Invasion of Book Reviewers

Amazon, a jungle of anonymous book reviewers...

"why anyone would even bother reading these anonymous customer reviews (even if not faked), rather than relying on those of the “experts.”

"To see why, we need to step back and recall that the book review was born at a democratising moment of the capitalist 18th century. Publishers realised that there was now a larger literate group of readers to whom they could sell books – and who therefore could use help in choosing their reading material.

The end of the patronage system had meant that writers were writing for a wider (and unknown) readership. But it also meant that the review first came into the world as a form of consumer reporting. And it has continued to have this function for us in the globalised, electronic world of the 21st century bombarded, as we all are, by more information and greater choice than ever before. We too are in need of assistance in making selections. 

More: http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/can-the-modern-book-reviewer-be-unputdownable-1.1332489



SpyWriter Jack King, the author of:
Agents of Change, WikiJustice, The Black Vault, and The Fifth Internationale.
A new Pope. A new Church. A new world:


www.SpyWriter.com

The secret world of Amazon reviewers

'But there is some new evidence suggesting that Amazon’s customer reviewers—particularly the top 1,000 reviewers—do not always make independent decisions about which books and other products they write about. According to anew Cornell study
 that we previewed last week, the reviewers in many cases acknowledge that in order to maintain their high rankings and continue to receive free products (one of the perks of being a top reviewer), they have to make surprisingly calculated decisions about what to review and what to say about those products. 

The author of the study, Cornell professor Trevor Pinch, says the fundamental problem is that people reading the reviews probably naturally assume that the Amazon reviewers are regular shoppers just like them—when, in fact, their relationship to the products they review can be a little more complicated. “The issue of the ‘customers’ not really being customers needs to be addressed,” says Pinch, who surveyed 166 of Amazon’s top 1,000 reviewers for his study.'

More:
http://m.paidcontent.org/article/419-what-shoppers-dont-realize-about-amazons-reviews/

Jack King