In the last eight years I have seen the shrinking respect that the general public has for professional critics. The most obvious example of this is the movie critic, but the same is vastly true of the book industry now, too. As the reading public, we don't often think the same way as a hired critic. We would rather hear what other readers have said.
Enter the broad range of reviews found today on blogs, websites, and social networks. Readers are flocking to Amazon to read the reviews before they buy a book. How do I know? Because half of the customers I run into at Barnes & Noble and other retail locations, tell me that they will check out the reviews on Amazon.
I like this. I like it a lot. It empowers the reader to look past the clique of professional critics, and instead consider it from the point-of-view of other book lovers.
What are your thoughts on this?
1 comment:
This is very true. There is this one particular movie reviewer in the newspaper that writes reviews and sometimes it is obvious that he'd like a certain film but annoying when he doesn't like a movie I really enjoyed. Film/book reviewers look to see if firstly if the movie/book was made skillfully, with good words or script, good special effects, good story, good actors, unique or cliche. Reviewers who are paid to review something have different tastes than us, prejudice against bad effects or not the best writing(even if it has a good moral).
Readers who review something just want to tell people what they thought of a book. They don't write it because they have to, they write it because they want someone to know what they thought.
It is good that readers would review stuff for free. Writers don't have to pay them to.
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