- Joined
- Sep 24, 2011
- Messages
- 355
- Reaction score
- 5
There is already a wealth of news items, blogs and so on about the subject of fake online reviews, many about Amazons.
To me Amazon reviews look like a dodgy ground to rely on. The audacity of some of the 5 star “reviewers” of my competitors, give me reason to believe they would have no qualms in posting negative reviews of my books, were I to get genuine positive ones and a boost in sales, and I’d bet it would get voted “unhelpful” before you can say “Todd Jason Rutherford” or “Fiverr”. Besides, with the growing publicity and outrage, perhaps genuine positive reviews may in time become questionable by association.
Having looked around, I have seen that some authors do talk about the subject on their own blogs, authors who also have their books on Amazon, and there seems to be no repercussion or fear of.
As I see making sales by other means as more secure in the long term than Amazon “customer reviews” I was wondering what anyone’s thoughts are on talking about this on ones own website as a marketing strategy? A simple page with an article of information and links to other sources such as…..
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-29873-8_5
…..that I have communicated as best as possible what my books are about, expressing my interest in customers who think for themselves rather than those who let someone else think for them. I’m not a hypocrite so I will of course ask not to rely on online customer reviews of my own books whether they are 1 star or 5 star.
When I say “marketing strategy” I don’t see that as ulterior motive because whatever the intentions, it is fair, and the subject I’d talk about is certainly not.
For anyone interested: Below are just 3 of the things I go by that make me suspect reviews, although there are more factors, these are just the things I have noticed in particular…
1. There’s the possibility that a person will only have ever reviewed one item on Amazon and given it a 5 star review. Also that more than one person will have done this. It’s just that when it happens to be the same book, often several of the 5 star reviewers are like this for the same book.
2. I have read on the “How to spot fake reviews on Amazon” guides that another sign is when reviewers have posted a bunch of other reviews of other things all on the same date to make it look genuine. However it could just be that a person, one day, decided to do some reviews of the things they had bought and just did more than one on the same day. Then after looking around I noticed that these types of reviewers tended to be found via the 5 star reviews of the same book, more than one reviewer with this same pattern.
3. I noticed that in the run up to Christmas there tended to be more 5 star reviews posted. If looking at the dates of all reviews on a particular book with this habit, it’s often pretty bare for the whole year until that time. Call me cynical but I would expect there to be more reviews in general after the 25th December, but there seems to be a correlation between people who open their presents before the 25th December and posting 5 star reviews.
To me Amazon reviews look like a dodgy ground to rely on. The audacity of some of the 5 star “reviewers” of my competitors, give me reason to believe they would have no qualms in posting negative reviews of my books, were I to get genuine positive ones and a boost in sales, and I’d bet it would get voted “unhelpful” before you can say “Todd Jason Rutherford” or “Fiverr”. Besides, with the growing publicity and outrage, perhaps genuine positive reviews may in time become questionable by association.
Having looked around, I have seen that some authors do talk about the subject on their own blogs, authors who also have their books on Amazon, and there seems to be no repercussion or fear of.
As I see making sales by other means as more secure in the long term than Amazon “customer reviews” I was wondering what anyone’s thoughts are on talking about this on ones own website as a marketing strategy? A simple page with an article of information and links to other sources such as…..
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-29873-8_5
…..that I have communicated as best as possible what my books are about, expressing my interest in customers who think for themselves rather than those who let someone else think for them. I’m not a hypocrite so I will of course ask not to rely on online customer reviews of my own books whether they are 1 star or 5 star.
When I say “marketing strategy” I don’t see that as ulterior motive because whatever the intentions, it is fair, and the subject I’d talk about is certainly not.
For anyone interested: Below are just 3 of the things I go by that make me suspect reviews, although there are more factors, these are just the things I have noticed in particular…
1. There’s the possibility that a person will only have ever reviewed one item on Amazon and given it a 5 star review. Also that more than one person will have done this. It’s just that when it happens to be the same book, often several of the 5 star reviewers are like this for the same book.
2. I have read on the “How to spot fake reviews on Amazon” guides that another sign is when reviewers have posted a bunch of other reviews of other things all on the same date to make it look genuine. However it could just be that a person, one day, decided to do some reviews of the things they had bought and just did more than one on the same day. Then after looking around I noticed that these types of reviewers tended to be found via the 5 star reviews of the same book, more than one reviewer with this same pattern.
3. I noticed that in the run up to Christmas there tended to be more 5 star reviews posted. If looking at the dates of all reviews on a particular book with this habit, it’s often pretty bare for the whole year until that time. Call me cynical but I would expect there to be more reviews in general after the 25th December, but there seems to be a correlation between people who open their presents before the 25th December and posting 5 star reviews.