The Death of Incentivized Reviews

October 6, 2016October 4, 2016 / rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Amazon Amazon announced a new policy on October 3 concerning incentivized reviews. These are reviews given in exchange for a free or discounted product. In the past, they permitted these reviews on their website if the reviewer disclosed their relationship with the product provider. These reviews can provide useful information, but also can be used to manipulate Amazon’s product rating system.

That caught my attention. A number of the books I review I receive as advance review copies (ARCs) from publishers. Often, the publishers request reviewers to post reviews on Amazon and other sites and I have done this, always with the disclosure that the book was provide by the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review, the same disclosure I use on the blog. I immediately wondered if I would be able to post reviews on Amazon any more (not that I want to–I only post these when requested). And with that, I wondered if publishers would scale back on review programs.

I had to read to the very end to find this statement:

“The above changes will apply to product categories other than books. We will continue to allow the age-old practice of providing advance review copies of books.”

That makes me curious, though. Why are books exempted from this policy? Is it just that we reviewers hew to a higher standard of ethics in our reviews? Are reviewers less likely to give favorable reviews just because the publisher provided them with free books? Personally, I would have to answer “yes” and “yes.” I fundamentally see reviews as honest attempts to fairly represent a book’s strengths and flaws as I see them. I feel like my primary constituency are those who follow my blog or reviews on Goodreads or LibraryThing. The reviews I post on Amazon are simply a cut and paste, occasionally shortened versions. My ratings are the same as on Goodreads and LibraryThing. A book has to be extraordinary to get a 5 star rating from me. Most ARCs aren’t that good. And I actually prefer that people buy books through brick and mortar booksellers if at all possible. I do not, as a rule, provide Amazon links in my reviews because I do not give preference to one vendor.

Even though I may prefer brick and mortar booksellers, and even though publishers have an uneasy, at best, relationship with this online bookseller, Amazon nevertheless represents a significant part of books sales. Because of this, I could see a case for why publishers and book reviewers have been exempted. Amazon reviews are a key factor in book-buying decisions. Even when people are in a physical bookstore, they can access Amazon reviews of a book that looks interesting. Everyone seems to benefit.

The area where I could see the greatest possibility for manipulation of ratings is in the category of self-published books. Here is where I could see reviews being limited to verified purchasers and requiring disclosure of any relationship with the author. I would suspect it would be easy to solicit lots of favorable reviews from friends. Occasionally, there have been cases of authors being slammed with one star reviews from rivals.

Amazon’s policy change should serve as a warning for book reviewers who post on Amazon. You might kill the goose that is laying the golden eggs for you, and the rest of us. If there are enough complaints about abuses to the ratings, Amazon could limit ratings to verified purchasers. Amazon might even extend its Amazon Vine program to book reviewers. Amazon, not the vendor, selects reviewers whose reviews they consider helpful and trustworthy to review new and pre-release products. I don’t think that will happen with books, but much will depend on those of us who post the reviews–will we be honest in our disclosures and balanced in our reviews?

As I said, this doesn’t matter that much to me, except that a change in policy could change the availability of ARC’s. If it weren’t for publisher requests, I wouldn’t post on Amazon. I’d actually hate having to be certified as an Amazon trusted reviewer. That seems a form of manipulation as well. As in other matters, it seems here as well that freedom and responsibility go hand in hand.

Of Sockpuppets and Fake Reviews

October 29, 2015August 25, 2025 / rtrube54 / 4 Comments

I had one of those “it’s about time” moments recently when I learned that Amazon is suing 1,114 people who have posted false reviews on its site. In most cases the review is provided by the purveyor of the product. The “reviewers” created a false online identity (a “sockpuppet”) and fake IP address. They worked through a site called Fiverr, where every service is offered for the price of $5 and agreed to post the fake review on the Amazon site for the particular product.

Despite Amazon’s stated terms, it has been know that Amazon is a kind of wild west (as are other sites like Yelp) where people get friends to write glowing reviews of whatever they are selling. Authors have even been known to create sockpuppet accounts to promote their own books. Likewise, there is the phenomenon of the malicious review, often from other authors trying to self-publish. This is a good article from Forbes published back in 2012 describing this phenomenon.

I suspect most of us have read Amazon product reviews and even weighed them in considering purchase of a product. I certainly have. Most of us probably intuit when a review seems fake or too good to be true. For those who struggle with this, I found this article on “How to Spot a Fake Review on Amazon.”

I would also confess that I have written a few Amazon reviews but I do not routinely re-post reviews from my blog on Amazon. I do this under two circumstances. One is when I have received a review copy of a book and the publisher explicitly requests an Amazon review. In this case, I disclose the relationship. The other instance has been a couple of instances when I’ve written a review on my blog and they’ve subsequently asked me if I would post it on Amazon. In the couple instances where I did this, I bought the book, my friends did not know in advance that I was reviewing it, and they did not have other reviews of the work on Amazon. In all cases the review is posted first to my blog, sometimes in more extended form.

My hunch is that many reviews posted on Amazon are honest reviews. Often the ones that are neither 5 star nor 1 star seem to have a balance to them, both what is good and what is not. So it is gratifying to see Amazon trying to clean up its act. However, what will really persuade me is when Amazon goes after the product sellers who are paying for these fake reviews. Banning them permanently from Amazon, and if they can get away with it legally, publishing the names of all those who pay for reviews would prove to be a significant disincentive. If Amazon doesn’t ban a product seller who they know engages in this fraudulent practice, then they are complicit in this.

What puzzles me is that people are posting fake reviews for $5. Now I suspect that if they do it numerous times, it can pay off. But to make $2500 a month, they have to do this 500 times, every month! One wonders how smart these people are. It reminds me of the person who must have purchased a skimmed credit card number of ours and made a $1.92 purchase that got flagged by our credit card issuer who froze the card immediately. Dumb. And, with Amazon’s suit, this just got dumber.

Using Amazon product reviews is probably the lazy person’s approach, one I’d admit to taking. On consumer goods, a consumer review publication is probably both more rigorous and reliable and you can access this at your library. For books and other media there are also reputable review publications, plus a whole cloud of us independent-minded bloggers. Find those whose judgments about things you’ve already purchased agree with yours or whose recommendations you’ve tried to your benefit.

Ethical reviewers neither conceal their identities nor any connection with the product they are reviewing. Better yet, they keep an arm’s length relationship if possible. For more thoughts on this, I wrote last year on Ethics for Reviewers.

Several posts I read including this one dealt with the contention that “everyone is doing it.” Truth is, a number of us write reviews for our own sheer interest in discussing the things we read or watch or use. And a number of writers, publishers and other product manufacturers do want their work to stand on its own merit. Everyone is not doing it.

We really have to ask ourselves whether we want to live in a culture of lies. If we tolerate a culture of deceit, what will we do when we really want someone to believe us? Peter can cry “wolf” too many times.

Ethics for Reviewers?

March 20, 2014March 21, 2015 / rtrube54 / 6 Comments

Apparently there are some people making a cottage industry of reviewing famous authors on Amazon and giving them one star, terrible reviews. A New Statesman article chronicles how Anne Rice and others are petitioning Amazon to ban anonymous reviews and requiring verifiable identities. Frankly, it seems this may just give these reviewers more attention. But it raises the question of reviewer ethics. Here is my proposed code of ethics:

1. If you can’t put your name to a review, don’t write it–or at least don’t publish it.

2. Don’t use mean reviews as a way to attract lots of views or followers. It seems to me this is a poor substitute for good writing. It also suggests you are a very poor chooser of books to read and review. Do you really want to spend your life reading and slamming bad books?

3. Read the books you review. If I can’t finish a book I won’t review it.

4. If you have a problem with a book, be specific. Cite the instances where the writing is poor, facts are in error, or the specifics of why you take issue with a writer’s argument.

5. Don’t engage in ad hominem attacks. Your assessment that a book is bad or a plot is faulty or an argument has problems doesn’t mean the writer is a bad person. Separate the book from the person.

6. Disclose any facts that might bias a review, even if they don’t, such as receiving a free review copy of a book or a personal relationship with an author.

7. Practice the golden rule. Treat writers as you would like to be treated. That doesn’t mean using kid gloves but it does mean being as fair and even-handed as you can be in reviewing a book. Remember that someone can review your stuff as well!

8. I’ve decided in providing links to a book to link to the publisher’s website rather than a certain online vendor if at all possible. This allows people to purchase from the vendor of their choice–perhaps that local bookshop down the road–rather than providing expedited access to that certain online vendor. I post reviews on that vendor’s site only if asked by the author or by a publisher providing a review copy of the book.

Reviews serve a valuable function in helping people know whether or not they should buy a particular book. That carries with it a certain responsibility, not only to book buyers but authors and publishers as well. It doesn’t mean serving as a publicist for a book. It means commending good works that might not otherwise come to a person’s attention. It means helping someone understand whether a book will serve their interest in buying it. It can give useful critiques to writers and publishers. All of these are real people who have an economic interest in what we write–whether it is the few dollars they spend to buy the book or a livelihood for writers and employees in publishing houses.

For me, this comes down to wanting to sleep at night–to believe I’ve acted with integrity. And it seems to be one more way of promoting civility in a society that too often seems to prefer the cheap shot.