Don’t get me wrong—I know Amazon is a business.  The management there has adopted policies they think will maximize their profits.  My complaint is that they also pretend they are helping indie publishers and indie authors.  I’m not saying that doesn’t happen some of the time, but they are certainly inconsistent.  They adapt policies and inconsistently apply them.  Reviews are a case in point, as we saw in Part One.

There is another aspect of their review policy—past, present, but hopefully not future—that is detrimental to all authors: treating books as just as another product, like shoes, clothing, appliances, toys, and so forth.  By doing so, a reviewer of a book becomes a reviewer of a product—all too often, a book reviewer also reviews other products, in fact, right on Amazon.  For product reviews, the buyer just looks at positives and negatives, perhaps disregarding the latter, if it seems to be just sour grapes or an isolated incident (yet, Amazon ranks that negative review higher than a positive one).

When we transfer that philosophy to books, bad things happen.  First, the number of reviews and the number that are positive versus negative becomes the metric, and this metric can be biased—by family, friends, paid reviews, and so forth.  Second, some online sites that make a lot of money from advertising can play the game of generating only positive reviews.  Third, other online sites can claim exclusivity by using the metric, one that Amazon, with its new policy, clearly no longer believes in.

I tend to look for sites that carry a disclaimer similar to “we don’t guarantee you a positive review.”  Some of these caveat their policy by saying that if it’s negative, they won’t post it.  That’s not quite as good, but I find it acceptable.  Reviewers are readers and readers are human.  Reading tastes are very subjective.  A smart reader will not assume a negative review means he won’t like the book.  He will also not assume a positive review means he will.  A good review, positive or negative (most responsible reviews are a mix), provides enough information for the reader to make his reading decision on his own.

However, there are egregious cases where sites offer to promote indie authors’ books and then use Amazon’s metrics because they are too lazy to analyze, review, or even read the book themselves.  Most of these are making money, either from ads on their site, or by charging the authors.  They are not helping indie publishing or indie authors—far from it, in fact.  They are supporting Amazon, a commercial giant that really deserves no help from others.

Here are three examples about what I mean, taken from “Free Sites to Promote Your eBook,” an article on Galley Cat:

Addicted to eBooks posts the requirements that first your eBook is $5.99 or less (most of mine are) and that the author has 5 Amazon reviews at least.  That doesn’t seem like much—the indie author used to be able to scrounge up five relatives or friends that will write an “atta-boy!” review.  He might even have 50 of those.  Presumably, Amazon’s new policy will eliminate that, but, if my own case is any indication, their enthusiasm also leads to the elimination of valid reviews.  I can’t get 50 relatives or friend to write reviews anyway, and many others can’t either.  What this site is promoting is bad reviews, not indie authors!  Moreover, they are as guilty as Apple and its traditional publishing partners for trying to fix prices!

Digital Book Today is even worse.  The requirements for an indie author to post to this site are the following: >= 4.2 stars average for the book’s reviews; >= 25 reviews (this is not a typo!); and a price between $0.99 and $5.99 (don’t ask why free isn’t the lower bound, but none of my books are free and most are more than $0.99—there’s a good reason for the ones at that low price).  I’d like to ask this website’s managers how they’re helping indie authors, but I won’t bother.  They wouldn’t even be beneficial to a NY Times best-selling author—of course, you’d never find him frequenting such a site anyway.

Goodkindles is “a place where you post your own article about your title and can reach the readers.  We do not review your book….”  OK.  That sounds like a good deal.  Whoops!  They ask for a $7 donation.  Sorry!  For $7, I can buy at least one eBook, maybe two.  Pox on your house.  And, if you don’t review books, why should I even visit your site.  I can go to the author’s website to read about his title.  Presumably, he does a much better job there; if he doesn’t, he should!

Goodreads has a long tradition of being an internet meeting place for readers and writers.  It has everything from soup to nuts—discussion groups, author info, interviews, reviews, what people are reading, trivia, quizzes, quotes, etc.  It has so much to offer that the website has become impossible to negotiate—anti-user-friendly, it needs an entire redo.  I can’t even figure how to add my books—it seems to be a happy accident when I pull it off.  I’m not computer illiterate, either—I was using computers when they still needed punch cards to run, probably long before Goodreads IT people were even in diapers.  I’ll give the site credit, though.  They bow to the mighty giant Amazon, but they seem to play fair and strive for an independent role.

Amazon, and its sycophants who employ their same metric, are making money on the backs of indie authors.  It reminds me of the music industry a few years back when indie musicians were exploited.  They still are, with Apple and its iTunes probably playing a bigger role than Amazon.  Indie publishers and writers are deluded into thinking this digital revolution in publishing is a positive thing.  Not necessarily.  Evidence is appearing all the time that it is more like when the Bolsheviks overthrew the Czar—we are just trading one exploiting class, the big publishers, for another, Amazon and its sycophants.

So, what’s the solution?  Dunno.  Thinking about having to find one starts to take the fun out of writing.  One thing for sure: both writers and readers suffer.  I think I’ll just put my blinders on and try to ignore the whole thing.  But it won’t be easy!

Next Tuesday: Part Three, Who qualifies as a reviewer?

In libris libertas….

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 3rd, 2013 at 4:00 am and is filed under Book Reviews, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.