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April 30, 2008
The Amazon Push
Again, it appears that Amazon's customer review system is evolving beyond "helpful, tell-it-like-it-is product information" into an extension of the publishing demimonde. This is not to say that there's anything wrong with the American review system, in which publicists send advance copies of books to influential readers in an attempt to get press; it is, rather, to argue that Amazon should take a good hard look at its system. On one hand, it could work harder to protect the disinterestedness of customer reviews (by not kowtowing to authors, for example, or by getting rid of the reviewer rankings). On the other, it might recast the review system as less of an aw-shucks, communitarian forum.
- Garth Risk Hallberg @ 12:24 PM ~
comments: 3 ~ Links to this post
Andrew Wheeler @ April 30, 2008 4:05 PM...Though I do kinda envy the ranking Thingy.
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The amount of new books being offered on Vine now seems to have diminished as publishers may not want to offer up books that will probably get slammed by overly critical reviewers. it would be far easier for them to just keep shilling out the 5 star glowing reviews by themselves rather than pay a hefty wage for the same thing but with a negative outcome.
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