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Amazon's Idiotic Customer Review Policy
Mar. 25th, 2010 11:00 amTech Crunch comments on the recent hubbub regarding The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis, which received numerous 1-star customer reviews because it was not yet available in a Kindle edition. These people hadn't even read the book and were using the reviews as a way of punishing the author for something he had no control over.
I think the issue of bullying via poor amazon.com reviews is much broader. Paul Carr, author of the article, writes:
Amazon’s book review policy has long been a bugbear of mine, and most other authors’. Too often, especially with controversial authors, the most negative reviews come from people who haven’t even read the book in question. Their anger, and the resulting one-star review, is simply a statement of general antipathy towards the author and everything they do. I know of several authors who have had to ask Amazon to take down libelous one-star reviews that focus on their gender, their race, their political views and almost any other aspect of their character.
How many books have gotten poor overall ratings on Amazon because a handful of readers objected to (AKA were out to get) the author or the subject material. All too often, I've seen scathing comments that had nothing to do with the merits of the book but were thinly disguised attacks because the book dealt with, for instance, GLBT issues. (Cases in point: Vera Nazarian's Northanger Abbey With Angels and Demons, the beautifully done riff on Emma, James Fairfax by Adam Campan, and my own Hastur Lord.)
Do such reviews hurt or help sales? Are prospective buyers intelligent enough to tell when a review is an honest reaction by someone who has read and thought about the book or a politically-driven smear campaign? Are you more or less likely to buy a book that has such reviews? Or is any buzz, positive or negative, a good thing?
I think the issue of bullying via poor amazon.com reviews is much broader. Paul Carr, author of the article, writes:
Amazon’s book review policy has long been a bugbear of mine, and most other authors’. Too often, especially with controversial authors, the most negative reviews come from people who haven’t even read the book in question. Their anger, and the resulting one-star review, is simply a statement of general antipathy towards the author and everything they do. I know of several authors who have had to ask Amazon to take down libelous one-star reviews that focus on their gender, their race, their political views and almost any other aspect of their character.
How many books have gotten poor overall ratings on Amazon because a handful of readers objected to (AKA were out to get) the author or the subject material. All too often, I've seen scathing comments that had nothing to do with the merits of the book but were thinly disguised attacks because the book dealt with, for instance, GLBT issues. (Cases in point: Vera Nazarian's Northanger Abbey With Angels and Demons, the beautifully done riff on Emma, James Fairfax by Adam Campan, and my own Hastur Lord.)
Do such reviews hurt or help sales? Are prospective buyers intelligent enough to tell when a review is an honest reaction by someone who has read and thought about the book or a politically-driven smear campaign? Are you more or less likely to buy a book that has such reviews? Or is any buzz, positive or negative, a good thing?
