Boy reading.
I happened to spin by an amazon site for a writer I've read and liked with a book coming out in two months . Although the book had no professional reviews posted yet, it had a bunch of negative reviews from people from something called Amazon Vine already posted. Is this fair? It's bad enough that people can trash a book once it's in the stores, but this far ahead?
Are these people getting ARCs of the book to do this? Maybe publishers are getting a little too generous with sending out ARCs with the demise of so much newspaper reviewing. But at least with a newspaper review, someone stands behind it. What do you think?
16 comments:
It doesn't seem fair. I post an occasional review myself, but only after I've bought and read the book. If I don't like a book, I never post reviews because I realize the problem might lie with me and not the book.
This Amazon vine I'm not familiar with. They do have what I've termed the serial reviewer: Harriet Klausner. The amount of reviews attributed to her is just impossible to take seriously. The last time I looked there was 17,000+ posted by her.
I just checked. Old Harriet is past 19,000 on her reviews.
Yes, she's a joke, I think, although I did see an article about her once where she claimed to read three books a day or something like that.
Jealous individuals can post nasty reviews to harm a book’s chances are very unfair. I hope your writer will be able to rise above such supercilious attacks.
But why is Amazon encouraging/authorizing early reviews by individuals?
Damn. Get a life, Harriet.
That's pretty weird, and unfair. I'm like Randy. I tend to only post negative reviews of books whose authors are no longer with us, with some rare exceptions.
Did you know you can buy ARCS on Ebay and other places ahead of publication? I believe publishers are getting more stingy about giving out ARCS. I saw that a bookseller was selling an ARC of one of my books before it was published.
As for Klausner...it's real. That's all she does. Read.
Since she almost never gives a bad review, I have no problem with it. I just hate to see a book trashed before it hits the bookstores. Especially by people who only represent themselves. And sometimes not that.
Universally positive reviews are unlikely to be much more useful than universally negative ones. I suppose these folks (if there is a little group of them, rather than a single person with a grudge and too much time to waste) are damaging in some manner, but as a couple of Avon representatives (Avon Lady puns too easy and dull) are so widely quoted on the net of late have noted, nothing on the web, including Amazon "Vine" reviewers, is likely to drive the sales of most books, even now...web communities being too atomized, and most viewers of websites not taking them very seriously.
I once tried to post a positive review on amazon (I don't know what 'vine' is) about two or three weeks prior to the book's release and amazon's system wouldn't allow it. Something wonky with letting bad reviews appear in advance of release, or maybe amazon isn't interested in selling their own products.
I think this VINES thing is something new. And not a good idea!
The Amazon Vine is something set up by Amazon-they give certain members advanced copies of a book to review. The main problem with this is a lot of the time readers are reviewing books by writers they don't know or genres they don't like. Also it's impossible to take Harriet Klausners reviews seriously since she never gives a book a bad review. She likes everything from literary novels to Harlequin romances(ugh).
Which brings me to a second question: should reviewers exclude themselves from reviewing books they have an aversion for. In other words, should hard-boiled fans review cozies or vice-versa.
I am always suspicious of customer reviews on Amazon (just as I am not to keen about Amazon's dominance in the book retailing marketplace). I think too many people who comment about books on Amazon (whether it is VINE or otherwise) seem to have not spent much time actually reading the books. As for Ms. Klausner, I do not understand how anyone can "read" so many books and still have time for eating, sleeping, trips to the bathroom, breathing, speaking to other human beings, etc.
I get ARCs from publishers and never post a review before its release date. If there is a book I'm not particularly keen on I won't be providing a negative review as one never knows whether another reader might really like that particular book for completely different reasons.
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