Encouraging folks to do more reviews

[Kanegrundar]

Time is the primary issue for me. There are a LOT of books in my collection that I would love to review, but I just don't tend to have the time to do it. I'd much rather develop my homebrew than write reviews. That's why I tend to pimp the books I really liked (and even sometimes disliked) in several message board threads. It may not be the exact same thing, but I have time for posts while I'm at work.

Kane

 

[Arnwyn]

So I'm curious, what can publishers do to encourage to folks to write reviews?

1) pay for the review, or give out free product for review (and the free product for review is up front, not "another copy" later)
2) don't have people bitch about the review
3) add more hours in a day

In any case - good luck with that. As others have said, reviewing is time-consuming and a lot of work. With little to no compensation for doing so, the result = few reviews. Not surprising.

 

[The Shaman]

I'm working on two reviews, but after that I don't know that I'll be writing many more - I simply don't keep up with much of what's being released, so I don't have much to say.

 

[mcrow]

I would do some reviews if:

I was given a comp copy. This is not the only reason I would do them , I buy plenty of my on RPGs. I have well of 50 rpgs in my collection and have traded or sold several. I simply can't shell out the money to buy all the games I would be interested in reading and/or reviewing.

I didn't have to worry about the reaction to the review. I have seen to many times that the review is attacked for writting a unfavorable review. Most of the time its one of the games fanboys that will love the game whether it is truely good or not though I have seen publishers do the same.

The review "gods" didn't have so much control. I had a friend who did a few reviews and submitted them to various websites and some of them refused to post them. They were good reviews. I don't have any problem with turning down poorly written reviews but their should be areas on review sites where anyone can self post a "user review". Maybe this could just be a special forum for such a purpose. Those who write high quality and detailed reviews get put into the site permanent data base. I guess what it boils down to is that if a review gets a comp copy of a game he shouldn't have to worry about feelling like he screwed over the publisher becasue the review never showed up anywhere.


I have not (up to this point) submitted any reviews but would be very willing to write reviews for anyone who sends a comp copy. I do have a review in the works,maybe I will try to get it on ENworld.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Speaking of which, I see that some folks in the thread have Review credits under their name. How do you get that noted? I didn't see it in my profile.

 

[Crothian]

Speaking of which, I see that some folks in the thread have Review credits under their name. How do you get that noted? I didn't see it in my profile.

have a review on EN world linked to your postinf account.

I don't undestand why people are worried about getting a bad reaction to their review. Most of the time you will get no reaction to it, and trust me that's worse.

 

[Eosin the Red]

I don't undestand why people are worried about getting a bad reaction to their review. Most of the time you will get no reaction to it, and trust me that's worse.

Yeah, I rather like it when folks talk about the review. Gives me some insight as to what I am doing right and/or wrong. I dislike it when I see a publisher go after a reviewer in public - that sucks (to be fair, I also dislike it when the reviewer shines a light on the tiff also) but it is generally only done by vanity press types rather than professional publishers.

 

[S'mon]

encourage sites to maintain the reviews. i know the ones i wrote were removed.

I got a bit discouraged as most of my (ENW) reviews were removed tout suite and the others got mostly criticism... :\ it takes effort and it's not remunerated, so why bother?

 

[S'mon]

Plus, from personal experience, you're not likely to get "heckled" for not pointing out errors in stat blocks. Quite the opposite, in fact.

*heckles*

 

[diaglo]

I got a bit discouraged as most of my (ENW) reviews were removed tout suite and the others got mostly criticism... :\ it takes effort and it's not remunerated, so why bother?

quoted for troof