Posted on Thursday, 26th March 2009 by CopywritingCat
Just borrowed a new book from the library: Throwing Sheep in the Boardroom: How Online Social Networking Will Transform Your Life, Work and World.
I was so looking forward to this book. After all, as you can see, I do social networking myself. I’m teaching an teleseminar on “Copywriting for Social Marketing..”
But I stopped cold when I came to the author’s discussion of Amazon book reviews on page 169.
According to the authors, one Garth Risk Hallberg received a glowing Amazon review for his first book. Hallberg was thrilled till he realized that Grady Harp, the reviewer, had been paid to write the review.
The authors say:
“Harp, it turns out, wasn’t an enlightened consumer at all. He was a regular, paid reviewer for Amazon - no different from a freelance book reviewer in the book sections of the New York Times or the Daily Telegraph.”
When I first read this statement, I thought the authors were saying Amazon pays reviewers. That’s simply not accurate.
I am an “Amazon 500″ reviewer and Vine reviewer. Amazon doesn’t pay me a dime.
I do get a limited number of books from the Vine program but I’m allowed to review them any way I want. Most are advance copies that have no monetary value. There is absolutely no encouragement to write a favorable review, let alone a glowing one.
The problem is not with Amazon: it’s with authors and publishers who are dumb enough to pay someone to write a glowing review. Hallberg’s publisher presumably paid a reviewer to write a glowing review. I was surprised to discover that a Top 10 reviewer was getting paid, although I know of services that promise to write you a glowing review for money.
The problem with these fake reviews is that Amazon is, first and foremost, a community. Amazon readers are *not* dumb. They can spot those puff pieces. They write comments and share “not helpful” votes.
In the foreword to this book, the Wikipedia founder tells us that Wikipedia is policed by its own readers. That’s the value of openness. Why don’t the authors understand that the same process applies to Amazon?
These paid reviewers are *not* analogous to reviewers of the New York Times or any other newspaper. Freelance reviewers are paid to write the review based on their own opinion. They are not asked to write glowing reviews.
Finally, if the authors had just looked up Hallberg’s book, they would have seen the Amazon system in action. Grady Harp’s review collected a huge number of “not helpful” votes. A number of used copies of Hallberg’s book are available at bargain prices - the ultimate indicator of reader responses. The book’s Amazon sales rank is something in the millions.
Just one glowing review won’t save a bad book. And if you pay for half a dozen reviewers, you’re eating into the book’s profits!
As a former college professor, I was especially shocked and disappointed to find these inaccuracies in a book written by two college professors. Did they trust their graduate students too much?
If you want to learn how to write the right kind of book reviews for your own business, come to my program: Boost Business With Book Reviews. You’ll get the Real Deal.
Comments (1)
Tags: book marketing, Social Marketing: Blogs
Posted in Social Marketing: Blogs, Tweets, Facebook & more, writing a book
March 29th, 2009 at 08:25
Is it bad to be a paid free-lance reviewer? IMO it’s only bad if the author is paying for the review. Looking up Grady Harp you see he has done a plethora of reviews, mostly 5 starred, but he does have a sprinkling of 4 and even 3 and 2 star reviews. Plenty of us unpaid “ordinary” people do Amazon reviews, I’m more concerned about authors getting their friends and relatives (and sometimes even their young students) to put up great reviews.