Rotten Tomatoes for Books
A new site called I Dream Books is being called “Rotten Tomatoes for Books,” a reference to the movie site that rounds ups critics responses to movies.
The founders tell Publishing Perspectives that although there are several other book review aggregators, their site is different because their user interface is better, “it’s made for discovery: there’s an emphasis on covers and images. The site is like looking in a shop window.”
After examining it, we’ll stick with our favorite aggregators; Bookmarks magazine’s web site, which lists the reviews for the week from 25 publications, as well as the most-reviewed titles for the past 8 weeks and the subscription service Publishers Marketplace ($20/month, which includes a host of other services). The latter indexes reviews from over 40 publications, with a brief excerpt and a simple indicator of whether each review is “Generally positive” or “Generally negative”.
In comparison to those sources, I Dream Books is not as timely. The latest reviews we could find are from May; no reviews are listed for Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies (published by Macmillan, one of the Big Six publishers that I Dream Books is currently focused on). Bookmarks shows 14 reviews for the title and Publishers Marketplace, 13. In addition, some of the information is perplexing; several titles are listed by their paperback release dates, with no mention of the hardcover.
I Dream Books has an advantage in the number of sources they cover, including several book blogs. As print coverage of books shrinks, this could be very useful. However, since many book blogs are by genre fans, they skew the listings. For instance, Jinx, a new graphic novel version of the Archie Comics, is listed as the #2 Top Rated fiction title of the year.
News stories:
Huffington Post — iDreamBooks Review Site: Rotten Tomatoes For Books?
MediaBistro —Idreambooks.com Is Like Rotten Tomatoes For Books – AppNewser
Publishing Perspectives — iDreambooks Promises “Rotten Tomatoes-like” Site for Books
Demo video:
July 16th, 2012 at 11:12 am
My initital reaction with this site was “eh”. It’s an interesting idea, but I noticed on Flavorwire that someone had left a comment mentioning another site like it called Critics & Writers. Both are new sites, but I really don’t see a need…maybe I’m misisng something? I briefly compared the two on my blog, but neither really beat my current system (Goodreads, blogs I read regularly, ewgc).