How much does a 5-star review cost?

[Doug_Pardee Distinguished Bibliophile]

Over at Dear Author (a romance-book site), Jane Litte reports that she's turned up a marketplace where authors can hire people to post 5-star Amazon reviews for them. She gave it a try to see what would happen, and got everything that was promised: the reviewer bought a copy of her 99-cent e-book, then wrote a coherent 4-paragraph review with a good subject line and the promised 5-star rating.

So how much did this service cost? Five bucks. And she got the 99-cent sale out of it.

Litte checked and found that the same person had written five-star reviews for a number of other self-published authors, including one who "regularly hit the Kindle charts’ Top 100."

[Sun_Cat]

Is anyone surprised by this? Hasn't it been obvious for some time that incentivized reviews are increasing at Amazon by leaps and bounds?

ETA: Maybe it's been easier for me to see, since I'm in the habit of using the filters available at eReaderIQ to isolate newer books with high ratings. Whenever I see a book with fewer than a dozen reviews and a very high rating, a quick glance at the reviews generally is enough to raise a red flag.

[vizeroth]

This is an issue with online reviews for all sorts of products at nearly every site that has them. There is simply too much incentive to game the system, and there are plenty of people out there willing to take someone's money to improve the online reputation of their product.

[Scott_Nagele]

This is very bad news for all of us not-so-well-known authors who put years of work into making our books their best. I'm talking about those of us who shun the fake review game, even at the expense of having very few reviews at all. Whenever we do get a good review, we feel that all the hard work must have been worth it -- and then stuff like this happens that cheapens every honest review and raises doubts about the integrity of us all. What must you think of your own work if you feel you have to pay people to make it sound good? Very sad.

[Sun_Cat]

It is sad, but pretty much inevitable in an unregulated free market. A casual search at fiverr.com shows the going rate for Amazon reviews to be anywhere from one good, long one for $5 up to five for $5. You can also buy up to 15 "rates review as helpful" for $5. Ironically, fiverr itself relies on a rating system.

The problem of distinguishing the signal from the noise on the Web has been difficult for years and is rapidly becoming intractable. For reviews and ratings, sites that include real social interaction (Goodreads, for example) tend to be more reliable than those that don't (Amazon). But even Goodreads reviews can be had for a price.

Whoever invents a system that combines ratings with social authentication will really have something. The closest thing I know of now is the Facebook "like," which since last year can be attached to any web page. (To be clear on this, the webmaster for each site has to install a widget or bit of server-side program code to enable the feature. Once that's done, any site visitor who's logged into Facebook can "like" a page and can see which friends and how many others have also liked it.)

[MacMcK1957]

Unfortunately it's not just books.  If you've been panned on Yelp or Angie's List, there are "reputation defender" services that will drown out the critics with glowing reviews of your services.  If nobody has ever rated you at all, they can build a sterling reputation for you.

For a fee, of course.

Here's a New York Times article from last August.

Take everything on the internet with a serious grain of salt.

[Sun_Cat]

Which exposes the other side of the coin. Just as anyone get obtain incentivized positive reviews and ratings, so can anyone deliberately sabotage a rival or competitor by posting unjustified negative ones. I'd say several serious grains of salt.

[keriflur]

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Sun_Cat wrote:

Whoever invents a system that combines ratings with social authentication will really have something. The closest thing I know of now is the Facebook "like," which since last year can be attached to any web page. (To be clear on this, the webmaster for each site has to install a widget or bit of server-side program code to enable the feature. Once that's done, any site visitor who's logged into Facebook can "like" a page and can see which friends and how many others have also liked it.)

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You can buy facebook likes.  The guy that sells them legally changed his name to Mark Zuckerberg last year and Facebook is suing him.  Seriously.  Soap operas have nothing on real life.

[Sun_Cat]

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keriflur wrote:

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Sun_Cat wrote:

Whoever invents a system that combines ratings with social authentication will really have something. The closest thing I know of now is the Facebook "like," which since last year can be attached to any web page. (To be clear on this, the webmaster for each site has to install a widget or bit of server-side program code to enable the feature. Once that's done, any site visitor who's logged into Facebook can "like" a page and can see which friends and how many others have also liked it.)

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You can buy facebook likes.  The guy that sells them legally changed his name to Mark Zuckerberg last year and Facebook is suing him.  Seriously.  Soap operas have nothing on real life.

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True. The reason I think this type of system has the potential of being more reliable is that as it comes into more widespread use people may learn to rely only on the opinions of actual friends and acquaintances. With Facebook (and Goodreads too, for that matter) you can distinguish between the aggregate ratings, or like counts, and those given just by your friends.

[MacMcK1957]

Unfortunately, the anonymity of the internet allows anyone to pretty much claim anything, with no way to verify or challenge.  I, for example, am frequently mistaken for George Clooney due to my full head of dark hair and matineee-idol good looks.

[keriflur]

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MacMcK1957 wrote:

Unfortunately, the anonymity of the internet allows anyone to pretty much claim anything, with no way to verify or challenge.

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This is why I rarely use reviews to help me make purchase decisions - I use the recommendations of authors whose work I like, friends, and book bloggers whose opinions I respect.

When I do use reviews, I rarely bother with the good ones.  I read the bad reviews to see if there's anything there to dissuade me.

MacMcK, you look like George Clooney, and you're better in bed than a kindle.  Your wife is a very lucky woman! 

[MacMcK1957]

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keriflur wrote:

MacMcK, you look like George Clooney, and you're better in bed than a kindle.  Your wife is a very lucky woman! 

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That's what I keep telling her.

[compulsiveread…]

This is not a new thing, just a new twist to an old practice.

Known authors have been getting paid to endorse/recommend books by new authors for years, with some authors being picky about which authors/books they recommend or not and other authors recommending every book/author that came across their desk because they were getting paid for doing it. Don't ask for a reference article because it was an article that I had read in the early 80's. Several authors were named at the time whose books I had read, including Stephen King. I don't remember the other names. (I AM OLD PEOPLE!!), but I remember Stephen King being named because he had been my favorite author for years and I was bummed that I couldn't trust his endorsement anymore.He's still one of my favorites, but I read his endorsements with a grain of salt now.

These days, we have access to the reviews of the average reader and that has been a great help to get a better idea of a book without the hype of advertising and endorsements. Or so I thought. I guess we couldn't expect it to stay free of contanimation forever.

[compulsiveread…]

ack......Contamination....

[Coaxial_Creatu…]

However, if this is the case, Amazon is fairly aggressive about weeding out fake reviews.   Authors have been bombarded with multiple negative reviews.   If it becomes apparent that the reviewers haven't read the book, or are one user using multiple IDs, then they'll take down the 'fake' reviews.

[Coaxial_Creatu…]

King is very, very generous with his reviews.   I like those authors who take care to review for books that they truly loved, and nothing else.   I remember hearing this about William Gibson - and for a popular author, I don't see his name plastered on everything - which is one of the reasons I gave the Sandman Slim books a chance.   (I loved the series, as well.)