even after I’ve finished reading it more than once, as a reminder to publish the review. I promise that I’ll publish it this Sunday. 😊
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