Do companies who post reviews (Amazon, Goodreads, etc) have any responsibility to ensure the reviews they post are written by individuals who read the books reviewed?
By now, everyone has read or heard about, the New York Times article citing a company who once offered ecstatic reviews for only $99. In that article, they revealed that independent authors relied heavily on shill reviews and cited John Locke in particular. Salon wrote a particularly nasty piece indicting virtually all independent authors. Hundreds of blogs have complained about John Locke in particular. No doubt, his abuse of the system is reprehensible. For the million books he sold at the time his review-for-hire company went under, he made roughly $300,000.
How much did Amazon make before, during and after the exposé from potentially thousands/millions of other fraudulent reviews? Which companies make money from selling books or advertising space with zero regard to how they sell them?
The Chinese equivalent of the western axiom, “an ounce of prevention…” is the proverb: Society present the crime, the criminal merely completes it. City parking lots glow in a weird orange light because society knows an unlit parking lot is a criminal’s haven. As citizens, we elect officials who reduce the criminal’s ability to complete his crime. As a society, we want to present fewer crimes to criminals.
What has Amazon done to validate reviews since the New York Times article first appeared?
Last February I set up three dummy accounts on Amazon with the intent of creating fake reviews. The book these personas reviewed consisted of 30,000 words used for place holders, Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, slapped together and posted in the 0.99 category by one of the dummy accounts and filed under fly fishing. I was curious about what criteria Amazon had for reviews because I had clicked through 250 books on fly fishing, ranked by “average customer review” without coming to one that was below 4.5 stars. (Never fly fished in my life, random topic.) I copied a New Yorker review of the musical Jersey Boys because, in my humble opinion, there is nothing more bizarre in this world than a musical review. Among the 300 words was this phrase, A winner! Splendid actors and elegant strokes of observation. Direct pedal-to-the-metal stuff. A phrase everyone intuitively associates with fly fishing. Sadly, the book never took off. After a few weeks, I deleted it along with the ghost reviewers. I showered.
Did I receive any cease & desist emails from Amazon? No, I received notes encouraging my imaginary friends to write more reviews. And one of the dummies was told “people who bought that book also bought 50 Shades of Grey. Of course they did.
Amazon has one requirement restricting who can post reviews: Anyone who has purchased items from Amazon.com.
Authors, publicists and publishing companies use unethical methods of gaining attention because it works. Ethical short cuts have attracted the desperate for thousands of years. Today, Amazon presents desperate people with an easy way to gain sales: The unverified review supplied by an unverified reviewer of unverified sanity.
Traditional news organizations abandoned professional book reviewers at the first decline in ad revenue a decade ago. The few remaining professional book reviewers choose books of extremely limited appeal. Yes, I’m sure Abyssinian Nights is the most beautiful prose the English language has ever witnessed, and the character development is the most visceral ever put on paper, but who the f**k wants to read a three hundred thirty page description of a depressed man making coffee? (You looked for it? Abyssinian Nights. Really.)
Where are the reviews the reader can trust?
In the back-alley blogs of unknown enthusiasts who churn out reviews for an audience who may or may not care. I am one of those. I only review books I like because I have no energy or interest in reviewing the ones I don’t. If you don’t like that concept, I don’t care. I am unpaid and will do what amuses me because it beats having to have sex with my wife, who happens to look like Kate Beckinsale. (You don’t know. She could.)
If there were money in it, I would post what I really think of Steve Berry’s travelogues. But since there isn’t, who cares?
How are we going to get honest, heartfelt, reliable, validated reviews?
Should Amazon pay me and others like me? Not gonna happen. Business 101–Never pay for something you can get for free. What about readers? Care to fork over a small sum for an honest and heartfelt review of books I like? Yeah. Well. Worth a shot. So who is willing to pay for reviews then? Who has an economic interest in posting reviews?
Aahhh… So that’s how we got in this mess is it?
Between now and when a better system crops up, we can demand that Amazon and others (I’m looking at you, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble) implement some form of validation or accreditation. Since these companies are presenting reviews on their sites, and making money from generated ads and book sales, they owe us some form of verification other than, this imaginary reviewer was rated ever so helpful by his imaginary friends. Demand better today!
Peace, Seeley James
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