Question: who decides winners of Member Reviews?

Who decides winners of Member Reviews? the members offering the books? or the same people who pick the Early Reviews winners? Is this not an appropriate group to ask? Is there a group for Member Reviews?

There is an algorithm that chooses the winners for Member Giveaways and Early Reviewers. The Member Giveaway one is a lot more simple and might even be a plain random() function, while the Early Reviewer one takes a lot more things into account in order to match the best reader with the book.

Right, Member Giveaways is a totally random process. Early Reviewers takes a whole host of factors into account. The differences are spelled out in the FAQ.

I think the winners are pretty random & not much thought goes into it. I gave away a book once, hoping for a review (it was one I had won from a publisher & I couldn't get through it & felt guilty about not writing a review.) When no MG review showed up, I went to the winner's page & saw that she had zero books & zero reviews - it was just a person who realized this was a place to get something for nothing. I felt very disappointed that I went to the trouble of sending a book to someone like that.

#4 Not everyone acts like the person you mentioned. I have written a review for every MG I've won. Well not for the book I won in January 2011 and am still waiting for!

Most of the folks I know on the site also write reviews for the books they receive through MG. Maybe there ought to be a process similar to ER, at least whether books previously won were added to the members library and reviewed. And that you have to have added at least 25 books, more or less, to your library. Jeremy, what do you think?

>5 - Adding any additional criteria to the MG program is something that's much requested. Unfortunately it's also something that would require time to build and then monitor, and time's not something we have a whole lot of around here. As it is, all the various bits and pieces of LTER basically takes the equivalent of a full week of my time every month; right now, LTMG is self-sustaining and entirely automated (except when a giveaway doesn't start and I have to go in and give it a swift kick, or something).

LTMG was designed as a very simply, very informal way for members to give away books to other members, without mandating a review as we do with LTER. While authors and some publishers have also used it to give away books, which is perfectly fine, we've not redesigned the program to specifically tailor it for this purpose.

Basically, there are lots of things we could do. But on the whole, LTER and LTMG are functioning just about as they should be, and frankly I think there are other parts of the site that our programmers should be spending their time developing before they spend time on this one. With limited time and limited staff, major changes to the way LTMG works aren't particularly high on the list of priorities.

#6 Thanks for the insight. I agree that there are lots of things that could be done and, with limited resources, you do have to pick and choose. However, dreaming is free!

>7 - Indeed :-)

JGoto: If you have seriously tried to read the book but couldn't get through it, that is worth writing a review about.
Why couldn't you get through it? Was the subject not what you expected? Writing style too dry or overly popular? Irritating main character?
All those things are worth knowing. Write them down and you have a review.

Well, the book was written in poem form and I honestly couldn't get past the first two pages - not enough to even write critically about. I have written reviews in the past of books that I couldn't finish and I have no qualms about that. This book was advertised as "poetic," but I didn't take that literally when I requested it. I feel that I just wasn't the right person to to give it a fair chance. I wrote that in my MG blurb, hoping that someone who understood from the beginning would be able to properly review it.

Then write a review without assigning any stars -- so that you explain exactly what you said above but without dinging the stars and/or making it a negative thing.

A review because of a special form of a novel is informative - even when the person that tried to read the book found it unreadable for them....

No, I won't review a book (even without stars) that I didn't read at all. It was my mistake and I didn't want to put forth the effort to trudge through even part of it - it's not fair to the author. It wasn't a trashy book - just one not suitable for me. I'd hoped to remedy the situation with MG... Since then, I've cut down on arc requests and only put in for books after carefully reading about them.

I definitely feel that if you are sent a book you are required to review it even if you didn't like the bok

I know I've seen ER and MG reviews where the reviewer kindly explained why the book wasn't read or wasn't liked or stopped being read on page 2.

I quit requesting MG books as I didn't get the last 2 I won. :( I did review the ones I got before though.

Personally the only place where I seem to actually win any books is on the ER program here... so... I've given up a little bit on MG, maybe I'll try again at some point.

I "won" but never received the only MG book I requested. The experience did not improve my opinion of self published books which this one was.

Well, decided to look over the MG books for the first time in a long while. I requested a few. Will see what happens.

>17

Same here.. so I am not even checking them anymore.