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I understand what your saying, I just think that it is unfair to negatively effect the book as a whole (including the author) over something that is more the responsibility of the publishing house. If I'm looking for the top rated books in a category so that I can go borrow one from my library, all of those one star ratings will pull books that, otherwise may have been great reads for me, off of the list. That is especially important when people don't read the reviews but simply discount the book out of hand.
If Amazon is thinking they should institute a publishers rating system and let people make purchasing decisions on that.
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It would be nice if there were some independent site where one could rate books based on its content separately from its retail and presentational mechanisms (for example, formatting could be another, even more legitimate, reason for low-rating a good book). In fact, such a site would be really awesome if it contained links with prices listed for all retailers selling pbooks and ebooks for a given title (perhaps with Worldcat library-borrowing information thrown in for good measure).
As it is, people do rate Amazon products (more than just books) based on the whole customer experience, for better or for worse. I would worry most about this sinking new authors, and I don't know if this is happening. Established authors at least have a chance of getting read regardless.