An interesting comment made by media and communication guru Seth Godin in a recent blog – the blog was focused around the poorly constructed analysis of Kindle reviews presented by a Times blog post – that was not the bit that got my brain churning – it was the following comment – “Amazon reviews never reflect the product, they reflect the passion people have for the product”. He supports this claim with a comment commonly made by Jeff Bezos, that most great products get 5 star and 1 star reviews on the basis, that anyone passionate enough about a product is not going to give it a three star review.
Makes perfect sense – especially when you add all those 5 star reviews given by ‘pseudo’ customers [read author or publicist] and one star reviews written by competing authors and publicists. Don’t get wooly on me – of course they do it. It’s why I don’t illicit reviews for my books on Amazon – probably stupid, considering that most people don’t know that most of them are false, and that they certainly do support book sales – its just that I can’t stand to be associated with anything false. I would rather just concentrate on putting out a quality product and market through channels with higher integrity.
Check out Seths Post – always a good read!