It's funny how just going through your email can inspire blog post ideas. I get blog ideas all the time, then forget about them a day later. Today I'm going for it. Yay me! :)
Like many authors and readers, I belong to GoodReads. I'm not an active participant, but I like to receive the reading recommendations from my friends there. Today I got an email with a review on a dystopian novel that looked really interesting, so I decided to explore further and decide if it's something I'd enjoy reading.
As is so often the case, one idea always leads to another as we follow links and read reviews and comments. The book I was interested in is a 99¢ self-published ebook and the cover is quite intriguing. I'm withholding the author's name and book title because that's not the point and I'm not trying to persuade anyone to read it, or not read it. It just opened up some interesting areas in regard to editing and reviewing that I'd like to share with you all.
This book has been out for a few months and has 55 reviews on Amazon, 36 of which are 5 star reviews. My first thought was that it's a popular choice among readers and probably a really good book. But after reading some of the reviews and comments, and after reading the first chapter that Amazon provides for free, I changed my mind.
It's not the reviews that changed my mind, but the poorly edited pages. I found 5 grammatical and spelling errors on the first page, and though that may not bother everyone, that kind of stuff chokes my eyeballs. If it's that bad on the first page, it's likely just as bad or worse on all 338 pages. Cheap or not, my time is worth a lot more than 99¢ and I'm not going to waste it on a poorly written book.
As for the reviews, the glowing ones were pretty generic. Most cited the typos and bad grammar, and said it was excusable because the story was so awesome. I'm very happy for them. :) It's a deal breaker for me, but that's not the point. The point is that those who didn't rate it high were verbally bludgeoned in comments on their reviews (one review had over 100 comments!). I think what a lot of people may not realize is that when they dispute a bad review, it leaves a bad taste in the mouths of potential readers, and may result in a decision to not read the book.
Something I discovered as I read the reviews and comments about this book on Amazon is the power of "shill" reviews. These are reviews that are either paid for, or posted by friends and family members multiple times and from multiple Amazon accounts, or a combination of both. Is that what happened with this book? Possibly, there's no real way of knowing. But here's the thing: the more positive reviews a book has, the higher it moves up in Amazon's rating system. Amazon's "Recommended Books List" to consumers is based on a combination of sales, the number of positive reviews, and the number of negative reviews, so fake positive reviews can undercut better books as well as dupe potential readers. Interesting, huh?
I would never buy a review for one of my books, but I imagine others do and for the reason stated above. To push a book up closer to the top of the list. There's another interesting phenomenon that I was only recently made aware of, and that's those buttons on the bottom of each review that ask if the review was helpful. The more yeses a review receives, the higher it will be placed on the review page.
So if you wanted to buy a review for your book on Amazon, where would you go? There's actually a resource for this very thing. It's called Fiverr.com and it lists all the various services and contacts for getting someone to do something for you for $5. Crazy! I tell you, I learn something new everyday. Some of those services that relate to book promotion may be okay, like paying a service to tweet about your book on twitter, or host an ad about your book on their blog or website. But in my opinion, the review thing is dishonest. People will even take a review of your book that you wrote yourself and post it on Amazon under their own name. Wow. Just... wow.
Would you pay someone to review your book on Amazon or anywhere else?
Like many authors and readers, I belong to GoodReads. I'm not an active participant, but I like to receive the reading recommendations from my friends there. Today I got an email with a review on a dystopian novel that looked really interesting, so I decided to explore further and decide if it's something I'd enjoy reading.
As is so often the case, one idea always leads to another as we follow links and read reviews and comments. The book I was interested in is a 99¢ self-published ebook and the cover is quite intriguing. I'm withholding the author's name and book title because that's not the point and I'm not trying to persuade anyone to read it, or not read it. It just opened up some interesting areas in regard to editing and reviewing that I'd like to share with you all.
This book has been out for a few months and has 55 reviews on Amazon, 36 of which are 5 star reviews. My first thought was that it's a popular choice among readers and probably a really good book. But after reading some of the reviews and comments, and after reading the first chapter that Amazon provides for free, I changed my mind.
It's not the reviews that changed my mind, but the poorly edited pages. I found 5 grammatical and spelling errors on the first page, and though that may not bother everyone, that kind of stuff chokes my eyeballs. If it's that bad on the first page, it's likely just as bad or worse on all 338 pages. Cheap or not, my time is worth a lot more than 99¢ and I'm not going to waste it on a poorly written book.
As for the reviews, the glowing ones were pretty generic. Most cited the typos and bad grammar, and said it was excusable because the story was so awesome. I'm very happy for them. :) It's a deal breaker for me, but that's not the point. The point is that those who didn't rate it high were verbally bludgeoned in comments on their reviews (one review had over 100 comments!). I think what a lot of people may not realize is that when they dispute a bad review, it leaves a bad taste in the mouths of potential readers, and may result in a decision to not read the book.
Something I discovered as I read the reviews and comments about this book on Amazon is the power of "shill" reviews. These are reviews that are either paid for, or posted by friends and family members multiple times and from multiple Amazon accounts, or a combination of both. Is that what happened with this book? Possibly, there's no real way of knowing. But here's the thing: the more positive reviews a book has, the higher it moves up in Amazon's rating system. Amazon's "Recommended Books List" to consumers is based on a combination of sales, the number of positive reviews, and the number of negative reviews, so fake positive reviews can undercut better books as well as dupe potential readers. Interesting, huh?
I would never buy a review for one of my books, but I imagine others do and for the reason stated above. To push a book up closer to the top of the list. There's another interesting phenomenon that I was only recently made aware of, and that's those buttons on the bottom of each review that ask if the review was helpful. The more yeses a review receives, the higher it will be placed on the review page.
So if you wanted to buy a review for your book on Amazon, where would you go? There's actually a resource for this very thing. It's called Fiverr.com and it lists all the various services and contacts for getting someone to do something for you for $5. Crazy! I tell you, I learn something new everyday. Some of those services that relate to book promotion may be okay, like paying a service to tweet about your book on twitter, or host an ad about your book on their blog or website. But in my opinion, the review thing is dishonest. People will even take a review of your book that you wrote yourself and post it on Amazon under their own name. Wow. Just... wow.
Would you pay someone to review your book on Amazon or anywhere else?
11 comments:
Paying for a review? Icky!
Luckily, people who are heavy readers are aware of these kinds of shennanigans. We can almost always spot this kind of thing, and one look at the sample pages says it all.
Five grammar errors on one page? It boggles the mind.
Wow! I've always heard rumors, but there's an actual website to buy reviews??? Uck!!!
No I would never pay someone to review my book. not only does it seem deceptive, but as an author it would diminish the reviews from readers who really did enjoy it...
Great blog!
Lisa
Boggles the mind, yes, Margaret. It's often--but obviously not always--the self-pubbed books that are guilty of overlooking the importance of editing, or at the very least, proofreading. My 12-year-old grandson could have spotted these errors, so I don't know what this author's excuse was. Laziness?
Thanks, Lisa! And Fiverr.com offers more than just book reviews. If you have $5 to spend, they have the labor force to put out for ya. Ha! :)
Nope -- I'm too cheap! Seriously, that kind of thing wouldn't have ever occurred to me. I'm curious how the author justifies it.
Great blog, Karen!
-Melia
I have often found myself lately avoiding to read the "glowing" reviews. I go directly for the bad ones and decide from there if the faults of the book are something I can live with or not. The bad reviews will almost always be trustworthy.
Great post. I just blogged about this, too, because grammatical errors and usage errors drive me crazy no matter how engaging the plot is. And paying for Amazon reviews really undercuts discoverability in this new publishing world of ours. Maybe good old word-of-mouth from trusted friends is the only way to go.
Lori, I'm don't agree that bad reviews are always trustworthy. Reviews are subjective opinions of readers, so what one person may not like could be amazing to someone else. If reviews point out technical errors like misspellings and poor grammar, that's different because it's not a subjective judgment, it's a fact.
Hey, Melia! Thanks for stopping by. I'm not a hundred percent positive this author paid for her reviews, but it looks that way. So if she didn't, great! If she did? Well...
A.J., I agree, word of mouth is the best way to garner attention for your book. Some reviews carry more weight than others, like Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, and Library Review. Other review sources are more questionable, like Romantic Times. I think we all have our favorite sources for reviews that we trust. :)
Great subject for a blog post, Karen! Personally, I have enjoyed a few e-books with good stories and numerous errors. I'll leave a positive review and note the errors. $5 reviewers won't be picking apart your mistakes in their comments.
There are a few e-book authors out there who have obviously used fiverr.
Hint: read the sample pages. Five-star reviews combined with primary-school grammar would be a big clue...
Because getting reviews/ratings is like pulling teeth.For every 100 books you sell (some say 1000), you are lucky to get one review. Personally, I've asked all my friends to rate my fledgling book and have only gotten 2. Amazon has now removed "tags" which used to be helpful. Now they won't let you swap reviews with a friend, as in I buy your book and review it; you buy my book and review it. As long as each of us is honest, I think this is okay, but Amazon doesn't and will remove the reviews. Yes, I can see where people are desperate enough for reviews to pay for them.
Post a Comment