Why I Hate Rating Books

All right, I confess. I don’t like rating books.

Here at the blog, I rate the books I briefly review for my “Book Notes” feature. Each month, I write a mini-review of a book or two for Christianity Today, and I provide a rating. Amazon.com requires me to post a rating too.

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But I don’t like doing it.

Yes, I know that people who skim the blog, magazine, or the Amazon reviews find the rating system helpful in gaining quick perspective as to the value of the book. But the subjectiveness and confusion of the rating system bothers me.

Here’s what I mean. Take a look at how I interpret a five-star rating system:

* = Poor

** = Fair

*** = Good

**** = Excellent

***** = Go out and get this book right now! A masterpiece.

That’s my system. But not everyone reading a review analyzes it the same way I do.

So every now and then, I’ll get an email from an author whose book I rated “good” (three stars) on Amazon. They’ll say, “Trevin, was my book really that bad?” And I’ll say, “Not at all. In fact, I thought your book was good.” Then they say, “But you are hurting my overall rating average!” (Translation: “and my sales”). As a sympathetic author who wants to help another writer out, I’ll up the rating to four stars and console myself by thinking, Most people probably think four stars mean what I mean by “good” anyway.

When writing mini-reviews for Christianity Today, I used to submit “in-between ratings”. (3 & 1/2 stars for one book, 4 & 1/2 for another). Why? Because some books fall into that place between good and excellent. So an extra half-star would be like saying, “Very good.” But CT doesn’t do half-ratings, so they round them up instead.

Then there’s the 5-star rating on Amazon. For the longest time, I held back on giving out a five-star rating unless I thought the book was a masterpiece that deserves to be on everyone’s shelf. Then my own book came out, which I am quite sure is not a classic, but hopefully is at least “good.” And all sorts of friendly readers left me five-star ratings on Amazon. I was grateful for their reviews, even if somewhat confused by how others interpret book ratings.

So now, I want to throw up my hands and ask, Does your five-star rating mean you thought the book was good? Is four stars your way of saying “Something is wrong with this book”? Does a three-star rating mean “Don’t waste your time”?

See the dilemma? That’s why I don’t like to rate books. Especially on Amazon, reviewers tend to polarize based on their gut reactions to the book. If most people like the book, the rating is five stars, regardless as to the merit of the work. That’s why C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity has a five-star average, and so does Holy Subversion. Yet our books are not on the same level. No false humility here; this is reality. One is a classic; the other is (hopefully) good work from a young author.

So the ratings system is flawed, and the bugs in the system really bug me. Because we are so quick to praise anything and everything, we don’t leave ourselves with a way to really praise a praise-worthy book. The best of the best are treated like all the rest. As the little boy in The Incredibles says, “When everyone is special, no one is special.”

What about you? What do book ratings communicate to you? And how do you choose to rate something?