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12-25-2012, 08:44 AM | #61 | |
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Last edited by HarryT; 12-25-2012 at 08:47 AM. |
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01-17-2013, 06:55 PM | #62 | |
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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: Quote:
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01-17-2013, 10:47 PM | #63 |
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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. |
01-18-2013, 10:37 AM | #64 | |
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01-18-2013, 10:46 AM | #65 |
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Good book am good.
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01-22-2013, 02:37 AM | #66 | |
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01-22-2013, 09:26 PM | #67 |
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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. Last edited by Prestidigitweeze; 01-23-2013 at 03:58 AM. |
01-23-2013, 01:39 AM | #68 |
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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?
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01-23-2013, 01:09 PM | #69 | |
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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. |
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01-23-2013, 01:40 PM | #70 | ||
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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. Quote:
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!" |
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01-23-2013, 01:56 PM | #71 | |
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01-23-2013, 10:22 PM | #72 |
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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.
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01-24-2013, 02:58 AM | #73 |
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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.
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01-24-2013, 08:10 AM | #74 |
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^ ditto, and that's exactly what Amazon is trying to nip in the butt.
Last edited by xendula; 01-28-2013 at 05:34 PM. |
01-28-2013, 01:40 PM | #75 |
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But then, have you ever had a legitimate review you posted to Amazon be deleted?
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