Monday, May 28, 2007

More on that disappearing review

I can't figure out how to edit the blog.

The reviewer who made the snotty comment #139, http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A3B48AN8JID1JK/002-5252214-5336844?ie=UTF8&display=public&sort%5Fby=MostRecentReview&page=1.

My goodness, she's really into the HK type of fiction (smut and bodice rippers, not Christian Fiction) and from what I've seen so far (four pages) EVERYTHING gets five stars. Makes one think.

4 comments:

Barbara Delaney said...

Misfit,

I see by her profile that she claims to live by the od adage that HK also says she lives by- namely, the tired old saw "if you can't say anything nice....

However we've seen that Harriet Klausner has been selective in applying that bit of folk wisdom to her own speech. Witness her trashing of two authors in a newspaper with millions of subscibers. And now this person thinks leaving a snide comment in response to an honest review is acceptable behavior.

Malleus said...

"Top Reviewer" + "REAL NAME" is all I need to know to ignore a poster's reviews. Never made an error yet.

A "REAL NAME" by itself is suspicious, but not always a problem: I suspect a lot of people simply don't realize you can have a nickname and end up with the name that their credit card bears, which is, well, their real name. But when combined with the 'Top' tag, that's it.

And finally, an attack-dog attitude (posting "damage-control" reviews) is a sure sign of a 'professional' at work.

I noticed many times that there may be a book (or anything) with a couple five-star reviews sitting there forever; then someone posts a negative review -- oh boy. Within a couple of days a goodly number of these 'damage-control' five-star reviews will pour in: first, pushing the neg down the page, off the page, and out of site, and second, 'fixing' the rating total.

Misfit said...

Barbara, now that is too funny. She certainly didn't say anything nice about my comment (and I wasn't the only one who gave a poor review).

Now this is interesting, I have made a point of not commenting on HK reviews for a week. Posted a review on Middlemarch today and within less than two hours got a negative vote.

Deborah Hern said...

I bet the people at RIO would be pretty pissed off to see someone slinging their name around like that on snotty comments. (I'm not a member, no affiliation, etc) As far as I know, they try to be fairly professional and wouldn't appreciate this.

And... as a reviewer, I can tell you it's PERFECTLY valid to point out in your review that the book is a genre you don't normally read. That's a significant fact to include. That tells fans of that genre that, while the reviewer wasn't into it, they still might be. Or, if the reviewer likes it despite not being a reader of that genre... that's a great endorsement.

Someone just got their panties in a wad over it and clicked the 'report' button. My guess is that Amazon pulls reported reviews rather than deal with arguments. (This, naturally, does not apply to Top Reviewers, who seem to enjoy special perks.)