Review Vetting, Author Bias, and leaving Amazon.

One of the things that irritates me about book reviewer culture, particularly on centralized platforms:

An over inflated idea of the value of one's own opinion, and trying to force their idea of quality on others. Most don't even qualify that it's their own opinion, and that it's literally the word of God.

If an author even dared to present an article on why readers should carefully vet the value of a book review, so often places like Twitter present it as if it were the "author's bias" coming in, rather than simply trying to help the reader find reviews that are actually helpful for them.

We need to encourage better review vetting practices, and carefully analyze the reviews people that have this overestimation of the value of their own opinion.

Not everyone who writes a book review, necessarily knows what they're talking about. I'm not suggesting all author's do either, and ever sense the rise of Amazon and self-publishing, so often those who review books are also other authors. That creates an environment, where authors will often "one-star" a book simply to promote their own books, because of how hard it is to get actual quality reviews. (Ones that don't promote their own books.)

As a reader, it's important to analyze how many buzz words places use, as often they'll use words like "padding" to make themselves sound more intellegent than they really are.

I've had to change platforms several times, just to keep from getting curb stomped by "angry reviewers", who have nothing better to do, than spend their time giving one-star ratings to book on smashwords and goodreads. I have even seen other authors, who otherwise promote "the reviewer is always right", even when they themselves don't even really believe these rather abusive anarcho-capitalistic verbiage.

In addition, about Amazon specifically, it's impossible to actually update a book cover in a timely fashion, and often it takes upwards of an entire day just to add a new addition to your work. Even within the day, my new addition of my novella would not update.

I've found a better place to publish that work, and no I wont be mentioning where it is: because an unnatural influx of wannabe authors is not something I find desirable.

Especially ones that judge books based on covers.