Fake Amazon Reviews

[T.Allen.Smith]

Edit: I thought this initial post was eaten by the Internet gods when my mobile app crashed. It is posted in similar fashion under the Chit Chat forum. Apologies.

I've been reading some interesting articles on promotion tactics of some authors in the form of post fake reviews. I know there are quite a lot of self-published authors here on MS so I am curious what the general consensus is on this topic.

This is not limited to self-published authors, posting fabricated reviews for their own works. Apparently some traditional publishing houses have gone so fat as to hire teams to fake favorable reviews of their own client's work and disparaging reviews of what they consider to be the competition.

My own personal view is that as long as a book is actually read, and a review is given honestly, I don't take issue to friends or authors reviewing each other's works. Some of the examples stated in the articles were obvious fakes though. They claimed things like "better than Tolkein" when the work looked and read amateurish, and all of the reviews were by accounts that never reviewed any other books at all. In my view, that is misleading the consumer & bad for all authors, especially self-published.

Thoughts?

Some links:

http://www.bestfantasybooks.com/blog/tag/amazon-fake-reviews/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/technology/finding-fake-reviews-online.html?_r=1

http://newsblaze.com/story/20090802171258jude.nb/topstory.html

 

[Frog]

1. I do not know of any way to stop it without shutting down the review system entirely.

2. Friends and colleagues giving an honest review does not constitute a "fake review." In fact, if another author puts his or her seal on a book, that author is really hanging herself out there. Author A endorses a book by Author B, and it turns out Author B sucks, then I don't know that I want to read anything by Author A, either.

3. Hiring a promotional team to call an amateur book "Better than Tolkien" isn't really all that surprising. I don't particularly like it, because it tends to water down the positive reviews of those authors that earn them. I just don't know that there's much to be done about it.

 

[Penpilot]

To me sample size and quality of arguments matters in reviews. I usually read a few good reviews, a few bad ones, and a few in the middle when possible. I try to gauge how thoughtful reviews are and add weight to those who sound sincere.

Call me a cynic but I auto assume all first reviews are by the author's best friend and/or mother. But in the end, you can't hide from the truth. Once a person reads a book or even a sample they'll know if its bad or not and tell anyone who'll listen. There's nothing like being tricked into purchasing a book by a review to add incentive for someone to write a bad review to balance out the fake positive one.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Friends and colleagues giving an honest review does not constitute a "fake review."

Hiring a promotional team to call an amateur book "Better than Tolkien" isn't really all that surprising.

I agree with the first point. Like I said, as long as the work is actually read & reviewed with some honesty.

The "better than Tolkein" reviews are more the realm of a single author & a shill account. The marketing teams hired to post reviews are not so obvious in their falseness.

 

[Frog]

The "better than Tolkein" reviews are more the realm of a single author & a shill account. The marketing teams hired to post reviews are not so obvious in their falseness.

I don't know, some of those hacks can be really terrible. Regardless, though, I think my point stands. They suck, but what can you do?

 

[Zophos]

That's why I generally start with the one star reviews and work my way up.

It's fairly evident that many of the 5-star reviews are shills. Honestly, who would take the time to write a 500 word essay on how great a book was, even if it was a very good book?

I don't put a great deal of credence into 1-stars that are that long either, because I've seen quite a few reviews that were pretty clear hack jobs by rivals or accomplices of rivals. The reason I start with those is it's pretty easy to pick out the hack jobs and get to the ones that have actual reasons the book was poorly written. If I hated a book I sure as **** wouldn't waste 500 words on it.

 

[TWErvin2]

There will always be people who try to game the system (any system, really). A lot of readers sort of expect it, like at Amazon, and pretty much know what to look for: only that book reviewed by that reviewer ever, generic or unrealistic statements, reviews posted the same day the novel was released coupled with not listed as 'purchased', among other things.

The first review of Blood Sword sort of demonstrates this. It starts: "I'm somewhat surprised that I'm the first to write a review of this excellent book since it's several months' after its release. Perhaps it's because it slipped out into publication with little fanfare. The author really needs to get with it and learn the rules of independent publishing...namely, any release needs to include having 10-20 glowing reviews posted from shills so that the book can make the "most popular" filters of the Amazon website. Well I'm going to post what I hope is a glowing review, but I'm no shill..."

While I ask for folks to who read my works to review them, it rarely happens. For me, it's just the way it is. I don't hound people. For me, even family and close friends, even ones that really enjoyed the read, don't far more often than they do. A lot of reviews for Flank Hawk and Blood Sword, I have no clue who the people are.

I do post reviews, not of everything I read. If it's an author published by a small house or self-published, if I can't give it at least a decent review, I just don't post a review. Maybe that's wrong on my part. But what I do post is honest.

I believe that readers who do pay attention to reviews to as part of their decision making with respect to what they're going to read have become aware and wary enough to identify/sift out the 'fake' reviews. Certainly they'll leave a bad taste, so having them can come back to bite an author. At least that's the way I see it.

I just posted a review today for one of the works of a writer here on Amazon after reading the story. It was an honest review. I enjoyed the story and I hope the review helps him attract additional readers, not only to that story but to other ones he's published.

But really, there's not much that can be done about 'fake' reviews. I do occasionally see a reviewer post a low rating and mock the high rating reviews. Not so sure if that's the best thing to do.

In any case, they're out there, and readers just have to be aware. Amazon, I suspect, has calculated into their algorithms, routines that lessen the positive impact of likely fake reviews with respect to various rankings. In addition, the look inside feature is something many readers use, and I believe can discount the impact (positive) of 'fake' reviews.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I noticed that Amazon now requires the reviewer actually purchasing the product & instituted a 48 hour wait period after purchasing before a review can be posted.

At least shills will have to fork over 30% of the list price to Amazon to post a review I guess.

 

[Frog]

If I hated a book I sure as **** wouldn't waste 500 words on it.

I wish I could say I was that Zen. When I find a really bad book I will, on occasion, unleash the fury. I view it as something of a public service to warn people away from those books whose very existence makes the world a stupider place.

 

[TWErvin2]

I noticed that Amazon now requires the reviewer actually purchasing the product & instituted a 48 hour wait period after purchasing before a review can be posted.

At least shills will have to fork over 30% of the list price to Amazon to post a review I guess.

I am not so sure that's accurate.

There is something that identifies if a reviewer has purchased a copy of the work, but purchasing via Amazon is not necessary to post a review. Even if you have an account, it is necessary that you've actually purcased something on Amazon, I believe. But I just downloaded on my Kindle and read a short story today, and posted a review about twenty minutes later.

Now, Amazon can and does track if a reader has read a novel on the Kindle. They can even track what pages they stopped on, and how long they stay on a page. There have been several articles published, discussing this. I did a blog post on it, based on a report by NPR (E-books: Are You, the Content, and Your Actual Reading being Tracked?) Maybe this was a factor in the 48 hour window. Maybe it's because I've posted a number of reviews over the years. I'm not really sure.

 

[Steerpike]

I noticed that Amazon now requires the reviewer actually purchasing the product & instituted a 48 hour wait period after purchasing before a review can be posted.

At least shills will have to fork over 30% of the list price to Amazon to post a review I guess.

I think you can review so long as you have an account and have purchased anything at all from Amazon.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Hmmm... Well maybe they should allow reviews only from someone who actually purchased the book.

 

[Steerpike]

Hmmm... Well maybe they should allow reviews only from someone who actually purchased the book.

Well, the only problem with that is that people give away copies of books to reviewers and bloggers for the specific purpose of reviewing them. Also, there are many books people may have read but not purchased through Amazon. I don't know that there is a good way to limit reviews to people who actually read the book without being overly-restrictive in the other direction.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Just read this....

On Amazon, when customers open a new account, they're required to make a purchase and then wait two days before posting a review. This limits the reviews to the number of credit cards the reviewer holds, and cuts down on fraud. Some sites don't bother to set limits and do minimal monitoring; on those sites, anything goes.

Any truth to that limitation?

 

[Steerpike]

@T.Allen.Smith - That doesn't make sense to me. Limits the number of reviews to the number of credit cards a person has? I only have one credit card on file with them and have posted more than one review. Some reviewers on that site have posted hundreds of reviews. So as far as I know that is not an actual limitation.

 

[Christopher Wright]

My personal policy is if I find out an author has been involved in fabricating (or sock puppeting) reviews, I will not read that author. While I consider myself a self-publishing supervillain, I'm not petty. You have to beat the good guys because you're awesome, not because you cheated.

I'm going for Magneto-level villainy here.

Anyway, there are reviews on Amazon where the identity of the reviewer is a confirmed buyer of the work, and reviews where the identity is not. So you're not required to buy the book to review it, but you do have to have an Amazon account.

 

[Steerpike]

Yes. I just went to Amazon, logged in, and clicked the button to write a review of a work I did not purchase from them. It gave me the web form to write the review, no problem.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

My personal policy is if I find out an author has been involved in fabricating (or sock puppeting) reviews, I will not read that author.

That seems like a solid policy.....





@Steerpike - I took the credit card bit to mean that you can't post more than one review per a specific product or book. Since you need to purchase thru a cc to open an account, they could restrict multiple reviews for a single product.

If you had 7 credit cards, you could have 7 accounts & leave 7 fakes reviews for a book, but only one per account for that same book.

Have you tried doing 2 reviews for the same book?

 

[Steerpike]

@Steerpike - I took the credit card bit to mean that you can't post more than one review per a specific product or book. Since you need to purchase thru a cc to open an account, they could restrict multiple reviews for a single product.

If you had 7 credit cards, you could have 7 accounts & leave 7 fakes reviews for a book, but only one per account for that same book.

I see. Yes, that's a more sensible interpretation

That is probably accurate. I wonder if you need a different email address for each account as well?

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I see. Yes, that's a more sensible interpretation

That is probably accurate. I wonder if you need a different email address for each account as well?

More than likely that is the case. Email addresses usually are required to be unique for online vendors to avoid multiple accounts.... That being said, I haven't tried this with Amazon but their required sign-in ID is an email address.