Would you trust a review that was paid for?

[Worldwalker]

That's another problem with user reviews, along with negative reviews for PEBCAK errors and positive ones from astroturfing: companies that delete all, or most, negative reviews. This generally happens when they're manufacturing or selling whatever it is. I don't trust reviews on any company's site unless there's a substantial leavening of the "this thing broke the day after I got it" kind on some of the items, so I have some hope they're real.

I think really the only hope of decent reviews is family and friends: if someone you know says "yeah, this was great for me, and I liked the ding-a-ling" or "don't buy that, it'll eat your petunias" you know a lot more about what it's like than you do if you read some review from someone you don't know from Adam, whether they're a NYT critic or some random schmuck who didn't like something.

The paid "reviewers" are basically eating their seed corn. They're making some money in the short term by capitalizing on the existing trust in reviews -- the former impartiality that leads most people to still consider a review more trustworthy than an ad -- while destroying that trust. After a few years of this, reviews will be considered just another format of ad. For short-term gains, they're destroying the long-term use. Typical.

[SlowRain]

That's like asking if you'd trust audited financial statements from an accounting firm that accepted payment for the work.

If the reviewer were semi-famous and had a history of telling it like it is, then I don't see why not. But that would have to be a reviewer whose opinion I trusted and shared based on past experience.

(Come to think of it, I don't really trust audited financial statements at all.)

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by SlowRain

That's like asking if you'd trust audited financial statements from an accounting firm that accepted payment for the work.

There's a reason why companies are expected (or in some places, required) to hire outside firms to examine their books instead of just having their own accountants print out a report. Their own accountants' employment may depend on them saying what their bosses want to hear; an outside firm, while paid by the company, is really working for the investors. If it does not have the confidence of those investors, they will take action ranging from voting to divesting. Accounting firms go to a great deal of effort to maintain -- and perhaps more important, prove -- their reliability. And for those who don't ... see Arthur Andersen.

Also, financial statements are a matter of plain fact. Two auditors looking at the same set of books, and following the same rules as to how certain items should be considered, will produce identical results. If a company earned $1 million in 2010, they earned $1 million, and opinions don't enter into it. Reviews, on the other hand, are almost entirely subjective. I could like a movie you hate, and vise versa. We could agree on some parts of it -- that the special effects were well done, for instance -- while disagreeing vehemently over whether those same effects were appropriate to the story. If you lined up all the reviewers end to end, they'd point in different directions (they're worse than economists!). Technical matters aside, a review generally comes down to "I like it." A truly independent reviewer gets paid by whoever (in the case of Consumer Reports, for example, by the buyers) no matter what their review says. A somewhat less independent, but still nominally so, reviewer gets paid by someone who is also getting paid by the subjects of the reviews, such as a movie critic working for a newspaper. You have to take those with a grain of salt; they don't want to peeve their advertisers. (I should mention, by the way, that I have been that advertiser -- yes, certain outlets do review favorably in exchange for ad buys) But when the reviewer is being paid by the subject of the review, with no pretense of impartiality about it, there is, well, no impartiality. A newspaper or magazine publisher has to balance keeping the advertisers happy (positive reviews) with keeping customers for the publication (honest reviews). When someone is paid by the author, band, etc., there is no balance to be kept. It's not even keeping the nebulous advertisers (which, naturally, includes the competitors of the source of whatever is being reviewed) happy; it's about keeping the payments coming.

It all comes down to who someone is working for. If I'm a stockholder, I want an accountant who provides an honest report to the stockholders. If I'm a reader, I want a reviewer who provides an unbiased opinion to the readers. If I'm a marketer, I want something that will encourage people to buy from me -- and if that "something" is purportedly a review, it is not delivering what the readers think they're getting. And thereby hangs the problem.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

Blarbity blarb.

Let me 'splain... No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

No, I would not trust a paid review because I would doubt the honesty and intentions behind the review.

[Love.Forever.]

I'm not sure if I would be able to trust that, but I mean a lot of book reviews are free, so would the one that was paid for going to be in better quality? hmm

[wodin]

The short answer is NO! But MR won’t let me make a three character post.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Love.Forever.

I'm not sure if I would be able to trust that, but I mean a lot of book reviews are free, so would the one that was paid for going to be in better quality? hmm

Very likely, it would be better-written and more entertaining to read. Authors won't pay for badly-written reviews.

The question is whether it would be a more accurate review--whether you could trust it to lead you to books you want to read, and warn you away from books you don't want to waste your time on.

[Worldwalker]

Of course, that leaves open the question of how "free" any given book review is.

Is the reviewer getting paid by a newspaper to write reviews for their website? Is the reviewer getting free books to review for their blog? Is the reviewer a MobileRead poster who comments on books they find interesting? Something else?

That's why I think disclosure is essential. There should be a little note ... "this reviewer was paid by the author" or "this reviewer's employer sells advertising to the publisher" or "this reviewer got nothing, not even a book."

[Fbone]

After the paid reviews I then try to determine if they are written by the author themselves. Or their spouse, mother, father, siblings, student, BFF, roommate or companion.

Also, I ignore all one star and five star reviews.

[SlowRain]

Originally Posted by Worldwalker

There's a reason why companies are expected (or in some places, required) to hire outside firms to examine their books instead of just having their own accountants print out a report. Their own accountants' employment may depend on them saying what their bosses want to hear; an outside firm, while paid by the company, is really working for the investors. If it does not have the confidence of those investors, they will take action ranging from voting to divesting. Accounting firms go to a great deal of effort to maintain -- and perhaps more important, prove -- their reliability. And for those who don't ... see Arthur Andersen.

Also, financial statements are a matter of plain fact. Two auditors looking at the same set of books, and following the same rules as to how certain items should be considered, will produce identical results. If a company earned $1 million in 2010, they earned $1 million, and opinions don't enter into it. Reviews, on the other hand, are almost entirely subjective. I could like a movie you hate, and vise versa. We could agree on some parts of it -- that the special effects were well done, for instance -- while disagreeing vehemently over whether those same effects were appropriate to the story. If you lined up all the reviewers end to end, they'd point in different directions (they're worse than economists!). Technical matters aside, a review generally comes down to "I like it." A truly independent reviewer gets paid by whoever (in the case of Consumer Reports, for example, by the buyers) no matter what their review says. A somewhat less independent, but still nominally so, reviewer gets paid by someone who is also getting paid by the subjects of the reviews, such as a movie critic working for a newspaper. You have to take those with a grain of salt; they don't want to peeve their advertisers. (I should mention, by the way, that I have been that advertiser -- yes, certain outlets do review favorably in exchange for ad buys) But when the reviewer is being paid by the subject of the review, with no pretense of impartiality about it, there is, well, no impartiality. A newspaper or magazine publisher has to balance keeping the advertisers happy (positive reviews) with keeping customers for the publication (honest reviews). When someone is paid by the author, band, etc., there is no balance to be kept. It's not even keeping the nebulous advertisers (which, naturally, includes the competitors of the source of whatever is being reviewed) happy; it's about keeping the payments coming.

It all comes down to who someone is working for. If I'm a stockholder, I want an accountant who provides an honest report to the stockholders. If I'm a reader, I want a reviewer who provides an unbiased opinion to the readers. If I'm a marketer, I want something that will encourage people to buy from me -- and if that "something" is purportedly a review, it is not delivering what the readers think they're getting. And thereby hangs the problem.

Thank you for your detailed reply. I guess I should have said that I used to work for an accounting firm, so I understand what you are getting at with your post. I sometimes feel like I'm the only person who wasn't surprised by the Enron-Arthur Anderson fiasco. I still don't trust audited financial statements. Had I not had first-hand experience with accounting, I probably wouldn't have a problem with the accuracy of financial statements.

The client pays for the financial statements, yet the accountants are reporting to the stockholders. The author pays for the review, yet the reviewer is reporting to the blog's readers.

[book_addict]

Originally Posted by Fbone

Also, I ignore all one star and five star reviews.

Just curious, why do you ignore them?


As someone as mentioned, reviews are subjective so I tend to read them to get a feel for the story. Although saying that, if I'm reading a review from an author I like or from a review blog I trust then I give it a bit more weight.

But it goes back to trust and I wouldn't feel as if I'm getting an honest review from someone paid to do so. It feels to me like trusting the salesgirl when she tells you that dress looks great on you.

[Giggleton]

One star and five star reviews should theoretically not exist. Therefore any review with these "perfect" ratings can usually be regarded as false. Meaning not written critically, as any decent review should be. Most often, they take the form of,

OMG best book/app/game eva

OR

OMG worst book/app/game eva

These reviews, while contributing to the culture in some weird way do not instill any sense of the items worth into my thoughts, and thus can for all intents and purposes, be deleted from the review system with no real harm done.

Having said that, all reviews are bought and paid for in one way or another. Accept this and move on.

[Anke Wehner]

I don't agree. When rating books I run into the problem that a scale with 5 points isn't fine-grained enough - I keep wanting to give half stars because a book is better than this, but not as good as that. So limiting myself to only 3 options would be even worse.

(I give five stars to books thatmake me think "that was so good, I want to read it again in a week"; one star is for books that put me off so that I did not finish them.)

[Fbone]

Originally Posted by book_addict

Just curious, why do you ignore them?

This is a re-post of comments I made at Teleread:

Instead of a 5 star limit I would prefer to give a numerical grade between 1-10 or 1-100. And allow decimals like 8.5 for the 1-10 option. This would help differentiate the reviews better.

I generally ignore the one-star and five-star reviews and pay more attention to the threes and fours. I find them more balanced and these reviewers often state both what they enjoyed and what they didn’t. Many one-stars complain of the high prices, poor customer service, not available in their country, so bad they stopped at page 25, “just awful” "sucks" or “boring.” These statements don’t help me any. And the five-star ones are so over glowing with praise usually ending with “best book I ever read.” Really? Since you can’t give better than 5 stars these books must be among the best humanity has ever produced. Unlikely.

I never give a one or two-star review because I spend a lot of time prescreening what I read and avoid anything that I most likely won't enjoy. For those I start to read but don't finish I won't leave any review at all as I believe it is unfair to others. How can I grade something I haven't completely read? Even after careful screening I only finish 30% of what I start.
And I've never given a five-star review as for me it would imply the book was a literary masterpiece for which few works achieve. With 1-5 option nothing can be better than a five.

[Elfwreck]

As a long-time D&D player, I wind up trying to translate 1-5 ratings to the 3-18 bell curve for D&D stats:

3: 0.5% (actually 0.46, rounded off)
4: 1.4%
5: 2.8%
These get grouped together as 1 star: abysmal. Nobody (reasonable) can call this a good book; the best that could be said is "it had interesting characters" or "occasional good dialogue;" nothing made it worth finishing unless the reader was under some kind of duress. Not recommended to anyone.

6: 4.6%
7: 6.9%
8: 9.7%
Two stars. Awful, but might have some redeeming traits anyway. Maybe. If you're feeling generous. Might have some appeal among genre fanatics, or people who absolutely loved one of its feature traits ("I love anything with pirates in black boots, therefore this was worth reading.") A lot of older erotica is in this category--the writing's awful, but so little was available that readers were willing to put up with it. Some older science fiction is here too, for the same reason.

9: 11.6%
10: 12.5%
11: 12.5%
12: 11.6%
Three stars. Average. Maybe a little above, maybe a little below, but mostly run-of-the-mill. Tolerable but nothing special. Most formula/line-based romances go here--if you love the genre, they're nice timewasting material, but you won't remember the details a month later. (I assume that a lot of genre line material is here, but I don't know enough about potboiler mysteries or adventure novels to be sure.) This level has a problem: fans of the genre or the details of the story are prone to rating it with 4 stars because they liked it.

13: 9.7%
14: 6.9%
15: 4.6%
Four stars. Exceptional; stands out in the field. Should be interesting to people not interested in its genre. People who hate the genre should still be able to find this worth reading, although not to their tastes.

16: 2.8%
17: 1.4%
18: 0.5%
5 stars. Excellent. Is noticeably good by any scale of objective standards people can come up with for literature. Should have strong appeal across many reading preferences.