This is an open letter to online booksellers. Endorse it with your name in the comments section.
Dear Amazon, you owe us better book reviews. You too Barnes & Noble, Google, Goodreads and all the others who sell books/ads online. We understand and appreciate the whole thing about free speech, everyman voice, real user reviews etc. We’re not asking you to do away with those. But you have to confess: you profit more than any other entity from fraudulent reviews written by publicists, editors, authors, shills, relatives and so on. Whether or not the review has any integrity, they help you sell more books. We expect a higher ethical standard from you.
For anyone freshly returned from a six month stint on the space station, it turns out that many of the reviews found on Amazon (and other online book sites) are not necessarily written by average citizens who simply bought the book and reviewed it. Many are written by people with a financial interest in the book reviewed. The epidemic is so widespread it calls into question all reviews.
Not to disparage these particular titles, but look at a book called Big Sycamore about the Western Apaches of Arizona. The book has 7 five-star reviews. Nothing less than five stars. Real reader sentiments? Students of the professor who wrote it? The author himself? We, the reading public, have no idea. If I wanted to learn how to tie flies would Wet Flies be my best choice? It has 14 five-star reviews. Nothing less than five stars. These reviews could be genuine.
Amazon, B&N, Goodreads, Google Books – We do not trust the reviews you offer us to assist in our buying decisions. Yes, you have little boxes noting whether the reviewer bought the book from you. And yes, you have little notes about how much/little others liked this reviewer. None of which answers the real question: Is the reviewer biased?
You owe us, the readers you serve, a better system.
Why? Not just because your profit motive makes suspect your participation in fraudulent reviews, but also because you helped destroy the voice of professional critics. Not intentionally or maliciously, but you did.
Once upon a time there were professional reviewers at newspapers all over the country. I’m talking about way back in the olden days, like ’95 or ’02. Knight Ridder newspapers had them. So did Gannett’s papers. You destroyed them not by malicious intent but through the evolutionary forces of a free market. As people began buying online, advertising moved online. Google, Amazon, et al saw rising revenues. You were successful, good for you. Newspapers either adapted or died. An unintended casualty was the professional book review. Not your fault. But by your success, you’ve inherited responsibility.
It is not your fault that professional book reviewers are hard to find. But the responsibility for honest reviews falls squarely on your shoulders. You sell books. Is it acceptable for you to allow fraudulent reviews? And yet you do, with a shrug of the shoulder and a muttered, ‘free country, what can I do?’ The stickier question is: Should you be held accountable for the integrity of reviews, posted on your site, that encourage people to buy a given book?
Solution? We, the book buying public, do not expect you to police reader reviews. We do not expect you to censor anyone. Keep the reader reviews.
Offer us professional, independent reviews. There are hundreds of reviewers posting on blogs for free right now. Corralling some of them would be easy. For a tiny fraction of the $50+ Billion book sales generated last year, you could create a certification with a promise of independence and integrity, maybe even pay them, and put those ‘certified’ reviews on your product pages.
If you influence our buying decisions by offering a review of any kind, at least have the decency to put your honor on the line for some of them.
Peace, Seeley James
