A Rating of 3 Out of 5 Stars is a Good Rating, and Here's Why

I feel like a lot of authors get bummed when they see a rating of around 3/5 stars. It can be 3/5 stars, 3.25/5 stars, 3.5/5 stars, or 3.75/5 stars. But any rating that's around 3 stars gets them upset. This reaction is understandable. The reader didn't feel like it was worth 4+ star, so therefore it's a "bad rating."

I'm here to say explain why a 3 star rating is not a bad rating. So if you have any author friends, feel free to use this argument to explain this to them. You can even send this post their way.

This photo is just here because we're talking
about star ratings and I liked it

I know that with myself and many other readers, a 3 star rating just means that the book was okay. Yes, the book didn't cut it for the 4-star "good" rating, but that doesn't mean that we didn't like the book. Personally, 3 stars means that I did like it and that it was okay, it just didn't "wow" me.

Out a rating of 5 stars, 3 is in the middle ground. I think that if we're going to find a middle ground on this topic, 3-stars can be described as the "okay" rating, because that's how many of us use it. It's in a nice, cozy place in the middle and it kind of acts as a balance between the "good" ratings (4, 5) and the "bad" ratings (1, 2).

And I want us all to remember something: "good" and "bad" are very subjective adjectives, and they can very easily mean different things for different people.

Goodreads Needs a More Nuanced Star-Rating for Books

There. I said it. Goodreads needs a more nuanced star-rating for books. I mentioned this in yesterday's post, but I wanted to go more in-depth about this topic.

Many of us readers who use Goodreads are very annoyed about this aspect of Goodreads. We enjoy using Goodreads for various reasons (see my following post: Goodreads: Why It is So Useful).

For me, however, the fact that I can't give a book a fraction of a star rating (e.g. 2.25, 3.5, or 4.75) annoys the heck out of me. Let me explain it this way (since it's the only easy way I can think of). Let's say you just read a book that you enjoyed it, but it didn't live up to whatever hype it's receiving on the bookish internet. You don't want to give it a full 4 stars since that feels too much, but giving it 3 stars doesn't feel like enough.

That's where the nuance comes in. Allowing for fractions within the star rating system makes it so much easier for us reading. Take the example above. The book wasn't good enough to be 4 stars, but it wasn't okay enough to be 3 stars. So maybe the book was a 3.5 stars.

Using the stars, I'll mark whatever star rating I'll feel comfortable with for the specific book. If I gave the book 3.25 stars, I'll mark it as 3 stars. If I gave it 3.5 or 3.75 stars, I'll mark it as 4 stars. But I'll mention my actual rating in the review section before getting to the actual review. Here's how:

Actual Rating: 3.5 stars

Review: [insert review here]

Goodreads is useful and fun to use for readers. However, it definitely has some disadvantages that it could easily fix but doesn't.

Why I Tend to Rate Between 4 and 5 Stars on Goodreads

I feel like star ratings are a really touchy subject right now in the bookish community. Many readers have stated, plain and simple, that they don't do star ratings any more, especially on Goodreads.

This is a decision that I respect. I honestly think that Goodreads needs to make its rating system more refined and nuanced. But this is something I'll talk about in tomorrow's post. Today, I want to talk about why my ratings on Goodreads tend to be between 4-5 stars.

Whether you're friends with me on Goodreads or see my review posts over on my bookstagram, you'll see that for most of my reviews, the rating out of 5 stats is usually no lower than a 4 stars; there may be a few have a rating of 3.75 or 3.5 stars.

Most of the books that I review and give star ratings to are history books. I look at a lot of factors when reading history books. The main factor I look for in a history book is whether or not the author told the history well and correctly given the sources they had.

I put "given the sources they had" because if the book is published 1-2 decades ago or more, the author may not have had access to recently discovered facts and documents of the past 1-5 years. Yes, there may be new information that either proves the history book wrong, either partially or wholly. There also may be new information that adds on to what was written in the book. However, if the book was written and published 1-2 decades before the new information, that doesn't make it a "bad history." It makes the history dated, not bad. If a history book is published recently, then I will judge it based on current knowledge of what the book is about.

This is why I tend to give history books a rating between 4-5 stars. Please see the following two posts for how I give more detailed ratings for history and historical fiction books:

1. How I Review History Books
2. How I Review Historical Fiction Books