Quote:
Originally Posted by mr ploppy
Does anyone really care what a bunch of random people on the internet think about a book? As well as fake/paid for reviews there's plenty of revenge reviews too.
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A lot of people, actually.
Mostly because it is not supposed to be a bunch of random people on the internet, but rather customers of Amazon who read the book and cared enough either way to submit their opinion. And because it impacts sales.
Of, course, that is just the baseline way it's supposed to work.
Overlaid on that are the promo scams, one-star activists, personal attacks, and what-not. Most of which are so blatant an experienced shopped can spot them a mile away. Unfortunately, few are blatant enough for algorithmic weeding and Amazon can't afford to hire a big enough crew to weed them out "by hand" and keep the system 100% honest.
Where the arguments come from is in how honest is the system overall? 80% 90% 50% or zero. And that, like so many things online is just a matter of opinion.
The system itself "is what it is"; some people have learned how to use it, flawed as it (just as some people know how to pick avocados in-store) and others don't want to learn.
What is interesting is that the problems span all product categories to some extent or another but it is books where you see the bulk of the scams and activist meddling and, contrary to myth, it is more common on tradpub titles (there's more of them) and most common on self-help and non-fiction (more controversial). Plus those problems predate Kindle and predate the mainstreaming of indie titles.
Somebody could write a whole book documenting the history of review-hijacks.
