The notion of posting online customer reviews of products and services, such as is done on Angie’s List and Amazon, has some troubling flaws.
I will focus here on Amazon since I have never used Angie’s list, and as an author, I have a lot of exposure to the reviews posted on Amazon.
The first problem is what book marketing guru John Kremer, author of the classic “1,001 Ways to Market Your Book”, calls “agenda-driven reviews”.
One example is when I am looking at the page on Amazon for some marketing guru’s new book and I see immediately two dozen five-star reviews and nothing lower.
I can’t help notice that virtually all the reviewers are the author’s friends, associates, joint venture partners, and affiliates.
The reviewers’ agenda is clear: to help the author hype his book. The motive? To have the author reciprocate and do the same for them.
The opposite situation is when the reviewer clearly has a grudge either against the author or his philosophy or ideas and posts a one-star review for what any sensible person would agree is a solid, good book on the topic.
The second problem with the Amazon review system is that, incredibly, I have seen a number of reviews where the reviewer says she has not read the book yet but will get to it soon…and amazingly, Amazon has let the review stand.
Can you imagine a book reviewer for the New York Times Book Review writing in his review that he has not yet read the book in question?
The third problem, which brings up a broader issue I will address in a minute, is reviews written by reviewers who are unqualified to evaluate the book in question. A related problem is when the reviewer’s comments are just plain stupid or trivial.
I subscribe to the New York Review of books, and if they are running a review of a new biography of Abraham Lincoln, the reviewer they hire will most certainly be a historian or presidential biographer or Lincoln scholar.
But on Amazon, you can post a review of a book on woodworking even if you have never in your life driven a nail into a 2X4.
And in your Amazon review, you can blatantly say things that are wrong, because Amazon doesn’t seem to check it or prevent it from being published.
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As for stupid or trivial comments: one of my books got a one-star review because the reader did not like the paper it was printed on.
The reason I like traditional print media like newspapers, magazines, and published books is that the authors and their writings are vetted by editors and publishers.
A columnist for PC Magazine once wisely observed: “The worst thing about the Internet is that anyone and everyone can publish anything to it.”
The Internet in general and social media in particular encourages the belief that everyone is entitled to their opinion. And it has given those people a vehicle for easily publishing those views, no matter how wrong or inane.
Writer Harlan Ellison correctly states: “Everyone is not entitled to their opinion. They are entitled to their informed opinion.”
“Informed opinion” means you have some experience, knowledge, qualifications, or credentials in the subject you are writing about.
For instance, is it OK for me to write a negative review of a book on home schooling if I have never tried the author’s methods or worse, never home-schooled my kids, or even worse, don’t even have kids? I think not. But I can do it on Amazon all day long. And so can you and everyone else reading this article.
If the NY Times Book Review hired me to review a book on home schooling, you can bet I would have to be a parent and probably a pediatrician or parenting writer to get the gig.
Another example: I once was hired to write a direct mail package being mailed to engineers selling them a membership in a professional society.
The client gave it to a dozen people to review. Many of them suggested changes that made no sense to me, mainly based on the fact that they did not understand some of the technical topics discussed in the letter, for instance, why chemical engineers want to increase process yields.
It turned out that none of the reviewers was an engineer. As such, I considered their opinion as to what would or would not engage engineers to be extremely uninformed.
The only one involved in the creation of the DM package who was in fact an engineer was the copywriter