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A look at paid reviews

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Offline leep
27 Aug 2012, 08:53 AM | Post: #1

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A look at paid reviews

The NY Times has an article, largely focusing on the guy who ran GettingBookReviews.com, that discusses authors paying for reviews. It's an interesting look at the murky side of self-published marketing.

Quote: For a 50-word review, she said she could find “enough information on the Internet so that I didn’t need to read anything, really.” For a 300-word review, she said, “I spent about 15 minutes reading the book.” She wrote three of each every week as well as press releases. In a few months, she earned $12,500.

“There were books I wished I could have gone back and actually read,” she said. “But I had to produce 70 pieces of content a week to pay my bills.”

Interesting to note that John Locke paid for reviews at the start.
Offline George Reading In The Blood Steve Robinson
27 Aug 2012, 06:05 PM | Post: #2

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RE: A look at paid reviews

I find it very sad that people have actually earned money from giving books false five star reviews and even sadder that some authors haved paid for them. I guess at the end of the day, reviews will become worthless.

My dad used to say, never believe what you hear and only half of what you see. Perhaps he was right.
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Offline Rosen Trevithick Reading
27 Aug 2012, 07:02 PM | Post: #3

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RE: A look at paid reviews

Today I found two free comedy books that each had 10+ five star reviews. However, something didn't feel right about them, so looked at the reviewers' pages. They had all reviewed many book and given them all five stars. Seems very dodgy to me.
Offline leep
27 Aug 2012, 09:24 PM | Post: #4

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RE: A look at paid reviews

I guess it goes to show that, as with anything you read on the 'net, you should take them with a pinch of salt.

I typically go for the bad reviews anyway, figuring that if someone has taken the time to write some criticism it must have really got to them as most of us will write nothing rather than a negative comment.

The galling thing is how people/companies/services like this subvert a system that was designed to provide unbiased feedback and help the buyer. Not the first time something like this has happened (movie studios have been caught creating entirely fake reviewers for their movies). With the uproar this is causing I hope Amazon pay attention, some simple rules to check the number of reviews posted over a period of time would catch these people. It's not that hard to automate.

I think it's interesting how it shows the demand there is for services to help authors stand out from the flood though.
Offline Trace Reading
28 Aug 2012, 04:14 AM | Post: #5

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RE: A look at paid reviews

Sadly it seems as though honesty, integrity and ethics are becoming nothing more than words. Paid reviews, in my opinion, are just as bad as pirating books/movies etc. Obviously I don't recommend anyone to buy a book based solely on reviews - Amazon allows us to 'try before we buy' but a lot of people do read reviews and use that as part of their decision making process.

All in all it's just another step in a downward spiral of bad behaviour, especially on the 'Net.
Offline alexroddie Reading "Pompomberry House" by Rosen Trevithick
28 Aug 2012, 10:11 AM | Post: #6

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RE: A look at paid reviews

Fascinating article, and makes me wonder if the Amazon reviews system will be forced to adapt in the future to combat problems like these. I would certainly never pay for reviews and I think it's despicable that some authors stoop to this level.

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