Context is Key Part II

 Last Wednesday I wrote an entry about people rating books with no comments and how that's useless to the author.  Lately while mostly I've just gotten ratings with no comments, there are sometimes comments and you can see why they're more helpful to me than merely a 1-star rating.

Like this one for Chance of a Lifetime:

Deleted it after page one. reviews were bad to start. and I don't need the f word in every paragraph. This writer has little imagination and even less grasp of the language

I went through and counted that in the first chapter there are exactly 3 f-bombs.  So there are some, but it's hardly "every paragraph."  I'm not sure what they mean by "reviews were bad to start;" according to Amazon of the 61 reviews/ratings, 52% are 5 stars and 24% 4 stars versus 8% 2 stars and 7% 1 star--including this one.  And I don't know how well you can gauge imagination or "grasp of the language" if you deleted it after "page one," whatever that means on your Kindle.

Or this one for Night at the Carnival:

There is nothing erotic, the main character i a constant victim, everyone else is scum and nothing in the least bit sexy happens.

I didn't file this as erotica for the exact reason that there wasn't a ton of sex in it.  I guess it is an Eric Filler book and there's a sexy ringmaster on the cover so you might assume it's erotic.  I wouldn't agree that "everyone else is scum;" it's probably that it's not pure black-and-white with good guys and bad guys.  You know, the main characters do some things that aren't all that good.

That's why I try not to do dark stories all that much anymore because they tend to get reviews like that from people who want simple fairy tale plots appropriate for little kids, but that are sexy.  SMH.

Anyway, so if these people had just given a 1star rating, I would have been like, "OK, someone didn't like it for...reasons."  The Chance of a Lifetime one I probably wouldn't have even noticed.  But since they wrote why they didn't like it, now I know that one is some annoying PTA mom who thought it was a children's story and the other whined because a non-erotica book wasn't erotic.

So they're annoying but not really anything I can do about it.  That's your context.