Everyone has a different book rating and review system. I thought it would be helpful to clearly define mine for those following my monthly book reviews.
Why Bother Rating and Reviewing Books?
First of all, I want to take a brief moment to explain why leaving reviews is so important. When you leave a review on a book you loved, you are publicly supporting the author who wrote it and are also giving that book the social proof many readers need to be convinced to read a book. Especially if the book you review is written by an indie author, your review can go a long way to not only support that author, but help them sell more books. I did a whole post on how you can support indie authors. You can read it here.
Star Ratings
I actually have two different star rating systems. For traditionally published books, I’m pretty critical of the work. This is because there’s a whole host of people who work on the book to make it the best. With such a large team of people who publish books professionally, to me, that should be the highest quality book.
Below you will see two different explanations for each star rating. Trad is for traditionally published books including the smaller independent publishers. Indie is for self-published authors exclusively.
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Trad: Five stars are the best of the best! They are well written, imaginative, paced properly, and are fully engaging. Usually I can’t stop thinking about these books after I finish reading them. I recommend these books to anyone and everyone.
Indie: These books are also the best of the best! In my opinion, they are worthy to be picked up by traditional publishers because they meet the same standard that traditional publishers put out. This is saying a lot because one person did what a whole team does for traditional published books.
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Trad: Four stars are pretty great! They are well written, creative, flow well from beginning to end and keep me turning pages. However, they lack that extra oomph that really makes them stand out. Usually it’s just a little something that held it back from being amazing and varies depending on the story.
Indie: These are also really great books! They have all the same elements that traditional four stars have but there’s some things that could have been better. Usually it needs more of something, like better world building, or more character development, or less of something, like some scenes could have been cut or repetitive things removed. They’re still great books, but it would have benefited from a better big picture story edit.
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Trad: Three star books are your average stories. They’re not outstanding, but they’re fun to read. The writing was okay, the pacing was fine, the plot moved from point A to point B. They’re not really creative or original, but overall they’re not bad. I’m not so hooked that I can’t wait to read what happens next, and it may take me awhile to finish.
Indie: This is where my rating between traditional and indies starts to diverge greatly. I’m a lot more lenient on indie 3 stars. These books may very well be creative and well paced and have all the bones of a four or five star read, but they usually need to be more fleshed out or lack quality editing and proof-reading. Either they needed a better big picture edit, or better line editing. (Two different things!) There may even be a plot hole or two that’s not detrimental to the overall story, but would have been spotted with good editing.
⭐️⭐️
Trad: Two star books are not good. I really don’t think they should have been picked up by traditional publishers, and really wonder why they were bought. I question the professional quality of the publisher more than I blame the author for this. Fortunately, these books are rare. They lack creativity, have choppy writing and pacing, and are the type of books you struggle to want to finish.
Indie: I don’t give two star ratings to indie books. Whether the story just wasn’t for me, the writing was terrible, or there were plot holes galore, two star ratings can be detrimental to indie authors. Even if the book wasn’t good, there may in fact be other readers who enjoy the story despite the lack of quality. I’m not going to deter anyone from at least giving the indie author a try.
⭐️
Trad: These are books I did not finish. Some argue that I shouldn’t rate or review a book I didn’t finish. I disagree. To capture a reader’s interest takes some measure of skill. I usually make it about 20-50% through the book before I decide to DNF. That’s pages I’m reading, and a story that I’m immersing myself in. A good story will keep me engaged from beginning to end. For the time I took to read, if the author fails to keep my interest, that one star is on them. I tried. I don’t, however, leave a written review. Readers following my reviews will know I did not finish the book based off the one star.
Indie: I also don’t give one stars to indie books. Again, the philosophy is that I don’t want to deter other readers from trying an indie book. If you’re wondering why I would do this for indies and not trad authors, it’s because there is a team of people working to put out a traditionally published book. Whether or not it’s a large or small team, there are hired “professionals” paid to do a good job. Someone in that team should have been responsible for ensuring the book is well written and engaging from beginning to end.
Self-published authors either do their own editing, or hire it out. In either case, chances are they don’t have access to the best of the best, or don’t know what is the best of the best when looking for good editors. The problems that arise in their stories because of this may not bother some readers. This is why I’m more lenient in my star ratings for self-published authors and don’t give one and two star ratings.
One Final Note
As I mentioned in my post about spice in books, some reviewers share their spice level rating in their written reviews. I don’t have a specific rating system as I try to only review books that are no spice to relate to my own target audience of young adults. However, I will occasionally stumble across explicit content despite my best efforts to avoid it. If I do, I will warn the potential reader of the content in my review. I do not condone young adult readers to read books with explicit content in it.
While I try to screen books ahead of time and only recommend books that don’t have spice to young adults, I can be mistaken or mislead. If you know a book I recommend in any of my book lists includes spicy content, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me and let me know.
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