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.

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.

That’s a great suggestions! I sent them an e-mail. I’ll keep you guys posted if they get back to me.

Even if you never get a response, and they don’t change there ways at lest you tried.

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.

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!