Amazon

The Death of Incentivized Reviews

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AmazonAmazon 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.

Tim Spalding, Founder of LibraryThing

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tim_1_grandeSomehow, it just seems like the kind of thing a Greek and Latin graduate student with free lance experience in web development would do. It began as a pet project of Tim’s to catalog his own books, and those of his book-loving friends. And so began the first social book cataloging site. LibraryThing.com launched on August 29, 2005.

What made this thing go, it appears, is that Spalding is a computer geek who leveraged experience in Houghton-Mifflin’s instructional technology division to acquire the tech savvy for an enterprise like LibraryThing. As he put the site together, he realized it was better than anything out there at the time. To help finance the effort, he sold a portion of the company to Abebooks, now owned by Amazon. So Amazon, which also owns GoodReads and Shelfari, does have an interest in LibraryThing. Spalding still holds the largest share of his company. He is fairly adamant about providing alternatives to the Amazon/GoodReads world. He wrote on the “talk” page of LibraryThing:

“We need to embrace being the “un-Amazon” and “un-Goodreads.” If they zag, we should zig. This is the way I like it—I find Goodreads too pushy on the social side, too cavalier about user data and–on average–not as intellectual as LibraryThing can be(1). So I want to be unlike them. But it’s also good business practices. If you want a ham sandwich, Goodreads will give you one. We need to be the site for people who hate ham sandwiches…. Trust me or don’t, but my motives are pretty pure. I like my job and I’m not looking to flip the company to Amazon or anyone else.”

One of the big things Spalding has done is integrate capabilities to search and incorporate library information from over 1000 libraries using Z39.50 connections (a data sharing protocol) that allows users to access cataloging information available through Dublin Core and MARC records. At the same time, Spalding is zealous in protecting user privacy. No email is required to set up an account and collections can be set to private, so that no one need see the books you have.

In a 2006 interview with Abebooks, he describes the features of the site he developed in this way:

“The idea is simple: You enter an ISBN, a title or a keyword, and it picks up the rest from Amazon, the Library of Congress or over 30 libraries around the world. Deweys, LC Call Numbers and MARC Records are all available. Once you’ve entered some books, the system points you to other users with eerily similar tastes. You can start a conversation with them or just browse their libraries to get ideas. The system also generates great automatic recommendations; it turns out “people who OWN X also own Y” can be more interesting than “people who BOUGHT X also bought Y.” I had cataloged my books one way or another since childhood, and making LibraryThing was a dream for a few years before I went ahead with it. I barely hoped that it would eventually repay the month of programming it took to launch the basic service, but it took off beyond my wildest dreams.”

A significant part of LibraryThing’s business is with libraries. LibraryThing for Libraries provides information that enhances online library catalogs. This helped me understand how they stay afloat. I wondered how they did it on annual memberships of $10.

Tim Spalding lives in Portland, Maine with his wife, author Lisa Carey, and their son Liam. Among the books he is currently reading according to his LibraryThing page are John P. Meier’s A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Enrico Ascalone’s Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians, and J.R. Ward’s Lover Avenged.

 

The State of Book Selling 2016

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Amazon Books

Amazon’s first brick and mortar store

Yesterday I wrote about the trends of print and e-book sales and the future of both media and suggested that both will continue to be with us. I touched as well on textbooks and preferred media for these, indicating that students continue to favor print, and for good reason.

What does all this mean for book selling? It is interesting that indie bookstores reported a 4.7 percent gain in revenue this past year.It seems that “buy local” programs in many cities have contributed to this sales growth. Publishers Weekly reports that 60 new indie stores opened in 2015, continuing a trend from 2014 when 59 new stores opened. I’ve observed a trend of local booksellers becoming increasingly savvy at cultivating clientele, and making their stores attractive “third places” through author readings, book and writing groups, coffee and wine bars, and attention to service. Still, they struggle with obtaining credit for business expansion and also pricing practices that favor the large buyers.

This may be a crazy idea, but given that e-books will continue to be with us, I wonder if there might be a way people could purchase e-books through indie bookstores. If stores serve as a showroom for books, might there be a way they can benefit from e-book sales when people prefer this format? This means either a competitive alternative to Apple and Amazon, or some arrangement with these online sellers. One advantage of the latter would be a chance to support rather than compete with “buy local” movements. Probably won’t happen.

Barnes and Noble also showed a slight increase in profit with print and college sales offsetting losses in their Nook market. But this chain continues to retrench and it is facing a new challenge with Amazon opening its first brick and mortar store in Seattle and rumored to be planning additional openings. It will be interesting to see how “brick and mortar” Amazon competes with online Amazon!

What has been less covered but may be equally significant for Barnes and Noble is that Amazon has begun opening Campus Pick-up Points at various universities including UC Berkeley, UC Santa Barbara, University of Cincinnati, Purdue University, and University of Massachusetts at Amherst. For now these simply serve as a pick up point for students ordering textbooks who may have difficulties receiving them at campus addresses. They also offer faster delivery of orders for Amazon Prime or Amazon Student members. This could be a serious challenge to Barnes and Noble as well. Nearly 30% of their revenues are in college sales.

As with the books we buy, where we buy them and in what form will continue to shape this industry going forward. The question of how important the physical community in which we do commerce is to the kinds of lives we want to lead will have a big part in determining the mix of local independent merchants, large retail concerns, and online sellers in our future.

What?…Amazon Has Opened a Bookstore?

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Amazon Books

It seems like the ultimate reversal. The online giant whose presence has driven brick and mortar bookstores out of business…has opened a brick and mortar bookstore, and may open more.

Publisher’s Weekly posted an article today taking readers into the Amazon Books brick and mortar store located in Seattle opposite the University of Washington campus. And at first glance, it looks like…a bookstore. Apart from a center section where one can purchase the various Amazon devices, most of the store is filled with books. Pictures I’ve seen portray a clean, visually appealing layout. But there are some differences:

  • Inventory. Amazon Books has about 5,000 to 6,000 books in stock, far less than the giant Barnes & Nobles stores.
  • Presentation. All books are face out rather than spine out, one reason for fewer titles.
  • Recommendations. Every book comes with a placard below it with its Amazon rating, a customer review and the number who have rated it.
  • Pricing. No prices appear on or below the book. Pricing varies just as it does online at Amazon. To find the price of a book, you either need to scan its barcode with the Amazon app on your phone, check it at a kiosk in the store, or get an associate to assist you.
  • Stocking. Amazon bases its stocking on book ratings and sales figures. Only books rated 4.0 or higher are stocked.

In this store at least, the strongest categories are children’s, young adult, best sellers, and genre fiction but there are also graphic novels, and a shelf of local authors.

Obviously I have not visited this store and so am judging it on the accounts of others (it just opened to the public on Wednesday). My first impression is that it strikes me as a more sophisticated version of the bookstores one finds in major airports. This sounds like a place to find the books most people are reading as quickly as possible, and perhaps learn of some books you hadn’t heard of through the tags with customer reviews. My hunch is that this will appeal to many people. Not so much to me, perhaps, but then I’m a bit eccentric in reading tastes!

Some things I’m not sure I like about this:

  • Hanging so much on Amazon reviews. This is a flawed system (see my post on “Of Sockpuppets and Fake Reviews“). Until Amazon cleans this up (including tough penalties for sellers as well as fake reviewers) I suspect that some worthy titles will never find a space on their physical shelves and others will that might actually be trash. Hopefully, some latitude will be given to people who know books and not just to heuristics.
  • It occurs to me that having to use a phone app to check pricing gives Amazon a whole new source of data about their customers. Might be worth checking what that app has access to!
  • I know this doesn’t matter to many people, but will it have a personality? Or will it have the personality of a fast-food operation–efficient but soulless? It is encouraging that they do seem to be featuring local writers.
  • Most of all, what many of us like about the indie stores and used bookstores is the chance to discover an unusual title, maybe in a less popular genre, or a book that is backlist or out of print of real merit. It doesn’t sound like I will find such books at Amazon Books (though possibly online).

My hunch is that Amazon will quickly figure out how to make this a pleasant and efficient experience for those who frequent the store. And I understand that you will be able to use online credits on your Amazon account in the store. I do wonder how their associates will handle it when they discover customers who treat the store as a showroom, but decide to buy their books online, or reserve them at their library! Amazon may finally find out what it is like to be in the shoes of the other guys. At the same time, if I were the other guys, I’d be watching what they do well and upping my game.

Of Sockpuppets and Fake Reviews

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AmazonI 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.

Kindle Scout and the Hopes of One Aspiring Author

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surrealitycoverscoutKindle Scout. No this is not a new kind of Kindle, nor is it an app to help you find your lost Kindle. Rather it is a publishing program that Amazon has created in which readers help decide if a new book will get published through Kindle Press. If a book is selected (which is not based on nominations alone) the author gets a $1500 advance, a five year contract with their book published by Kindle Press, 50% royalties on net revenue, and rights of reversion. And all who nominate a book get a free e-copy if it is selected. You need to have an Amazon account to nominate a book.

Ben TrubeIn the interests of full disclosure, my son, an aspiring author, has a book (Surreality) in this program right now (cover above). Each book is listed on the Kindle Scout site for 30 days. My son’s can be viewed here, which includes a synopsis, cover photo, excerpt of the first three chapters, and an author profile. I’m totally biased here, but having read an early draft (since professionally edited), I think it’s a pretty good read. I hope you will take a look, and if you like what you see, nominate the book which the Kindle Scout site says is “hot” right now.

Since I write on books, reading, publishing and other things, I decided to look into this program, which seems to provide an alternative for aspiring authors who want to break into the publishing world. At the same time, this is, well, Amazon.

Probably the most significant thing any aspiring author should do is carefully read the submission and publishing agreement. It is probably advisable to have your attorney review this. Once you submit your work to Kindle Scout, it is a binding contract. And because it is a contract written by Amazon and not negotiated between you and Amazon, you can bet that it favors their interests. Be absolutely sure you know what your rights are (particularly rights of reversion), what Amazon’s rights are to your work if selected, and how royalty payments are calculated and made.

Victoria Strauss has posted a good summary of pros and cons on the Writer Beware website. The big pros include:

  • The $1500 advance if your work is selected.
  • If your book is selected and you earn less that $25,000 over 5 years, or less than $500 in any 12 month period after the first two years, you can request reversion of your rights to the book.
  • There is also the prospect of having Amazon promote your book. What promotion they do is up to Amazon, but if they promote the book, that can have a huge impact on sales, and on your visibility as an author.
  • You retain the right to publish print versions of your work.

There are some caveats as well:

  • When you enter the program, you cannot shop your manuscript elsewhere for 45 days.
  • You should consider professionally editing your book, although Kindle Publishing may also do so at their discretion. Authors have reported this but the only guarantee of your work being top quality is to have this done yourself.
  • Amazon may register copyright for you but they are not obligated to do so.
  • This is not strictly a crowd-sourcing way to get a book published. Interest is considered but the final decision is up to the Kindle Scout people.
  • Only certain genres are included: Romance, Mystery and Thriller, and SF/Fantasy.
  • Amazon sets the prices at which your work is sold.
  • If you are selected, you cannot sell your work on other e-book platforms like Nook or Google.

What this seems to represent is a third way alternative between traditional publishing and self-publishing. If selected, the author does make some immediate cash and has the potential of benefiting from Amazon’s promotional heft. Some would argue that you might do better just self-publishing which may provide a better royalty arrangement, but lacks any promotion aside from the promotion you do yourself (or can persuade your social network to do).

This just sounds like life, where there are always trade-offs. If my son is selected (or not) I may have more to pass along from first hand experience.