Booking Through Thursday: Obligated to post a good review?
Nov 20th, 2008 | By Rob | Category: Booking Through Thursday
It’s time for another Booking Through Thursday meme and this week Deb’s ask a very interesting question with regards to book reviews and any obligation to post a good review:
Do you think reviewers are obligated to put up a good review of a book, even if they don’t like it? Have we come to a point where reviewers *need* to put up disclaimers to (hopefully) save themselves from being harassed by unhappy authors who get negative reviews?
I feel it’s absolutely imperative to be as truthful and upfront as one possibly can be - NO EXCEPTIONS! It’s all about credibility and you will always earn more respect if you are honest from the outset. While I’m always grateful to receive any and all review copies, and appreciate the time, effort and expense the publisher, promoter or author goes to, to get a review copy into my hands, this really shouldn’t come into how the book is judged.
I owe it to my readers to be as honest and impartial as I can be. God forbid if someone bought a ‘hummer’ based on any recommendation I make, simply because I’ve been encouraged to rate it that way.
We totally agree.
http://bookcritiques.blogspot.com/
>>I feel it’s absolutely imperative to be as truthful and upfront and one possibly can be - NO EXCEPTIONS
I agree totally. I would much rather read a fellow book bloggers review of a book than the New York Times book review. I feel your average readers is more honesty about what they thought of a book.
There are ways of reviewing a book without making it an personal attack against the author.
Absolutely! I wrote a similar response.
I totally agree. Your answer is much more concise than mine.
I totally agree. The authors and publishers should know better than reviewers owe their readers honest opinion. There is no room for dispute. If they can’t handle negative reviews, they should keep the books to themselves.
Thanks for all of your feedback guys. I doubt any one of use would have a different view, and looking around the BTT posts for this week I’ve not seen any different (I’m sure you’ve found it the same).
As you say, all of us share similar views. But with honesty, I think politeness is important too. Trash a book but be as polite as possible. Thats what I do…
Read my BTT post!
Of course Gautami! Thanks for reminding me. We are after all talking about somebody else’s hard work and effort. Rude critics are almost as bad as dishonest ones!
Right on the money. I think you said it better than I did.
My post is up.
Robin of mytwoblessings
Here! Here!
I’m late due to connection problems, but if you’re interested:
http://imemeit.blogspot.com/2008/11/booking-through-thursday-honesty.html