Have You Seen the Harriet Stalkers?

What I find fascinating is that this "stalking" is getting underway only now. Harriet has been a thorn in the sides of many writers for donkey's years, long before anybody was talking about outsourcing anything.

Most writers I know just wince when they see she has (inevitably) posted the first "review" of their book, usually a slight and inaccurate re-working of the cover copy with a few buzz words or phrases thrown in.

My thought was always that she was a speed-reader, missing a lot, and in recent years has been speed-reading cover copy or publisher info rather than the books. And since her ambition now seems to be to "review" more books than anybody else on earth, I figure she's got a few boilerplate "reviews" she just plugs a few individualized words and phrases into.

Still, I'm surprised, as I say, that she's being stalked and/or attacked now. I don't know what the ultimate aim would be, unless it's the hope that they can discredit "Harriet Klausner" as a reviewer and get Amazon and others to stop posting her stuff.

And good luck with that.

I used to be a member of the Amazon Reviewers discussion forum, and she's a real thorn in their side.
These are poeple who write reviews as a hobby and try to get as many "Helpful" votes as possible, so as to advance in the reviewer ranking. Harriet has been number 1 reviewer for years and she is always a subject of discussion on that forum.

2 years ago amazon invited several of their main reviewers to a meeting in Seattle. They met the amazon staff, jeff bezos, and all. Harriet was not among the invitees.

BTW, there was even a Time article about her in this year's Person of the Year edition.
I would HATE to have Harriet review my books!!!!

I've been noticing for a long time that people go out of their way to give her reviews "not helpful" votes. The comments are a continuation of that, IMO. People have been stalking Harriet for years.

Getting Klausnered is like getting author blurbs on your cover. It's not that anyone pays attention to the blurbs; it's that they notice if there aren't any. (On the other hand, if the only review quote on a book is a Klausner, it's a pretty reliable signal that the book probably sucked.)

My last Klausner review was not any (well, not much) dumber than the review from Booklist, whose reviewer, I am absolutely positive, didn't bother to do more than skim.

- Victoria

I clicked over to see if she'd found my very, very, very small press book, but nope. Guess Lovecraftian tales aren't her style.

(Of course, while I was there, they made me an offer I couldn't refuse on a new Jimmy Page bio, but that's another story.)

I've seen Harriet the Spy. . .

Over on the Reviewers board they all obsess a lot about helpful and not helpful votes. The votes are more important than the reviews, it seems, and the reviews more important than the books! They also complain about stalkers who give negative votes even to good reviews, out of spite - they ALL get such votes, not just Harriet, and then they complain to Amazon, and amazon removes the neg votes, etc etc etc. It's a real mini-world of intrigue and politics in that community.
Since leaving it I get the impression that nobody outside that world is even aware that there is a ranking system, and who is high on it, or even cares.

This stuff is all news to me, and I've done most of my book purchases through Amazon nearly since the company started.

I occasionally skim reviews, but never really find them that helpful. Most are 5 stars are 1 star. I didn't realize there was this entire sub-community of Amazon reviewers, much less ones who are famous for being prolific.

weird.

BiggerBoat said:

This stuff is all news to me, and I've done most of my book purchases through Amazon nearly since the company started.

I occasionally skim reviews, but never really find them that helpful. Most are 5 stars are 1 star. I didn't realize there was this entire sub-community of Amazon reviewers, much less ones who are famous for being prolific.

weird.

Click to expand...

It's not about being prolific - it's about helpful votes. IE, if your review gets lots of helpful votes from readers, you go up in the ranking, if you get lots of negatives, you go down. Amazon has a secret formula by which it works out the ranking, eg more than 3 votes in a row don't count as that might be a friend voting for you. The reviewers have tried to work out amazon's system but never quite got it right,. They keep accurate count of positive and negative votes and freak out when they get, say, 10 negatives over a weekend, because it means someone evil is stalking them. All of this is dicussed with some passion on their board.

I just went over to Amazon and I see that the both the reviewer ranking and the reviewer forum are very hard to find. Both used to be easily visisble on the front page - now you actually have to go to a reviewer's review page to see both. I guess they were getting too much traffic on the forum, with lots of spammers. (Needless to say, lots of book authors looking for reviews!)

If you look for the badges beside a reviewer's name you might see Top 500 Reviewer or Top 10 reviewer. If you click through a few times you get to the reviewers page and there you get the links to the ranking and the forum.

Here's the reviewer ranking page
And here's the forum.

At any given time, there is a discussion on Harret Klausner in that discussion board. At the moment there are THREE.

Ah, I just read the "comments" feature for the first time. This is fairly new at amazon. I see what you mean! The Reviewer Board is a little more balanced than this. They are critical of her reviews, but not spiteful.