Do reviews matter?

[buzz]

However, I don't actively read reviews- it's the buzz that affects my buying patterns.

I do what I can.

 

[Whisper72]

For me they matter alot. Where I live I do not really have the option of thumbing through the goods before I buy them. I buy everything on-line, so the reviews are all that I have to go on. They can make or break purchase decisions for me...

 

[BLACKDIRGE]

Well, it looks like an overwhelming majority consider reviews when purchasing RPG products. I know I do. Hell, I consider reviews for just about everything i spend money on, from movies and video games to big purchases like computers, and even cars.

Personally, I think certain reviewers can even drive sales. It might be coincidental, but after John Cooper reviewed my None so Vile products I saw a descernable increase in sales. I'd be curious to know if any other publishers out there have experienced this with specific reviewers.

BD

 

[Mr. Patient]

Reviews matter, and and I wish there were more of them. John Cooper is by far my favorite, and I also like trancejeremy's and MerricB's reviews quite a bit.

I agree that the star system is not terribly useful. I think it needs to be finer-grained (half-stars, perhaps), and there is indeed quite a bit of grade inflation (which I may be guilty of myself), particularly for the older reviews. Three-star reviews really ought to be a lot more prevalent, so that the truly exceptional stuff is more visible. I'd be interested in scavenging some older 3.0 material from bargain bins now and then, but in a lot of cases, the reviews are uniformly tiny and four-starred. It's not a lot to go on.

 

[mcrow]

I'm a staff reviewer over on The RPG Site and I think that sometimes reviewers spend to much time writting a review with only their personal tastes in mind. Whether or not the reviewer has the same likes and dislikes in gaming products as the reader, the review should be useful to the reader. If it does not help the reader then you as the reviewer failed to write a good review. If a review covers the contents, editing, layout, and rules (if any) along with your unbiased opinions, the review should at the least help the reader decide if they would buy it or not.

 

[GVDammerung]

Reviews don't make or break my buying decision, but I will look more closely at a product that has good reviews, maybe even give it a second look, if I rejected it when I first saw it.

 

[Bardsandsages]

A review is only as valuable as it's content. I tend to dismiss one or two sentence reviews (particularly the ones that obviously have a less than firm grasp of the English language). As someone who has spent a great deal of time reading, writing, and studying reviews in general, I've gotten pretty good at spotting "fake" reviews and reviews written by people with an agenda. I can ignore the star rating and determine if a reviewer actually enjoyed a product or not.

As a publisher, though I have commented on a couple of reviews that I felt were a little unfair, for the most part I don't fixate on them. If a criticism is honest, I accept it and attempt to fix the problem if it seems to be a theme in a lot of reviews (the beauty of PDF is, after all, we can fix a product whenever we need to!). We made a lot of revisions to products like The Manipulative Player's Guide to Sympathetic Magic and The Encyclopedia of Skill Lore based off of feedback (and being raked over the coals by John Cooper ). For us, reviews let us know what customers like so we can continue to do it, and what they don't so we can fix it.

 

[Crothian]

Yes

I have bought many books based on my own reviews.

 

[Paul Watson]

I always check for reviews, and I'll try to seek out negative as well as positive reviews. I want to know what problems people are having with a product. Often, what they cite as problems are not problems for me; sometimes, they're even positives. But I'll have all the information I need to make an informed decision.

While I'm on the subject of negative reviews, writers should keep in mind that even a scathing but widely read review can be a positive thing. It gets people talking about your book, makes them aware of it. I'm aware of a recent review that tore apart the book reviewed, and the authors saw their sales spike.

 

[mcrow]

I'm aware of a recent review that tore apart the book reviewed, and the authors saw their sales spike.

Would that be the Spirit of the Century review we have over on the The RPG Site?