Who is Harriet Klausner....

[anamardoll]

@Skip Wyona, the speed reading thing has been floated before. It's not reasonable. I can believe (marginally) that she's reading the 60 books a day that she's supposedly churning out; I cannot believe that she's typing up the reviews as fast as she does. I have written hundreds of reviews on Amazon, and it's a time consuming process.

Incidentally, most of her "plot line details" are wrong, so the speed reading that she's supposedly doing isn't working out for her.

Then there's the question of her giving EVERYTHING 4- or 5-stars. Either she's never met a book she didn't like OR she's actually reading 100+ books a day and not reviewing the crappy ones. Unlikely.

[afa]

Originally Posted by Skip Wyona

Interesting but dubious speculation here.

Ummm... you're defending a 'person' that produces book reviews at a rate that would have to be damn near supernatural to be true, and it's our speculation that is dubious..?

No matter what you or I think about her 'reviews' you all need to understand that 'reading' many books in one day is not unusual for a librarian. It is part of the training to get the idea of a book by skim reading as quickly as possible.

I doubt Klausner's prodigious churn out rate is a result of her being 'trained' by The Society of Speed-Reading Librarians.

I have never thought that her reviews are meant to be qualitative but simply the type of review all librarians do to get to know what a book is about for book talks and book promotions.

I fully admit I don't know a heck of a lot of librarians, but this claim (along with the bit about 'training') seems rather dubious to me.

Her written Amazon pieces are no different then the usual junk that passes as comment on Amazon except that at least she gives detail about the book's plot line.

As Ana and others have pointed out, she frequently gets the plot details wrong. To me, this implies that she likely copy/pastes blurbs and summaries for books into her 'reviews', and occasionally pastes the wrong one. Or maybe she just has a terrible memory. Either way, it renders her 'reviews' worthless.

Besides, if you want to know the plot line, you can go ahead and read the back-of-book summary. At least you know it will belong to the correct book.

See http://www.booksnbytes.com/contribut..._klausner.html

I am unclear as to what that link is supposed to demonstrate. It's a mini-"biography" of Klausner. Er... so?

I found this random blog (mockingly) dedicated to Harriet. Some people, taking this debate far more seriously than us, have actually gone to the extent of keeping detailed tabs on her reviews:

Thanks to the awesome poster "buck210", we now have Harriet's updated statistical profile going over this past half a year:

buck210 says:
Stats so far this year, with a max of 306 in April and a low of 171 in May and an average of over 7.5 books per day for the year that Fraud Hattie fraudulently claims to have read and "reviewed".

185 fraudulent reviews in Jan 2011 5.97 per day
229 fraudulent reviews in Feb 2011 8.18 per day
204 fraudulent reviews in Mar 2011 6.58 per day
306 fraudulent reviews in Apr 2011 10.20 per day
171 fraudulent reviews in May 2011 5.52 per day
219 fraudulent reviews in Jun 2011 7.30 per day
218 fraudulent reviews in Jul 2011 7.03 per day
289 fraudulent reviews in Aug 2011 9.32 per day

So what can we expect for this month?? I'm predicting a slightly lower than average month, say around 200, as she just put out 79 a couple of days ago, she usually waits until the first of the month to puke them out so it's likely that this will not be a stellar 300+ month. But, knowing Fraud Hattie, it's still definitely possible...

Thumbs up, buck210! Last time I calculated her long-term average it was close to six (6) books a day over about a decade (starting late November 1999 -- the first review posted under her current account was dated something like 22 Nov 1999 or thereabouts). But now Harriet obviously went over that old parameter, hitting as much as 10.20 books a day (April 2011). Awesome! Harriet recognises no limits! If this keeps up she'll be reviewing 100 books every day.

I have no idea how accurate those figures are, but that does seem like an awful lot of books. Keep in mind that in addition to finding the time to read all these books, she also has to have to time to post reviews.

Those figures seem rather steep, even if we assume that reading books and writing reviews is her full-time job.

[anamardoll]

Afa, that was wonderful, thank you.

It's not too hard to get accurate figures on posting. My husband programmed an Amazon Reviewer Analysis Tool (ARAT) for me a year or so ago and it's been disseminated fairly widely on the Amazon boards. And I'm sure that other bedroom programmers can and have done similar programs.

I know at least one person who is using ARAT to track several of the Top 20 via a nightly batch script and seeing when they delete-and-repost reviews to shake off negs votes. Reviewer watching is sort of like bird-watching, but from the comfort of your own home, it seems.

[abookreader]

Yeah, all that jockeying amongst the top reviewers is fairly fascinating. For whatever reason, those ranking are really important to some people. I guess it is partly explained by manufacturers/publishers sending promotional items out but largely it often seems to be just badge of honor type of pride fueling them.

Second in entertainment is the spend a scary hour pursuing the Amazon Vine board.

[anamardoll]

As someone who does "care"* about my ranking, I can confirm that it's all for the fun of seeing your number go up. The material rewards aren't much to write home about, since the unsolicited ARCs I receive are all electronic (not resale-able, not that I would) and most of them aren't things I'd necessarily pay money for anyway. It's just a fun hobby.

The Vine board, otoh, are -- as you say -- straight-jacket-wearing insane. I've sworn off that board because it was troll central. There are a LOT of good Viners, and the trolls comprise maybe 1% of the group, but almost 99% of the posts, and Amazon is utterly unwilling to do anything about it. I personally think there's a buildup of bad-will towards Amazon; I know that I was pretty frustrated with them as a company until I finally swore off the boards and got some distance.

*Admittedly not enough to delete-and-repost my reviews to improve my ranking. Not out of any moral reason, I've just been too busy to invest that much time into the ranking.

[afa]

I'm not even sure I know what Amazon Vine is, let alone why it's so troll-y.

Judging by the name (which seems like it was inspired by the idea of the 'grapevine') I assume this is some sort of service for sharing recommendation of books?

Originally Posted by anamardoll

Afa, that was wonderful, thank you.

You're quite welcome, Ana.

It's not too hard to get accurate figures on posting. My husband programmed an Amazon Reviewer Analysis Tool (ARAT) for me a year or so ago and it's been disseminated fairly widely on the Amazon boards. And I'm sure that other bedroom programmers can and have done similar programs.

That's a pretty interesting tool. I don't think I knew that such things existed, though in retrospect it seems obvious (doesn't everything?).

I know at least one person who is using ARAT to track several of the Top 20 via a nightly batch script and seeing when they delete-and-repost reviews to shake off negs votes.

Hmmm... now that's just wrong. Shouldn't there be some way of controlling such behaviour? I know these reviews are, perhaps, not an entirely big deal. But they are there for a reason, and so are the votes. The feature is supposed to give you an idea about how well-received a person's critique's are. Such shenanigans essentially render them meaningless.

Perhaps Amazon should just prevent deleting posts.

[anamardoll]

Afa,

Amazon Vine is a program wherein publishers (and others) provide free products to Amazon for Amazon to disseminate to a selection of reviewers. I'm a member and have a post on it here if you're interested in learning more:

http://www.anamardoll.com/2011/03/ar...-and-vine.html

The only (well, biggest) problem with the program that I can see is that Amazon is perfectly willing to take the publishers' moneys (you have to pay to participate) but not to sink any money into maintaining the program, i.e., moderating member behavior.

It has gotten bad enough that many Vine members don't publicize that they are Vine members because many customers are frustrated with Vine "placeholder" reviews and the like. ("I.e., I've received this and will review it soon, but I'm putting this up as a placeholder so I can still select more stuff this month.")

The ABNA (Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award) judges are also selected from Vine members. 90% of the members are wonderful, but there was a hubbub this year when a Vine Troll was selected as a judge and said some very inappropriate things in some of their ABNA reviews.... and Amazon pretty much failed to correct the situation in a way that I and many of the ABNA authors were hoping for. (I wanted the Troll Judge's selections resubmitted to a backup judge; it would seem Amazon decided to just press on with the contest and not worry about it.)

---

There has been much ink spilled over the Amazon system. Being able to delete a review is a good thing -- I've deleted some in the past where after I calmed down over the RAGE POST prompted by a movie I didn't like, I've realized that I had nothing worthwhile to say and that the review wasn't helpful, so I pruned or outright deleted it.

Essentially, no system is perfect. I think the current system is pretty good and if the Top 20 have to shake off negs to stay where they are, well, that teaches that all systems can be gamed to a certain extent.*

* And at least one Top 20 conspicuously DOESN'T delete-and-repost, so it's not required to rise to the top.

[afa]

Thanks for the info.

I've actually considered putting down some reviews of books/movies/music and the like, largely because I'm an arrogant prat who thinks his opinions are worthier than others'.

Unfortunately, I am far too lazy for me to make any significant effort towards that. Every time I get a little excited by the prospect, I think of the effort required to sit down and pen a coherent, well-thought, engaging and interesting review, then proof-read it and correct any errors, re-word and re-write sections that could have been stated more eloquently...

And I go back to not writing anything.

[SkookumPete]

Harriet is not the only one. There are outfits like Midwest Book Review, which to date has published over 64,000 Amazon "reviews", all of them (as far as I know) five stars, and seldom consisting of much more than the title and author repeated, a very general description of the contents, and a recommendation to buy.

I've thought about the possible business model for a long time, and the conclusion I've come to is that these people are getting review copies for free and then wholesaling them to some bookseller who sells them as new (which they are, because it's a certainty no one has read them!). Say you "review" ten books with an average retail price of $15. You sell these to the bookseller for half-price and realize $75, which is not bad money for an hour or two spent writing and posting one-paragraph blurbs.

It seems dishonest in so many ways.

[SWyona]

[QUOTE=afa;1748086]Ummm... you're defending a 'person' that produces book reviews at a rate that would have to be damn near supernatural to be true, and it's our speculation that is dubious..?

I am not defending Harriet. Merely putting things into perspective. I do not believe the 60 books a day claim at all. I however can believe the POSTING of 60 comments a day.

I was a librarian and it was typical of me, when time permitted (which was rare) to skip-read and take notes on a dozen or so books a day to prepare for book promotions. It does not mean I got the plot points right, just got enough exposure to introduce a book to my audiences. Usually I would choose only one or two to read fully.

What Harriet does is very typical of librarian book promotion techniques. In any case I do not state that Harriets comments on Amazon are worth much. Few actually are.

The link in my previous post merely provides some biographical information on Harriet. This site might also be the source of the info about her on Wikipedia.

Some people are obsessive about books and have too much time on their hands. Harriet may be one of those people.

[Skip Wyona]

[QUOTE=SWyona;1748701]

Originally Posted by afa

I was a librarian and it was typical of me, when time permitted (which was rare) to skip-read and take notes on a dozen or so books a day to prepare for book promotions. It does not mean I got the plot points right, just got enough exposure to introduce a book to my audiences. Usually I would choose only one or two to read fully.

Actually I misspoke about the dozen books a day thing. I rarely took more than 4 hours. One afternoon a week was all the time I had to spare.

[xg4bx]

i was doing some research and apparently an author had inserted a character named harriet klausner into the book. klausner's review made no mention of this at all.

maybe its just me but if an author used my name and based a character on me i'd maybe mention that somewhere in the review.

there was also a case of one of these "reviewers" selling the very books they recieved for "review" on amazon with the description "never even opened". lol. so there is a bit of financial incentive to receive scads of free books in the mail.

[anamardoll]

I just don't see it. Most publishers send us reviewers ARCs, which are usually clearly marked as such. You can trade them at, say, Swap.com, but reselling them through Amazon is going to get you a lot of low rankings as a seller VERY fast.

(And, of course, more and more publishers are going the e-ARC route which is all for the best.)

I suspect, if "Harriet" is paid, she's paid directly and not through resale.

[afa]

Originally Posted by SWyona

I am not defending Harriet. Merely putting things into perspective. I do not believe the 60 books a day claim at all. I however can believe the POSTING of 60 comments a day.

That is believable, yes. But doesn't it follow that she must be reading an extraordinary number of books for her to be posting comments?

I was a librarian and it was typical of me, when time permitted (which was rare) to skip-read and take notes on a dozen or so books a day to prepare for book promotions.

If that is what "Klausner" is doing, isn't it more than a little disingenuous of her not to state that fact? She certainly seems to be implying that she actually reads the novels, and explains that ability by claiming to be a speed-reader.

In any case I do not state that Harriets comments on Amazon are worth much. Few actually are.

Have you read Ana Mardoll's reviews? I just checked some out recently. She is the anti-Klausner. Where Klausner writes brief snippets and meaningless recommendations, Ana's reviews take the tactic of bludgeoning you with such a mountain of information, that you would not dare to offer a contradictory point of view.

Seriously Ana - I saw your review of the Pocketbook 360 vs. PRS-350. Good God, woman! It's the giantest review I have ever seen. I actually copied and pasted the entire thing in Word, just to check... it's over 3000 words!

I suppose it's fitting when reviewing an ebook reader that you would write a whole book about it...

Originally Posted by Skip Wyona

Actually I misspoke about the dozen books a day thing. I rarely took more than 4 hours. One afternoon a week was all the time I had to spare.

Out of curiosity - is there any particular reason you have two distinct accounts on MR?

[Skip Wyona]

Originally Posted by afa

Out of curiosity - is there any particular reason you have two distinct accounts on MR?

I do???? News to me.