I'm in the middle of a personal project and I would love some input from people who actually enjoy reading (which is why I'm putting this here, not GD )
At the moment I have something with a basic "scoring" system for a book - 87%, or 4.5 stars, etc. I'm wondering about giving the reader a bit more of a breakdown. So, along with the main review and the simplified overall grade, they could bring up a table with a summary of key areas:
Characters - 25/25





The characters are wonderfully written and really evoke a sense of character-iness.
Plot - 24/25





The plot is simplistic, but that's ok because the words are simple, too.
Narrative - 14/25





The reader is taken through the action in a bumbling, unclear fashion, lurching from plot-point to plot-point like a drunken monkey looking for bananas.
Style - 24/25





The author is clearly fond of short, punchy, sentences. The style works well with this book.
Overall score: 87%











My questions are twofold:

• If you were reading reviews while looking for your next book, would you see any kind of value in this breakdown?






• If so, what key areas would you want to see in this list?

Any and all input is welcome. Your reward shall be a warm, fuzzy glow, knowing that you have posted in this thread




 

Interesting.  I would find this system helpful but I would add another category for editing.

It reminds me of the way a lot of review websites used to review games; particularly GameSpot back in the day.

One problem I think you might run into using both an overall review score and component scores is that you can end up with a situation where your overall score is "2/5 stars" but your component score (in the example given) adds up to 87% -- but even if you have a cool style and a cool story and cool characters, if you do a bad job telling a story then nobody cares and you get a bad score. So the component score ends up not mapping accurately to the overall review (bonus: you can end up like GameSpot and IGN where basic functional competence gets you like 40% right out of the gate).

Plus, now the reviewer has to come up with and fiddle with five separate numerical scores so they all suit the tone of the review and their feelings on the work.

I do quite like the idea of discussing components of a work as a sort of summary or addendum to the book, though. To avoid weird numerical pitfalls, maybe you could just note whether each component added to or detracted from the work. Like a thumbs-up thumbs-down or a +/- for each component. That way it's easier for the reviewer to assign a score that jives with the overall tone of the review, but you still get those little component capsules to sum up how various elements contributed to that tone.

I ain't no doctor, though. I like a nice 5-star scale, as long as you can resist the urge to give 5 stars to anything you like and 1 star to anything that you dislike a little.

ETA: I feel it! I feel the warm, fuzzy glow!
ETA2: Wait, nope, that's-- yep, my fur is on fire.

The added workload is something I considered on the basis that I'm lazy



The scoring system currently works like this:

• Each book can have multiple reviews (not likely to happen in the near future but it can handle it).


• Each review is scored by the reviewer out of 100.


• The final book score is an average of the review scores.


• If the book is part of a series, the series score is an average of the book scores.


• The score is translated into "stars" - still working on the weighting, but for example 87% might translate into 4 1/2 stars.

Where there are multiple reviews, one is used as the "lead review" (either manually or by virtue of sorting by highest score). This is the one that comes up when the link is clicked, with the other reviews listed for further reading.



The proposed additional breakdown would work by giving each category a percentage of the overall points available, eg Narrative is worth up to 25 of the 100 points. The final review score would then be a simple sum of the individual category scores.



This proposed score breakdown would be optional for the reviewer to complete - if the data isn't represent, it just displays the score. If the data is present, it is shown as a summary at the end. Taking on board your comment, the scoring component could be removed, just leaving the reviewer to set the overall score, while retaining the comments under each section.



The reason for this breakdown is actually to consider similar issues to the one you raised. It would give readers a chance to look past a low score and see why it's low. A classic example of this is the original version of Arfcom's beloved "Lights Out" - the terrible (and I'm told the version I read was pre-edited) writing would have crucified it, even though the underlying story was worth reading. This should come out in the body of the review, of course, which is why I'm wondering if the proposed summary is useful or just redundant redundancy.



What I intend to do is to create a marking scheme for consistency. For those who haven't come across them, imagine a list of point bands with a phrase that described the outcome ("This book has no clear narrative"/"This book has a clear narrative but is not compelling"/"This book has a clear narrative that is compelling", etc). Find the phrase that applies, which gives you a scoring band and starting point ("This book has a clear narrative" = 15 to 20 points, starting point 17) then adjust the starting point number up or down. As well as providing some consistency in how books are scored, it also provides a useful prompt for the reviewer when it comes to writing a comment.



I kinda know where I want to go, I'm just not sure if that's where anyone else wants to go



 

This is interesting. It reminds me a lot of the worksheets authors send out to beta readers to get feedback on their WIP.

I use Goodreads and I don't tend to look at the star rating as a guide for my next read, as much as the written reviews. Having said that, I'm drawn to read the review of more drastic scores (really high, really low) and if those reviews reflect views I've had about similar books, then I might be more inclined to read or shy away from that book.

I guess what I'm getting at, is, I like the idea of a larger scale and the focused categories to get a better view of someone's thoughts on a book.

Thank you for the feedback. I am hoping that the system will also act as a useful template for people who want to submit reviews but are not experienced with writing them - it provides a structure that can help them collect their own thoughts.

It's currently one of several projects I'm involved with so it's not going to appear in the very near future, but work is progressing

You're welcome!

I think you're on target, for sure, if that's your intention with it Good luck!