Week 5 Prompt Responses - Reviews

Prompts are the darker purple, responses are the light pink

1. 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. How does this affect collection development?

    I could see this review trend biasing collection development activities away from acquiring ebook only publications. As for my library specifically, I think with the apps we use for our digital collection, there is less of a gap. We use Libby and Hoopla and I have yet to find a book that wasn’t listed on one of the apps. Whether or not we own a book on Libby is a different question, but even if we don’t own it, if it is listed on Libby, the collection request process is fairly easy and more often than not, the library will fulfill the request.

2. 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?

    Between the two reviews, I found the one from Amazon to be more reliable. I liked that the person wrote a short summary of the story and then mentioned some aspects of the book such as there being a dual POV and no epilogue. The writing in the review from the blog was a little all over the place and repeated the same thing multiple times. Normally I appreciate when reviewers include more of their personality and actual thoughts about books, but this particular review just was not well written. As far as whether I would buy this book for my library, probably not. Before making the decision, I would look at the demand for the book through Baker & Taylor as well as the ranking on Amazon, but I don’t imagine either of those warranting purchasing the book.

3. The other document contains some reviews of Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt, an incredibly popular memoir. How do these reviews make you feel about the possibility of adding Angela's Ashes to your collection?

    From the reviews, I can see the draw of adding a book like Angela’s Ashes to the collection, in fact, I checked and my library does have the book in the collection. I personally am not a big biography reader, but I can see why this story may appeal to other readers. Based on the reviews it seems that the author manages to recount his rather unfortunate upbringing in a way that captivates readers through his use of detail and humor. I also think that while the story may be about hard times and death, there must be some high points or at least a sense of hope given that the author survived to write the memoir.

4. 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?

    On principle, it does not seem fair that certain types of books are reviewed more than others. In a perfect world, there would be plenty of reviews for those who want them, for any book imaginable, however, that is not the reality. I think several factors impact reviews including popular genre shifts, format, and accessibility. For example, there is a shift happening right now where romance is currently the best selling fiction genre. It would make sense then that there is a surge of romance reviews showing up through blogs, BookTok, Bookstgram, etc. The format of how books are offered as well as how reviews are posted may also determine what types of reviews are published. From what I have personally observed, print books do tend to have more reviews readily available than say an e-book or audiobook and that may have to do with what publishers are pushing or with how reviewers are able to access books. I know that the two companies I get ARCs from to review only offer e-ARCs so I only review books that are available in that format. How reviews are accepted may also determine what books are more reviewed. Again, from personal experience while using NoveList and social media, I have noticed that I see more reviews for literary fiction or mystery novels published on NoveList, while the majority of what I see, review-wise, on Instagram is in the romance or fantasy genres. I’m sure the algorithm is partly to blame for this discrepancy, but I also think that reviews for certain genres translate to a visual media like Instagram easier than others. 

    As for review sources not printing negative reviews, while I can understand it from a business perspective, not wanting to showcase negative thoughts on books, I think it’s a bit disingenuous. Every book is not going to be for every reader and that’s okay, that’s kind of the point; authors want to find the audience that best vibes with their books. Now when a reviewer gives a negative review that solely attacks the writer on a personal level, that’s not okay, but if their problem is with the story, I think it’s fine to make it known that they weren’t a fan. It’s the same kind of thing as movie critics or food critics, not everything is going to be good and reviews are a tool that readers can use to help decide what’s for them and what’s not. Now, for me personally, I don’t tend to read reviews before I read books. I like to make my own determinations on whether or not a book is good without looking into other readers’ specific thoughts on it. That’s not to say that I’m not influenced in other ways on what to read. If an author I follow recommends a book or if one of my close friends tells me that a book was good, there’s a decent chance that I’ll at least read the blurb of it, but I don’t use full reviews to decide what to read next.