I haven’t read the late Robert Jordan’s epic fantasy series, the Wheel of Time, but I’ve heard that it drags along in the middle books, which is what this quick visualization demonstrates:
It’s more complicated than that though, as the additional data from GoodReads demonstrates:
On Amazon, where leaving a review is an ordeal, there are far more reviews for the lowest-scoring books:
This suggests that the really low scores are actually a result of frustrated readers motivated to express their concerns, rather than a reflection of relative enjoyability or quality per-se.
“On Amazon, where leaving a review is an ordeal”
What? Why?
You select the number of stars, enter 20+ characters for your review and hit publish.
I don’t do facebook, twitter or any of the other ‘social media’, but even I’ve left a few reviews on amazon.
The author of the cited post, James Siddle, notes how easy and natural it is to review a book on GoodReads versus Amazon:
“On Amazon, where leaving a review is an ordeal”
and
“… jump through all the hoops…”
vs
“…the “Write a Review” button is halfway down the page, and you must provide a title and description for your review…”
Yes I guess my definition of ‘ordeal’ and hoop jumping is a little different.
And yes, I realize that doesn’t invalidate the Amazon to GoodReads comparison, but still.
‘Inconvenience’ would be more accurate word to differentiate the two.