Bitchery reader June forwarded me this email, a message to which I can only say, “Holy Shit.”
A friend of hers subscribes to a job offer listserv, and the following message came on by:
Write Online Book Reviews
We need 5 reviewers for 3 of our newly released titles. We ask that you write a 1-3 Paragraph review with a 5 star rating (5 being best) of each of the 3 books. We will then ask that you forward the reviews over to us so that we can look over them before you post them on Amazon.com and Barns and Noble.com.
Most of our reviewers are paid from $5- to $10 per review or $15.00 to $30.00 per 3 review book set. Unfortunately, Amazon has recently instituted a new procedure whereby you can only review books if you have an account that you have used to purchase books / products from them before, so in order to bid you must have an account with Amazon that you have used to purchased books with them from before. You are bidding on writing 5 reviews and posting them to Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and lulu.com
Apply for this job here:
Write Reviews for Company Books
Now, we’ve had the discussion before that Amz. reviews at this point can and must be taken with a grain of large and salty suspicion, but jeez. $5 to $10 a review?! I have to wonder where the money is coming from for the reviewing, and how they choose the books what get the good reviews.
That is more than a little disturbing, I have to say. I think you should do a SBTB 20/20 investigation and expose the employer. Wouldn’t it be interesting if it were a publishing house or agent?
(This comment not paid for by any agency.)
Is it just me, or is that link not working? Maybe they took the ad down out of shame.
I came upon the original review discussion too late to comment, so just briefly:
As a reader, I do pay some attention to Amazon reviews, but it’s pretty easy to filter out the ones that are expressing personal prefs (which I might not share), e.g., “This book sucks because I hate first-person narrative” or “This book rocks because I luuuuurve pirates whose shirts keep popping (half-)open.”
Jeri – I updated the link with a correct one.
Perhaps this solves the mystery of the incredibly prolific reviewer, Harriet Klausner, who has apparently never read a book she didn’t love.
The only reviews I read are the ones here and over on AAR. I don’t think that paying for good reviews is anything new. Though I will say it’s pretty low. I can only assume that this company is being hired by the publishing houses. Not very cool boo boo.
I wonder if anyone will go undercover, bid for the job, and see what books they’re asked to review? And how do you sign your book up for the pay-for-stars review process?
Hmmmm…I think I’ll stick to reviewing for Green Man Review. *lol*
I’m still wondering who takes Amazon reviews seriously. Anyone who reads can see the variation and hit-or-miss quality. I may not always agree with AAR Reviews, but at least I have some confidence in the reviewers.
That’s pretty cheap price, if you ask me. It will (I hope) lead to the Obvious Shill Review as follows:
1. No one’s going to actually read the books for that price. (Hey, Kirkus pays at least $50 for a review, and they don’t require it to be a good review.)
2. Reviews based on not reading a book all sound the same: vague, perhaps with a bit of plot synopsis one could garner from the back cover or a promo release.
3. Anyone who would accept such a low price to commit such a low act is not going to devote any time or effort to it. People without integrity tend to be slack-ass employees who will cut all corners. This will, I suspect, prevent the “reviews” from achieving the believability threshold.
Darlene – I do; Or, at least, I consider consumer reviews in my decisionmaking.
Generally, I pay closest attention to the three-and-four star reviews (since those people are most likely to point out good and bad things), but I almost always make a point to look at the 1-2 star reviews, even if only to see how well-written and intelligent they are. There’s plenty of tripe on Amazon, no doubt; but pro-written reviews are often too vague (or opinionated in a way I am not), and so it helps to rely on other readers to get a sense of the tone and potential squicks in the book. I don’t know how much I get from any individual review, but I do get a lot from having a sense of who did/didn’t love it, and why.
I do tend to avoid Five-star reviews, though – too many of them are from rabid squeeing fangirls (Or friends, or …hired hands, apparently). Personally, in this case I’m just amused by the incorrect spelling of Barn(e)s and Noble. Clearly, these people are VERY professional
So if applicants need only have an amazon account and write English well to qualify that’s a decent playing field. Hmmm.
Okay, I’ve got some extra cash.
Say 20 bucks for a five-star review, three reviews per book comes to $60.
Maybe 15 bucks for a couple of three- and four-star reviews for those who figure the fivers are bogus. That’s 30 bucks a book.
Comes to $90 a book for, let’s say, 150 titles, for a total of . . .
Never mind.
Ma’am, I will totally sacrifice my Smart Bitch credibility here, but if you’re payin’ I’m Squeein’. Just say the word.
That free-lance writer site has some pretty dodgy listings, iirc. I’ve read some of them in past, and they tend to have a lot of the “Write Term Papers for $50!!!!” and my gut reaction is usually something like, “Um. Isn’t the STUDENT supposed to write their own term paper? If I’m doing someone else’s homework, they’re darn well going to pay me more than $50, too, or I’ll get them an F. Cheap bastards!”
I guess some freelance gigs are from the Dark Side of the Force….
Which, of course, does not change the fact that I don’t *browse* on BN.com or Amazon—I only buy books there that I was going to buy anyway, and needed to buy to get free shipping on the CD I was looking at a few months ago and wanted to buy, too. Therefore, the reviews are meaningless to me, tend to the badly written and the snark is not as deliciously snarky as genuine Smart Bitch Snark (TM). I don’t know anyone who reads those reviews, actually, and if I ever met someone who bought a book based on the advice of a total stranger who may or may not be the author or their own agent and can’t spell “ingenious” when describing the plot…. Well. All I can say is, they deserve to read what they buy!
Someone please convince me out of the belief I have that paid reviews—under any circumstances—are completely antithetical to the whole concept of the review. Except for people who simply get paid *as reviewers*, that is, they get paid a salary for their skill in reviewing in the same way some people get paid as *food critics* of *editorial commentators*.
That’s absolutely effing scandalous.
It does explain how books get so many positive reviews before they are released.
Media Bistro picked up the story from y’all. I wonder if they can find out who’s asking for the positive reviews?
Check it out here:
http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/web_tech/default.asp
Supposedly Harriet Klausner only reviews books she likes.
You know, I will point out that Amazon.com lets you edit your review AT ANY TIME; so, (assuming these people do actually send a check in the first place), I think an appropriate mission for the bitchery might be to accept the job, get the check, and then post the review with one small edit:
The addition of “this review (and associated 5-star rating) bought and paid for by…”
Or hell. Replace the whole review with an honest one. What are the odds, if they have to BUY a good book review, that they can afford a good lawyer?
I guess I’m also baffled by what I see as the stupidity factor in this deal. Didn’t whoever put this up for applicants realize that the whole thing would leak to the very on-line readership it was seeking to reach? Thereby, not just negating the positive reviews it paid for, but turning them into a bad joke—however well the ‘reviewer’ writes English?
Nobody likes to be duped, or to feel as if someone’s tried to dupe them. Thereby readers who feel they have been won’t give the books in question the attention they may or may not deserve, but are more likely to refuse to buy or read them.
So to me, it’s not just effing scandalous and unethical, it’s also flat-out stupid.
Just curious, but why does AAR get so much respect? Do the reviewers have to pass a training course? I’ve only been there once or twice, when directed by the SB’s to watch a good fight on the boards, so I don’t know much about them.
family. Heck, I totally expect my friends and family to do the same when my book comes out (whether I ask them to or not).
As a reader I always look at the 1 and 2-star reviews. I want to see if the reasons given just happen to be amongst my pet peeves before I lay out $ for a new author.
In fact, maybe I’ll ask my friends to lay in a couple of false bad reviews saying my book was too hot for them. LOL!*
*please note that I’m kidding here.
It is disturbing, but it’s not unheard-of, after the whole NetVocates thing (people paid to comment on blog posts for a certain agenda), and the “sock puppet” scandal at The National Review.
I sort of expect to find underhanded persuasive tactics at commercial sites, but the idea of people posing as everyday commenters on blogs to sway opinion is really crazymaking. Before public opinion on the war started to change I was finding pro-war posts on teeny little out of the way blogs where 2 or 3 comments on a post was like an avalanche. It was truly weird, like dissent had to be stamped out in every corner of existence.
Finally, a theory that explains Harriet Klausner. Browsed some of her reviews once after seeing her name here. Either she doesn’t read some of the books she reviews, or she’s not a very bright girl because she often gets the plot wrong.
Honestly, I don’t pay much attention to amazon reviews unless its for a musty old reference book where I just want to get an idea of how helpful it is. For any new books, I seriously go to a bookstore and judge them by their covers and copy… and if I buy something online, its because I know the author already. The only thing I do use to find new books on amazon is the “readers who bought this book also bought…” section, maybe PR people should just strategically get people to buy some super popular book at the same time as their book…
I’m sure that’s their next step, although seeing as how they seem to think online shoppers are dumber than sheep (OOOH! Purty revyooo! Me read it now!!) I don’t know that they’d have thought that far ahead yet.
That explains so much about amazon reviews and where all those positive LKH reviews are coming from. I thought it was just the fangirls, but clearly they’re calling in reinforcements.
This is almost as painful as hearing that Harriet “I never met a book I didn’t slavishly adore” Klausner was tagged as one of the 15 influential movers and shakers of the web generation in Time magazine.
Apparently I am one of the few that actually *does* read Amazon reviews (at least the reviews written by a select group of Amazon reviewers who have taste similar to my own.) For some reason I find that I rarely read the AAR review until *after* I have already read the book. I frequently already have read the book by the time the SB review is posted as well. Mrs. Giggles reviews are usually hilarious, but she hates some of my favorites and raves about some books that I find very mediocre, so I read her for the entertainment factor rather than actual book recommendations.
Yes, there are a lot of worthless reviews on Amazon, but there are also a lot of thoughtful, entertaining, well-written reviews as well (IMO, of course.)
Re: Harriet Klausner. The pattern of her reviews is that *every* book gets 4 or 5 stars and a very positively worded review. She explains this by stating that she only writes reviews on books that she likes (fair enough.) She usually gives a very detailed summary of the first chapter or two of the book and I sometimes wonder whether she has even read much further than that, since if the first chapter is a long prologue which occurred years prior to the main action of the story, she will natter on and on about the characters and action in the prologue when the book is really about a totally different hero and heroine and set of circumstances.
I have found an author that was offering 10 free review copies of his book to people that would review it on Amazon.com. I always meant to go see the results. The author suggested 5-star would help with sales.