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..a zero star review.
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birdsedge points out that if you don't put a star rating on a Goodreads review, Goodreads treats that as a zero star review when calculating the star average for the book, i.e. as low a rating as you can give, and not as an abstention.
Amongst other things, this means that if you don't give a star rating because as an author you feel uncomfortable doing that to other authors, or (as I sometimes do) because it was a book you didn't like but recognise as this being you and not the book, what you're inadvertently doing is rating the book as even lower than 1 star, even if you thought the book was worth 4 or 5 stars. On a book with few reviews, that can significantly affect the average rating.
birdsedge points out that if you don't put a star rating on a Goodreads review, Goodreads treats that as a zero star review when calculating the star average for the book, i.e. as low a rating as you can give, and not as an abstention.Amongst other things, this means that if you don't give a star rating because as an author you feel uncomfortable doing that to other authors, or (as I sometimes do) because it was a book you didn't like but recognise as this being you and not the book, what you're inadvertently doing is rating the book as even lower than 1 star, even if you thought the book was worth 4 or 5 stars. On a book with few reviews, that can significantly affect the average rating.