Amazon Deletes Wrong Reviews, Forbids Authors to Review One Another's Work

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Phogg

Fixed your mistake for you Harry.

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Please do not misrepresent someone else's views when involved in a discussion...

I meant what I said. I do not need you (or anyone else) to "correct" it for me . Please edit your post and change it to represent what I actually said.

[xendula]

So, on the look-out for free books (God knows my TBR list is long enough already, why am I even doing this to myself?), I stumbled over a book (or short story?)
I thought Amazon was cutting down on fake reviews.
These are primarily 5 star reviews:

This was a great way to get the kindle fire download and install it very difficult to get the English version of Guantanamo
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I am Maria and this book was published very well. I thought that it had cathartic that's what made it amazing
Maria
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This book was the best I've read yet.
I would recommend book to someone that is a very good reader.
----
This is a really good books. The snow owl and the other day I was going to get a really good book and the rest of it but I had to take a shower
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The snow owl book was great! Although it was really short it was great. You will have to read it!
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You're BOOK was good but to short.I liked the events in it.it was interesting to me and I'm sure to more who comes.
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It is a great book
People should really read it because it is very interesting and fun cute for kids

[silasgreenback]

C.J. Cherryh recently made a blog post about Amazon's new review policy and the Vine program. The initial post is rather short, but she has lots more to say in the comments along with her author friend Jane Fancher.

Lots of interesting words from a couple of fine sci-fi writers to be had here.

[pidgeon92]

Originally Posted by xendula

So, on the look-out for free books (God knows my TBR list is long enough already, why am I even doing this to myself?), I stumbled over a book (or short story?)
I thought Amazon was cutting down on fake reviews.
These are primarily 5 star reviews:

Looks like all of these nutty reviews were posted in the last couple of days. Most likely Amazon simply hasn't caught up with these yet.

[DiapDealer]

Good book am good.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

Well, yes, I think the whole point of Amazon doing this is to eliminate a conflict of interest. Which doesn't mean that the reviewers *are* liars, but it does mean that it may be in their interest to lie.

It doesn't matter if they know other authors personally: if an author has reviewed several other authors books, they may feel an obligation to review his books positively. Or an author reviewing a book may be concerned about being too critical about a book lest that author retaliate with a critical review of the first author's book. These incentives don't exist if the person reviewing a book isn't an author.


No, they are not saying that the author isn't qualified. That has no bearing on the issue at all. What they are saying is that the author has a conflict of interest, and because of this conflict the author shouldn't write reviews.

It's like not letting the mayor's son bid on the sidewalk project: the prohibition has nothing to do with his qualifications and everything to do with the conflict of interest. IOW, we can't tell whether the son was chosen because he is the best contractor or because he is the mayor's son, so we bar him from playing.



Again, it's not about qualifications, it's about conflict of interest.



Because there is a conflict of interest. We don't know whether they are telling the truth, and they have an incentive to lie.

And of course random authors are no better than readers at knowing what a well written piece of writing looks like: they have no special knowledge that people who have read thousands of books don't have.

Well I can say I disagree with you on several points. If just being an author invalidates your ability to write an impartial review of a book by another author then we are in trouble. That would be like saying that if someone is of German descent that they are a Nazi or if they have Irish ancestry they're an alcoholic (I have both German and Irish ancestry) both of which are nonsense. Writer's are also readers, in fact they were probably readers long before they wrote the 1st word of their own contributions to literature. While there may be some bias (everyone has their own likes and dislikes in reading material) that same bias exists in the mind of every reader, published author or not. Granted not all authors are created equal as far as knowing what others will like or dislike they still know how best to structure a book, define characters etc. because they had to learn that while trying to get their own work published. Of course right or wrong it's moot by now as Amazon has done it. I don't think it's fair though to penalize everyone for the actions of the few who fake reviews or whatever.

[Prestidigitweeze]

I agree, crich. The real issue is the reviewer's relationship to the author, not the reviewer's profession, and Amazon has no way of policing that unless the reviewer states it overtly. Enemies and stalkers write negative reviews for reasons that have nothing to do with commerce, and everyone has friends and family who write reviews in an effort to show support.

The advantage of an author's review is not that they'll necessary like one's book but that they might have a better sense of what one is actually doing. Effectively Amazon is disallowing reviews by some of the very experts whom book review digests court.

However, if you apply this policy to commercial products made by companies, and are disallowing employees from writing product reviews, then the idea makes far more sense. I wonder whether Amazon has simply made an unfortunate transposition of a policy which has yielded positive results elsewhere -- one which does work when applied to a corrupt dynamic which is easier to trace.

Fraudulent reviews often occur around health products with questionable claims, and those do have to potential to harm the customer. Yerba mate, agave, kombucha -- all have markets which depend on the suppression of knowledge about side effects and the repetition of claims which various studies have discredited.

I've noticed that companies often combat discouraging data by spamming venues with arbitrary posts by a succession of supposedly disinterested users -- posts which share the same phrases, contain the same mistakes in grammar and spelling, and are in the same style.

This doesn't just happen on Amazon. It also happens on health and science blogs. You can also find the same equivocations and tap-dancing at Wikipedia's back end, where the validity of facts and conclusions in Wikipedia articles is being discussed.

It's the reason that research on health issues can look far more favorable on Wikipedia than elsewhere.

[crich70]

Another thing occurred to me. If reviews by the makers of a product are against the rules then why does Amazon have ads promoting their Kindle ereaders up onsite? After all isn't an ad promoting your own product bound to be biased in its favor?

[4691mls]

Originally Posted by crich70

Another thing occurred to me. If reviews by the makers of a product are against the rules then why does Amazon have ads promoting their Kindle ereaders up onsite? After all isn't an ad promoting your own product bound to be biased in its favor?

I think if the advertisements are clearly advertisements, that's OK. Any store can promote itself or its products.

However, if they start posting fake reviews of their Kindle ereaders in an attempt to sell them, or in some other way try to disguise their advertisements so that customers are not aware they're reading an ad, that should be against the rules.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by crich70

Well I can say I disagree with you on several points. If just being an author invalidates your ability to write an impartial review of a book by another author then we are in trouble. That would be like saying that if someone is of German descent that they are a Nazi or if they have Irish ancestry they're an alcoholic (I have both German and Irish ancestry) both of which are nonsense. Writer's are also readers, in fact they were probably readers long before they wrote the 1st word of their own contributions to literature. While there may be some bias (everyone has their own likes and dislikes in reading material) that same bias exists in the mind of every reader, published author or not. Granted not all authors are created equal as far as knowing what others will like or dislike they still know how best to structure a book, define characters etc. because they had to learn that while trying to get their own work published. Of course right or wrong it's moot by now as Amazon has done it. I don't think it's fair though to penalize everyone for the actions of the few who fake reviews or whatever.

That's a strawman argument, not the argument that I made.

An author who publishes an Amazon has an inherent conflict of interest in reviewing another author's work. That doesn't mean that the author is *incapable* of writing an unbiased review. It means that authors have an incentive to write biased reviews. An incentive to pull punches in the hope of getting good reviews from author authors. And the incentive is stronger for indie authors because they aren't as well known as, say, Stephen King.

I think that Amazon is being customer-friendly by trying to eliminate reviews written by people with a conflict of interest. And yes, of course many authors would write unbiased reviews, and there are other non-authors who are biased for any number of reasons. But you can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

The advantage of an author's review is not that they'll necessary like one's book but that they might have a better sense of what one is actually doing. Effectively Amazon is disallowing reviews by some of the very experts whom book review digests court.

Oh, nonsense.

While I'm sure that many authors believe that they are better reviewers than non-writers, I don't believe that at all.

In fact, if you take a random look at reviews published by self-pubbed authors on Amazon, you'll begin to suspect that authors are worse reviewers than ordinanry readers. It's easy to find a bunch of five star reviews like this:

"I loved this book for it's great mix. It's an Action-Adventure mixed with disaster and triumph, and some poignant scenes stirred in. The author did a great job keeping things moving and I was never bored. Some of the ideas might strike cords of controversy for some people, but in this age of "tolerance" and accepting everything, I should think we could look at the overall plot and exellent quality of the work itself. I like the author's writing style and hope to find more books by him. Great job!"

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

In fact, if you take a random look at reviews published by self-pubbed authors on Amazon, you'll begin to suspect that authors are worse reviewers than ordinanry readers. It's easy to find a bunch of five star reviews like this:

"I loved this book for it's great mix. It's an Action-Adventure mixed with disaster and triumph, and some poignant scenes stirred in. The author did a great job keeping things moving and I was never bored. Some of the ideas might strike cords of controversy for some people, but in this age of "tolerance" and accepting everything, I should think we could look at the overall plot and exellent quality of the work itself. I like the author's writing style and hope to find more books by him. Great job!"

Wouldn't it be better to leave reviews like this? If you don't like the way this author wrote a review, you know to stay away from this author's books.

[crich70]

I grant that bias does exist. As long as reviewers are human that will be the case, but if an author has a conflict of interest isn't it more likely that said bias would lead to them writing negative rather than positive reviews? I mean especially with the way the economy is going now days people have less $ to spend on wants as opposed to needs and if two authors are vying for the same dollar (or what ever price is on the book) from the customer wouldn't it make more sense for them to write negative reviews of each others work rather than positive ones? Not that I have anyone in mind, just that that sounds more the human response.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by crich70

I grant that bias does exist. As long as reviewers are human that will be the case, but if an author has a conflict of interest isn't it more likely that said bias would lead to them writing negative rather than positive reviews?

You've obviously never seen the cozy little "you write me a positive review and I'll write you one" cliques that are common on writing forums. These have nothing to do with the quality of the work involved - it's pure advertising.

[xendula]

^ ditto, and that's exactly what Amazon is trying to nip in the butt.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You've obviously never seen the cozy little "you write me a positive review and I'll write you one" cliques that are common on writing forums. These have nothing to do with the quality of the work involved - it's pure advertising.

But then, have you ever had a legitimate review you posted to Amazon be deleted?