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Originally Posted by JSWolf
Amazon's KDP is not helping matters. All it's doing is allowing anyone with Word and Kindlegen to publish. It just causes the good authors to become lost in a sea of garbage. Also, the way we see these self-published authors get people to write good reviews regardless if they are deserved or not is also not helping. It's making the reviews worthless and this for the good authors, reviews are not helping them.
Amazon should only allow reviews from people who bought the eBook. That way, if it's to actually be reviewed, it will at least be reviewed by people who own it. That still doesn't say that the reviews will be worthwhile, but at least it stops the schmuck who doesn't give a crap about the eBook from putting in a totally worthless review or giving 1-star for some stupid reason.
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It may interest you to know that these days some sites won't even take a PAID ad from an author unless they have X number of reviews. This makes the problem worse IMO. I ran across two sites while looking for a place to take out an ad. One of them required my book be 99 cents and have 10 reviews with an average star of...I think it was 4 stars. That part I don't remember. Most of my short stories and anthologies are 99 cents, but guess what? They are the least likely to generate reviews from either bloggers or purchasers. So my options are to lump it (hey, I can take my money elsewhere!) or go hunt down people and mug them for reviews. Some authors decide that "I need ten reviews" means, "I will get my Aunt Joan and Uncle Bill and so on" to add reviews. The other site required even more reviews.
One of the GR groups I'm on just put a new policy in place in order for a book to be nominated for group read: 100 reviews.
I look at numbers like that and just shake my head. Some authors will go out there and get 100 reviews just to "make the grade."
I don't know what the answer is to the review problem. The 'purchased' thing helps, but reviewers (blogs) rarely purchase the books they cover whether it is from a trad pub or an indie. I am happy to send a file to review blogs, but that doesn't guarantee a review at all (and it shouldn't). But "gifting" your book via Amazon doesn't work either. Some blogs won't accept that because it then looks like they bought the book when they didn't and some blogs, I hate to admit, exchange the gift book for something else instead...