Hey guys,
Music to write by: “Fall to Pieces“ by Velvet Revolver
Okay, I’ll just come out and say it right now: The reviewing system on Amazon.com is broken. So there, I said it, and I stand by it. Here’s why:
Midwest Book Review posts a lot of reviews on Amazon. Thiry-two thousand of them at last count. Yes, I said thirty-two THOUSAND. They must have quite a range of reviews. Except that they don’t. Every single review they’ve ever done gets five stars. Even self published authors universally get five stars reviews. I have nothing against the self-published, but can they ALL have written a work equal to Vinge’s? I think not.
One argument I’ve heard is that they only post positive reviews, to which I ask, why? Readers rely on reviewers to tell them not only when a book is good, but also when it’s bad. By posting only good reviews Midwest is homogenizing the reading landscape. If a reviewer claims all books are equally good, then their reviews are useless. As for the initial assertion, I don’t believe they publish only good reviews. If they’ve given 32000 5 star reviews (the top tier), can you imagine how many reviews they must do overall? How many books are perfect, 1%? So that means they do 3.2 million reviews and toss out all but 32,000? Sure…
Out of the reviews they DO do, many of them show no actual knowledge of the book itself, other than what can be read in the Editorial Book Description (written by the author). This is often a real good sign that the review is fake. In my opinion, if these guys think they’re doing some good by spamming 5 star reviews, they’re daydreaming.
We’re also not fooled by authors that get their friends and families to log on a give them five star reviews. Even a “Real Name” moniker doesn’t help in detecting them. A good rule of thumb is to never trust a reviewer that’s written only one review.
Especially bad are anonymous reviews that are clearly written by the author themselves (like, for instance, if you review your book using your Writing.com handle. You know who you are, and now so do we).
But the very worst kind of review was the subject of a recent post on Amy Casil Sterling’s blog. Sterling’s book was given a poor review by George Randolph Calverhall. Like the fake-looking reviews written by Midwest Book review, Calverhall’s reviews were all spurious, containing very little information that wasn’t available in the Editorial Book Description. Upon further investigation, Sterling discovered that Calverhall was targetting books by minorities for bad reviews. Personally, I was stunned at the pettiness of this tactic, but, looking at the review, it sure seems like Calverhall didn’t read the book. I could have written that review (Sorry Amy, IMAGO’s on the reading list).
What can we do about this? Amazon needs to post a few of each reviewers stats next to their names, not just their location, or if they are using a real name. They should include the number of reviews the reviewer has posted as well as, and this is key, the average rating of their reviews. Amazon could then use this information to “sort” reviews according to relevance. Reviewers like Calverhall (too many negative reviews) and Midwest Book Review (too many positives) would migrate to the bottom of the list . Even if Amazon doesn’t perform this sort, the reader could, themselves, decide which reviews are relevant.
Readers deserve to know when they’re being hoodwinked and minority authors deserve to have their work judged on merit, not the colour of their skin (Or in Ms Sterling’s case: her sex). The system needs to be fixed. Come’on Amazon, put a fire under it.
6 Comments(+Add)
Excellent commentary, Jordan, I agree whole-heartedly.
3.2 million reviews, my ass. 32k 5-star reviews, they must think we’re assess! I commented on this concept on my blog a few months back under a “That’s the Best?” heading and said pretty much the same thing. Rather than being specifically oriented to Amazon or Midwest Book Review, however, I was being merely selfish and reacting to reader ratings on a book I reviewed for SFReader’s Book Reviews.
Good post!
Howard,
Overly generous reviews are a problem, as I mentioned in my posts on Writing.com.
If anyone’s interested, Howard’s post is here. I strongly agree with his point. Only the masterworks should get 5 stars.
Amazon allows you to send them suggestions
Why don’t you try and submit this article to them as a suggestion.
Amazon contact us
Even if you never get a response, and they don’t change there ways at lest you tried.
Steven,
That’s a great suggestions! I sent them an e-mail. I’ll keep you guys posted if they get back to me.
I don’t like Midwest Book Review either and I’m not going to defend them and their useless reviews; however, you have used them to make some points about Amazon reviews generally, thereby smearing all Amazon reviewers with the same same brush.
Reviewers and customers tend to set their own definitions for star ratings and you clearly believe that 5 stars should be reserved for perfect products. Amazon’s own recommended definition is that 5 stars means “I love this”. As it is possible to love things – or people – despite their flaws, Amazon clearly don’t think 5 stars should be reserved for perfect products.
Another question you ask is why reviewers only (or mostly) review what they like. Amazon don’t pay anybody for posting reviews on their website in the customer reviews section. They do pay for editorial reviews (and Midwest Book Review have done some of those in the past, although I don’t know if they still do), but your post is not concerned with those. Customers MAY be paid for writing reviews by outside sources, but I doubt that many are financially rewarded. The main reward is in the form of free review copies. Some people will review anything if its free. I won’t. I only accept stuff if I would consider buying it anyway. So, along with many other reviewers, I’m only interested in the stuff I like and try to avoid other stuff. I’ll review things I don’t like occasionally, but by the nature of my self-selection, that won’t amount to a whole lot.
You suggest (as others before have done) that if reviewers offer only praise, it renders all their reviews useless, because there is no contrast. Not so. People who share my tastes start from a position of knowing nothing about me. As they peruse Amazon reviews, they run into my reviews regularly, and correspondingly, those who don’t share my tastes don’t see my reviews, but see names of other reviewers whose tastes they share. Those who share my tastes get to know what I like. They may look up stuff they’re already familiar with, whether by looking through my reviews or just by looking for the relevant Amazon reviews. They can then decide whether they trust me or not. And those who do trust me are overwhelmingly satisfied with the purchases they’ve made on my recommendations. Particularly satisfying was one comment on one of my 5-star reviews from somebody who DIDN’T buy a CD, because she could see from my review that it wasn’t what she was looking for. Yes, just because I rate something 5 stars doesn’t mean that it will suit everybody, even if they basically share my tastes. People need to read the reviews, not just rely on star ratings.
I once got a comment complaining about the sound quality of a CD (which I hadn’t mentioned) so I replayed the CD to check, then added a paragraph to my review noting that I was very happy with the sound quality, given the age of the recordings (30′s/40′s). But that was a one-off. I get plenty of criticism, falling into two main categories, these being
a) those who share my tastes, but who point out errors in my reviews, and I do make them sometimes, and I correct them if I am wrong, which is most of the time in these cases, although occasionally somebody points out something they think I’ve got wrong but they are wrong and I have to explain that to them
b) those who come across my reviews despite not being interested in the stuff I review. I didn’t write my reviews for those people and as long as the people who share my tastes are for the most part satisfied, that’ll do for me.
Author shills are a whole other subject and I don’t like them either. The problem still exists but is less serious than it used to be because Amazon have acted on this ussue. Rather like real-life crime, the problems will never go away, but the worst excesses can be reduced.
Peter,
I’m a little baffled by your comment. You claim that I smear all reviewers with the same brush, and yet I thought my post called out only particular KINDS of reviewers, one per paragraph.
If your beef is with the single line in the above post: “If a reviewer claims all books are equally good, then their reviews are useless.”, I’ll simply point out that your reviews don’t make this claim, do they?
In any case, you imagine several things about me that aren’t in the above post… for instance, I agree with you that 5 star reviews should mean “I love this” rather than “This is perfect”. However, there’s more love in Midwest’s reviews than there is in Vegas on a Friday night.
While I doubt there’s much “name recognition” in the Amazon review system, your duty as a reviewer is to both point people who share your tastes to something they’d like, and ALSO to steer them clear of things they don’t. If I trust your judgement, see your 2 star review on a product, and decided not to buy, I will have been saved from spending my hard earned cash on it. By giving only 5 star reviews, you’re only doing half the job.