PDF reviews top 20

[malladin]

Not sure if this is the right forum for this, but it seems most appropriate to me...

I've been thinking (dangerous occupation, I know) that there are far fewer reviews done of PDF products than print ones. You just need to look at the difference in number of reviews done in the last month to see the difference.

This is fair enough - there's no where near as many sold, so in many ways it merely represents the market place.

Therefore, should not the top 20 have a lower minimum entry requirement? At the moment the list is dominated by either very old products or those by the 'big' PDFers, such as Malhavoc and EN Publishing, but would, I suspect change dramatically if the limit was dropped to 3 or 4.

Again, I suppose this represents the market share of these larger companies, but is a review not supposed to even out this playing field and allow smaller companies to compete with the larger ones on the strength of their product rather than the volume of their sales??

I don't want this to sound like sour grapes cos we're not in the top 20. I'm not even sure that expanded out list would include any of our products, as there would be undoubtedly other products that met the new minimum as well as ours. I just think that there's a (small) imbalance here that needs consideration...

What does everyone think?

cheerio,

Ben, Malladin's Gate Press

[Mark]

It is difficult to get reviews of things for PDFs, that's true. I think that lower the entry by lower the number of reviews might be a good thing, as long as it isn't lowered to much. Maybe just down to four (from five, right?) ...and maybe expand the list to the top thirty? Both might help things out a bit in getting more PDFs recognized.

[HellHound]

When the entry requirement was lower (as it was when I started PDF publishing), the lists were very erratic.

For example, Librum Equitis volume 1 jumped to the top of the list after being out for two weeks, because it had received three 5-star reviews.

Then a week later it dropped off the list COMPLETELY when it received its fourth review (a 1-star review).

[Mark]

Originally posted by HellHound
When the entry requirement was lower (as it was when I started PDF publishing), the lists were very erratic.

For example, Librum Equitis volume 1 jumped to the top of the list after being out for two weeks, because it had received three 5-star reviews.

Then a week later it dropped off the list COMPLETELY when it received its fourth review (a 1-star review).

That's going to happen with four reviews, five reviews, six reviews, etc. and it is certainly an example in the extreme. If that's the worst that can happen, versus more PDFs being given the chance for recognition, then I say let's definitely do it.

At the least, let's expand the list to a top 30. There's simply too many products out now to give a broad view of the variety in only twenty slots. Fifty might even be more in order.

If there aren't enough reviews for products to fill out the fifty list, perhaps a few open slots at the bottom would encourage more folks to write reviews. I think at a certain point people look at the products that have received a lot of 5 star reviews and they figure "What's the point in writing when no one is going to see anything from more than a few companies?" A top fifty list would probably change that view to a great extent.

Make it a hundred! Wait, let's stop at fifty...for now.

[philreed]

Originally posted by Mark
At the least, let's expand the list to a top 30. There's simply too many products out now to give a broad view of the variety in only twenty slots. Fifty might even be more in order.

The same could be said about print products. I think a top 10 is a better choice (for print and PDF).

[jmucchiello]

Originally posted by philreed
The same could be said about print products. I think a top 10 is a better choice (for print and PDF).

I disagree. The criteria for reviewing PDFs has changed dramatically since those first PDFs were given good (or bad) reviews. The top 20 is good enough and I'd like to see it drop to at least 4 reviews that would get my book into the top 10 or 11 (I forget which)

Seriously, I think if you want your book reviewed more you are going to send it out to more reviewers. There are three staff reviewers + GameWyrd and d20zine. If you cannot get all of them to review your book or cannot get an independent reviewer to voluntarily review your book, maybe you should try harder.

(And as soon as I revise my book it'll go out to the remaining staff reviewers who haven't seen it. Plan was to revise it sooner, though. I'm bad with getting stuff out on-time.)

[Crothian]

There are also a few independant reviews who have a small reputaion for reviewing pdf's that you can send them to.