A Ratings War by Liz Flaherty

I remember when there was a real furor about movie ratings. People either loved them or hated them.

Once ratings became commonplace, their accuracy was always in question. Not being much of a movie-watcher, I was never overly concerned. Until my kids approached puberty, at which time I became a devoted student of those ratings and appreciated them a lot.

So, why don’t books have ratings? The same ones as movies have without the age restrictions. Not just romances or other genre titles, but classics and literati-adored-fiction, too. How-to books, memoirs, and self-help treatises could stand ratings, couldn’t they?

When I first had the idea to write this, it was because I was irritated when guests to my blog, Window Over the Sink, didn’t understand that when I required their posts to be “PG-rated,” I basically meant no violence and no f-bombs. When writers ignored the requirements, it reminded me of people wearing muddy shoes onto clean floors.

Covers have changed a lot in recent years. I often can’t tell what the story’s going to be like from the cover art. It’s more than the heroine’s hair being the wrong color or the hero not having facial hair when he should—they just don’t feel representative to me. So, should ratings be based on what the book looks like or by what’s inside?

While I don’t often write inspirational, I do write sweet. Imagine my surprise when I got “marked down” in a review because my main characters went to church. Should my books be rated not inspy and they swear sometimes, but they do go to church? No. Takes up too much room on the cover that might or might not look like it belongs on the front of my book. Maybe I should have a little graphic of a steeple or a synagogue...oh, but then there’s the swear words...

Erotic romance in all its forms creates another conundrum. It’s not my preference, so I don’t know that much about it, but I see authors of the subgenre being stung by terms like mommy porn and smut or the ubiquitous clean that implies anything else is dirty. I’m sort of a prude—except for the thing with swearing and a sense of humor that leans a bit to the bawdy side—so I’m one of those who wouldn’t even notice if someone slapped an X or a scarlet A on a book cover. I just wouldn’t buy it if it had one of those, especially if the X was tripled like the movies used to be. It would be entirely fair.

To me, because I’m not interested.

But it wouldn’t be fair to the person who doesn’t want my main characters going to church, would it?

Or to the authors whose work falls between the X and the A.

Or to readers.

Hmm...I thought it would be easy. Back when I read Romantic Times religiously, their divisions were clear enough for most of us. I don’t remember them all, but I based some of my book-buying on them.

Speaking of RT, I received a two-star rating on a book and I wonder to this day how much that affected its sales. Did all the fours and fives it received elsewhere negate that single, horrible two? I don’t know.

That cobbled-up paragraph brings us to why I don’t believe ratings on book covers would work.

Subjectivity.

No matter how fair and objective we all want to be, sometimes it doesn’t seem that way. We’ve all had reviews where we could tell by the end of the first sentence that the reviewer hadn’t read the book. Or, like my RT two-stars and some I’ve seen on books I’ve read, that they just hated the book. Or the author. Or the cover.

I’d like to know how others, readers and writers both, feel about the ratings question. 

Thank you for coming by. I hope you’ll seek out, buy, and enjoy my latest release. Reinventing Riley is Book 2 in the Second Chances Series from Magnolia Blossom Publishing. The hero is a pastor and the heroine is a businesswoman. They go to church—naturally; Jake has to preach!—and it’s a sweet seasoned romance.

And, yeah, there may be a swear word or two in there.