04 June 2012

Reviewer Demographics?

Reviewer demographics are bizarre things. I just noticed on Friday that my super-short story Certified has 4 x 5-star reviews plus 1 x 4-star review on Smashwords, and yet on Barnes & Noble, it has 3 x 4-star, 3 x 3-star, and 2 x 2-star. Also of note is the fact that all the Smashword reviews have comments, while only one of the B&N ones does. These trends - less, higher-star reviews on Smashwords with comments; more, lower-star reviews on B&N sans comments - bear out across all four of my free shorts.

Investigating further, I think you can leave reviews anonymously and without comments on B&N, but not on Smashwords, and on Smashwords you have to have purchased the book through them in order to be able to leave a review.

Not really sure where I'm going with this, because 4 books isn't really a sufficient sample size, esp when they're all flash fiction and free (which I think is a big factor in negative reviews - the cheaper something is, the more likely people who would never like that kind of fiction anywhere are to pick it up), but it's kind of interesting to see that on sites where you have to man up and identify yourself, reviews tend to be positive, and on sites where you can be anonymous they trend towards, well, not necessarily negative, although one or two are (at which I snicker), but definitely less glowing. More honest?? Who knows.

Anyway, random thoughts for the day. Anyone else noticed any trends like this?

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