Without Fear

When you finish reading a comic on ComiXology, the final swipe across reveals a panel where you can rate the comic from 1-5 stars.

It takes literally a second to do – unless you want to take 10 minutes deliberating your choice. And, hey, if you want to be judicial and thorough in your assignment of approval or disappointment then I have no problem with you or your methods. You do what needs to be done.

However, despite the ease of the process, it seems that many people don’t take this opportunity to give anonymous feedback to the creator, the publisher, and the world at large. I have to admit, I don’t know why.

There’s the internet rule of the 1% which states that only 1% of users will interact with their community. This could mean that only 1% of people are giving ratings, which would be crazy. Though, to be honest, from some chat behind closed doors, it seems more common that only 10% of ComiXology readers are giving feedback after reading a comic.

Why?

Apathy – this is always a big player in most endeavours these days. People just couldn’t be assed. They don’t want to be heard, they don’t care if anyone’s listening. They just move to the next comic to read it because that’s what they’re there to do, read.

No WiFi – at the time of reading the issue, the reader may not be in a wifi zone and so the rating cannot be assigned, and be damned if I’d go back later once I got a signal. That’s way too much commitment.

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice To Say – the reader might feel bad about giving a poor score because they were raised that if you didn’t have anything nice to say then you don’t say anything at all. And they aren’t going to drop a praise score if they don’t mean it because that’d just be disingenuous toward the money of other buyers who trust these scores.

Which raises my next point, do these review scores mean anything? Does anyone look at how many reviews an issue got and what the average score is and care or even more allow it to affect their purchasing habits? I’d be interested to know thoughts on this one.

For me, I don’t care what other people rated a comic. Well, I don’t care what they rated comics created by other people. I do, somewhat, care about what the ratings are on my books. I like to know how things are landing, if I’m anywhere near target.
I rate pretty much every single book I read on ComiXology, I think it’s only fair. I wish they had a 10 point scale to allow for greater nuance of pleasure/pain but otherwise I’m happy to take a second and drop my feedback so the creator feels that little warm glow in their special area (which is their brain, perv).

The next time you read a book on ComiXology, think about dropping that rating at the end. It’ll only take a moment.