There has been a lot of discourse about arcs lately, and I thought I’d put my stance clear here about how I feel about that entire conversation because it, cuz it’s kind of pissing me off. The discourse in question is about now authors who in the terms and conditions of their arcs, put that people posting three or lower star reviews should wait before a, you know, a lot amount of time before they post their honest review. The conversation a lot on threads is talking about can, well, they can do that. They are allowed to do that. They can, can, can. It should not be about can. It should be about whether they should be doing that.
And I read part of the reason I feel like this is a bad thing for arcs in general, it’s because it’s creating the sentiment that you should not trust arcs, that on day 1 that you see arc reviews, you should not trust them cuz those people are obviously on only lying and don’t like only are putting 4 and fives and that the honest result views are not there.
Three star reviews are important and these reviews should just be for the readers. And if you’re trying to prevent as long as possible negative reviews for your book, then you do not believe in your own book. And our creator is not a person who just reads a book and is going into it wanting to trash a book. If they like you to work and they want to sign up for Art Cuz they sound like the book sounded interesting and they read it and they did not enjoy it like to the 5 star, but I was like, it’s good. I just had some issues and give it a 3. Those issues are gonna help readers. And more importantly, those readers are consumers. They’re buying something and they should be allowed to get the full scope of what something is and not just only positive reviews. I’ll give an example. If I, there’s been books where there’s been like people who give it three stars.
I look at, we start reviews first cuz those are the people who tell you the good and the bad. And they might say, oh, this book had like a pregnancy towards the end. I hate books that end with pregnancies. I love that. So that negative is a positive for me. It’s the same with like make reviews where someone gets a PR box and there might be videos for us only positive stuff. They only see positive stuff and they’ll go look for the negative review of a new product.
They might see a review that says, oh, this foundation feels nice, has long wear, but I do not think it would be good for people with oily skin. Because I did my normal base and I found myself using more powder than you normally would. And to a consumer has oily skin, that’s good for them to get that information. Cuz they’re like, oh, I probably shouldn’t use this foundation. But a person with normal or even dry scam that up, this is perfect for me. And it’s the same with book reviews. They might hear something negative from someone, but that might be something they’re okay with or that they lack.
Because the negative review, it might stop someone who shouldn’t be reading your book from reading your book and then reread it negatively. Or it might get someone who is like, oh, actually like that thing this person said was negative and now I wanna read the book more. But if people are not given the full scope of what a book is, that is not good for anybody. I just, I do not wanna end up in a situation where people do not trust arc views. And a lot of people talk with or have like emotional hat on and their pair of social relationship with authors on the forefront. And they’re like, well, they can do that. And if you don’t wanna, if they don’t even wanna accept it, you don’t have to accept the arc. I won’t. Trust me, if I saw an Arthur doing this in their terms, condition, I would never want to arbury for them and I never want to support them. Cuz I think that’s a very strange thing to do and I think it’s very manipulative thing to do cuz it’s not gonna help you in the long run. I also wanna add that if this was a thing that publishing houses thought they could do, they would be doing it. And I think it’s a reason they don’t do it because it’s bad and around doing it out of the goodness of their heart. I think there’s a little something called the FTC that people should like more look into. And actually, I’m not saying against the rules cuz I’m, I have not done the research to say that it’s against the rules. But I think there’s probably a reason that big publishing houses do not do this, and I don’t think it’s out of the goodness of their heart. I don’t think you’re supposed to be doing this. I think it’s bad.