Price-Based Ratings Increase Trust

We expect more from a book that costs $9.99 than for a free book. This means the traditional flat 1-5 star rating doesn’t work in a CrowdPriced market. We need a way to see the rating at each $CP (Scribl CrowdPriced) tier.

If you’ve read reviews on other sites, you may have seen a reviewer write something like, “I got the widget on sale, and at that price, it was a great deal!” or “The widget worked, but I just can’t recommend it for the price.” Because many sites prohibit including price information in reviews, you can’t even correlate the review with the price to determine if it’s a good value at the current price. If the price doesn’t change much, or only moves around in a tight pricing window, this could be acceptable, but for CrowdPriced titles, where the price for a single novel can range from free to $9.99, tying the review and rating to the price paid is essential.

Price-Based Ratings simply show the average rating at each price tier. You should expect to see higher ratings at the free tiers than at the more expensive $CP (Scribl CrowdPriced) tiers, reflecting lower expectations at lower prices. If the title has poor ratings at the current $CP tier, it may be overpriced. If it has 5 stars at the current $CP tier and all lower tiers, it’s probably going to move up to the next higher tier, so buy it before the next price change.