Why has the value of Amazon book reviews gone down so?

Cafe Society
21

I’ll take issue with both statements.

“Verified purchase” does not equate to reliability, especially in regards to books on controversial issues, as people pushing a particular viewpoint are likely to give raves to books that support their views, no matter how badly written or poorly documented. By contrast, non-verified purchasers who’ve obtained books through other sources (including the public library) often write thoughtful, detailed reviews that are worth reading (full disclosure: I have posted a number of reviews on Amazon of books about vaccination, pro and con, which I put a good deal of effort into even though I didn’t buy the books on Amazon).

Ignoring all the five-star and one-star reviews is counterproductive (exceptions being one-line reviews consisting of unexplained adoration or loathing). I’ve also noticed people gaming the review system with three-star reviews which Amazon considers negative. The trick used is to say something glowing about the book but only give it three stars. If enough people “like” the review, it shows up as the leading “negative” review - obviously a deliberate attempt to prevent people from seeing a truly negative featured review.

Online reviews are always going to be somewhat of a crapshoot, seeing that they can be manipulated by zealous fans and non-fans. I have had better luck with Amazon book reviews than with (for example) many restaurant reviews. No matter how ordinary or even crummy a restaurant is, there seem to be plenty of people on Yelp, TripAdvisor etc. who think it’s the cat’s ass.

22

:smiley: One of the pages was dog-eared. I left my copy on the bus. The book didn’t have that ‘new book smell’. Author keeps using big words. Author is a lying sack a shit. I don’t like author’s picture on the back.

23

And this was the Kindle Edition!

24

I suspect the review quality has gone down because of the Amazon Vine program. The Vine program gives free products, especially books, to top-rated reviewers in exchange for them reviewing the products. So it’s not exactly paid reviews, but it’s “reviews in exchange for free stuff.” And to get more free products you have to submit reviews for the products they already gave you, so there is an incentive to publish something even if you aren’t thoroughly familiar with the book/product.

25

This is interesting. Can anyone else verify that low-star reviews have been removed?

It doesn’t necessarily surprise me, but I thought it was just people giving skewed ratings. Whether it’s Amazon or Yelp or TripAdvisor or Google, reviews tend to be clustered very high on the 5-star scale. Look, I might have been satisfied at a restaurant or store or attraction, but that doesn’t make it a 5-star place. I tend to give a lot more 4-star reviews than 5, but that doesn’t seem to be the case for many people. But perhaps the 1- and 2-star reviews are being deleted.

26

I no longer read Amazon reviews since my friend bugged me and everyone he knew to write glowing reviews of his boring, clichéd, poetry. I didn’t, but enough people did that I no longer trust their system.

Goodreads reviews seem to be written by intelligent people and I rarely see bubbly, “best book evah!” reviews or the “omg, swearing!”, etc type reviews there.

27

Huh. I just had an interesting experience: Amazon sent me a message that they had refused to post my latest review!

With a helpful link to their guidelines, which leave me baffled because I do not see that I bent any of them.

Here’s my too-offensive to post review. Do you suppose it’s just because of the one star rating?

=-=-=-=
I really struggled over picking a rating for this book.

On the one hand, it’s far above average as far as characterization and actual writing goes. The sentences read smoothly, the punctuation and grammar and diction were nearly perfect, as good as most books published by the major houses. The heroine was rather emotionally fragile, but that’s believable given events in her recent past, and it’s actually nice to see a heroine with a flaw beyond the ridiculously common ‘feistiness.’

OTOH, the setting bothers me. No two ways about it, we are talking about cotton plantations in the antebellum south. The “Hero” appears perfectly content with the system, perfectly happy to own slaves. In fact, he buys his wife her favorite boy slave (and his mother) as an impulsive wedding present! Yes, the author gives the heroine’s brother, a man born and raised in Boston, some qualms, but that’s all they are: they make him feel somewhat bad about the situation, but don’t stop him from keeping the slaves he has inherited AND purchasing more, and he clearly intends to continue running the plantation on slave labor. (Yes, both Hero and brother treat their slaves well, in the sense of housing and feeding them and not beating them. They are still exploiting and growing rich off their forced, unpaid labor.)

Which made me even queasier reading, as all the slaves, none of whom are differentiated in personality, talk in stereotypical accents/phrases and present the picture of “happy, happy, childlike darkies” that might have been acceptable in books written in, oh, 1900. Today???

Which actually made we want to give the book only one star, I found it so offensive.

So, I’ll leave it there. On the writing level, it deserves a four star rating. On the other hand, if you find the cheerful acceptance of human slavery by the Hero, Heroine, her brother and all the rest of the ‘admirable’ people in this book as disgusting as I did…you might want to spend your money elsewhere.
=-=-=-

28

I wonder if you ran afoul of some automatic screening program that won’t allow people to post anything with, say, the word “slavery” in it. Which is pretty ridiculous for a book about slave owners, but stupider things have happened.

29

I suspect “darkies” was the issue that ran afoul of the automated program. While it makes sense within the content of your review, a program would not know that.

30

You know, I bet you guys are right. The rejection got bounced to me in like one minute after I hit submit, likely no real human ever saw it.

I suppose I could take that out and see if it goes through okay then.

<sigh> Artificial Stupidity programs.

31

I posted a one-star review that got rejected because I complained about the manufacturer’s customer service. When I took that sentence out, but left in the negative product comments, it was accepted.

32

I ignore the numbers, and read the very negative reviews. Then I judge whether the criticism is relevant to what I am looking for.