Should You Review Indie-Author Books Even When You Can’t Give 5-Stars?

Short answer — yes. But strive to keep the review constructive.

Murray "MJ" Blehart
6 min readMar 7, 2023

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Review indie author books
Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

I have no idea why I came across a book I recently completed.

It was sci-fi, and I think it came up via BookBub, a recommendation from Amazon based on other reads, or some other similar suggestion. As far as I can tell, this is an indie author like me.

It started off slow. The main character, as I interpreted him, was only semi-likable. There were some elements of the galaxy the author created that felt a bit derivative. It felt like the story meandered a bunch, and there were a lot of bits and pieces that only barely held my attention.

More than once, I read through merely to get out of where I was in the hope the next part was better.

This is the first book in a series of 5. At present, I’m not certain I care enough to read the rest of the series.

I am, however, a big proponent of reviewing the books I read. Given that I always seek more reviews for my work, it feels disingenuous on my part not to review other indie authors.

On Amazon, you can give up to 5 stars. But what if you feel you can’t give a 5-star review? Or even a 4-star review? Should you still give a…

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Murray "MJ" Blehart

I explore mindfulness, positivity, philosophy, & conscious reality creation. I love to help & inspire. And I also write sci-fi/fantasy. http://www.mjblehart.com