Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Jess pointed out in the comments to our entry regarding Amazon reviews for sale that Harriett Klausner has been named one of Time Magazine’s influential persons of the year. While I do like the focus of the profile of Ms. Klausner that discusses the power of online reviewers, I’m not sure I love that the spokesperson for the revolution in online reviewing wouldn’t know plot accuracy if it hit her in the deus ex machina.

Seems the Time Person of the Year is You. Or me. Or both of us. Or all of us who use the internet and make our tastes and preferences known. We who control the information age by participating in the global discussion of romance novels, celebrity gossip, technology, and how cute our cats are when they sleep, we are the People of the Year:

The influence of newspaper and magazine critics is on the wane. People don’t care to be lectured by professionals on what they should read or listen to or see. They’re increasingly likely to pay attention to amateur online reviewers, bloggers and Amazon critics like Klausner. Online critics have a kind of just-plain-folks authenticity that the professionals just can’t match. They’re not fancy. They don’t have an agenda. They just read for fun, the way you do.

Candy and I, we are certainly amateur online reviewers, and we’re definitely bloggers. We don’t write on Amazon (which begs the question: what if Klausner got paid $5 a review? Ka CHING!) but we do write online in multiple locations. Now I wonder how the line between amateur online blog reviewer and professional reviewer will be defined, and how much credibility rests on amateur status versus quality of review.

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