Honestly, even unpaid reviews can be thoroughly untrustworthy.
Case in point: Night Shade Books decided to offer for
B&N's Free Fridays feature e-book Kameron Hurley's
God's War.
Are people grateful, or thanks-but-I'll-pass appreciative? Or do they even confine their complaints that they're sick of romance/paranormal/Christian fiction Free Fridays-whyyyy can't we get some [insert favoured genre here] instead on the blog comments as they did in the past?
No. They immediately go and put
several 1 star "reviews" trashing the book solely because they want something from a different genre free as the promotional friday e-book. B&N only display the latest few on the actual product page, and make you click through several pages to go through all the reviews 5 at a time, so people visiting will at first glance get a completely false impression and most probably won't bother to trawl through the reviews.
Worse yet, there are several dozen 1-star "ratings" which can't be "unhelpful"-ed or otherwise countermanded (short of giving sympathy 5-star ratings which also don't reflect reality), which allow people to drag the book's rating down without having to take the time to write even a fake review. This is part of why I disagree with "rate without reviewing" proposals. At least making people type in some words puts an extra step in their path towards abusing the system, if they're so inclined.
I must say this brings a new twist to the "1-star based solely on price over 9.99" grudge review, but it's not a development I like to see.
Hopefully it's just an isolated incident that's the result of concerted trolling and today's calendar date, rather than a trend in how people voice their market preferences.
Also, this is a good way for those B&N complainers to get no Free Fridays books at all in the future if this is the reception they get. Serve them right if B&N suspended the offer for the rest of the month. It could be their April Fools' prank.