Week 5 Prompt Response

For this week's prompt, I want to start a conversation about the different types of reviews. Different publications review different types of books and they allow different types of conversations. For example, Booklist will not publish negative reviews, while, as you have all seen, Kirkus has no problems with it (check out this savage review - https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/sebastia-alzamora/blood-crime/). Ebook only books, which are increasingly popular (especially in the romance genre) see little to no reviews in professional publications unless they have a big name author, and then still it's usually only RT Reviews (formally Romantic Times) or other genre heavy publications. How does this affect collection development?

If books aren’t being reviewed, how do librarians and/or readers know if people are enjoying them? Librarians want to purchase books that will check out and circulate, but also books that have been reviewed. This is because they want to know not only how people are responding to a book but that people are responding to a book. Clearly you have some built-in authors that are auto-buys, but there are those outliers or lesser known authors and titles that librarians are more wary of buying without knowing anything about.

I have posted two more documents in the week five files. One is two reviews of an ebook only romantic suspense novel, one from a blog and one from amazon. Look over the reviews - do you feel they are both reliable? How likely would you be to buy this book for your library?

They are reliable because every reader has a valid opinion about a book he/she reads. As librarians we serve the community in we work. Do we not value the opinion of each person who lives (and reads) there? I highly doubt each of them are writing reviews for professional review magazines. That being said, misspellings and grammatical errors do make it harder to take them seriously. When I’m thinking of adding a book to our collection I’m more apt to look at overall star rating on Amazon first and then randomly pick out a few of the good ones as well as a few of the bad ones to read to get a feel for how people feel. I like to check Amazon and Goodreads to get a feel for how the everyday reader feels about the book as well. This sounds like a feel good, cozy, Christmas read (I get a Hallmark Christmas movie vibe from these two reviews) that a lot of people might be into at the holiday time so it would probably be a good add to our ebook collection.

The other document contains some reviews of Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt, an incredibly popular memoir. These reviews are all from professional publications, feel free to find more on your own I just nabbed a few from the Book Review Digest database for you. How do these reviews make you feel about the possibility of adding Angela's Ashes to your collection?

Clearly these reviews are better written, well thought out, and more concisely composed than the ebook reviews. These are professionally published reviews done by people who are reading in order to critically review books, most likely librarians or serious bloggers. That being said, these professionally reviewed books do tend to add a bit more weight when deciding whether or not to add material to the collection or not.

Do you think it's fair that one type of book is reviewed to death and other types of books get little to no coverage? How does this affect a library's collection?  And how do you feel about review sources that won't print negative content? Do you think that's appropriate? If you buy for your library, how often do you use reviews to make your decisions? If not, how do you feel about reviews for personal reading, and what are some of your favorite review sources?

I don’t think it’s fair because as someone who does have input on purchases for my library reviews and rating do affect what I may or may not purchase for my library. Books with fewer or no reviews can keep libraries from purchasing them because they don’t know how readers are responding to them yet. The same can be said about negative reviews. Not only can be fun to read in and of themselves, they can also give us insight as to why readers might not be enjoying the book. I also like perusing reviews for personal reading, but I stick to shorter ones, and definitely the shorter the better (and definitely no spoilers). I don’t read them so much because I care how others felt about the book, but I want to get a feel for how I will care about the book. I mostly look to Amazon and Goodreads for my personal reviews, but I’m hoping to find some new sources with this class as well.





Comments

  1. Hillarie FinleyFebruary 6, 2019 at 8:31 PM

    Brandy,
    I struggled with the eBook reviews. Although I think it's important to consider every perspective, it's difficult for me to take the blog review seriously because the review was more about the reader's vacation and experience reading the book than the actual book, which is why I would want to read the review. It reminded me of recipe blogs and how they're often 90% personal information and tangents, 10% recipe. If I felt connected to the blogger, I might be more invested, but when I'm spending the library's money, I'm less concerned with "all the feels" and more concerned with whether or not my patrons will pick it up.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. BrandyFebruary 8, 2019 at 12:50 PM

      Hillarie - That's fair. I would definitely look further into other reviews and not base a purchase solely off the ebook reviews here alone. I'd look and see what others have written about them as well.

      Delete
  2. SledsomeFebruary 8, 2019 at 8:05 PM

    I think posting negative reviews are actually a positive for books. Not everyone is going to like the same book. So, I feel that review services that only post positive reviews are participating in false advertisement. I get why they do it, because they want to sell books, but at the same time there's no difference of opinion. Also, people don't HAVE to read the negative reviews, they have that choice. Personally, I feel that all reviews, good or bad should be taken with a grain of salt but they are also someone's opinion. They shouldn't be ignored, but they don't have to be taken for gospel either.

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    Replies
    1. BrandyFebruary 10, 2019 at 12:38 PM

      You are right, reviews shouldn't be taken for gospel. They are just a way to get a feel for how people are responding to the book in general. And if you know your patrons (or, if you're doing RA, the person you are doing RA for), then you might have an inkling if it's something that would circulate or be well-received. Obviously you can't predict for sure, but it can help give you an idea. I definitely think positive and negative reviews should be printed because you need both sides of the story in order to make an informed decision.

      Delete
  3. Zachary BalgemanFebruary 10, 2019 at 11:50 AM

    Brandy,
    Is there a way that you balance professional reviews and customer reviews when you look into purchasing books? I sometimes find it hard to find a good mix of both in the different genres that I purchase books for. I also think it is unfair that book reviewers get to decide what books get seen and what books languish in obscurity. I will say that I think negative reviews are helpful to me since it shows a different side of the book that the positive reviews don't always acknowledge.

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    Replies
    1. BrandyFebruary 10, 2019 at 12:35 PM

      I definitely look at both if they're available. Depending on what the customer reviews contain (legit reviews - actual things about the book - vs where they were reading the book, time of year they read the book etc or the condition of the book) and what our patron's are wanting I may take those a little more into consideration. With ebooks patrons can request on the Overdrive site itself, so that is helpful as well. I also agree that I think negative reviews are great to help see the "whole story" about a book.

      Delete
  4. Erin CataldiFebruary 11, 2019 at 7:54 AM

    Great prompt response, your classmates posed some good questions and insight as well! Full points!

    ReplyDelete

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