The "slush pile" analogy is exactly right. Amazon has unpaid reviews but also actual sales numbers to weed out the dreck. I don't see this as a "bad Amazon" story, but rather a "clueless publishing industry" story. After all, every single publishing house in the world will have months to years to recognize the marketability of each AmazonEncore book before Amazon does. What they don't have is a system that allows them to do this.
|