If you were to invent a method of publishing reasonable (i.e., truthful) book-reviews, how would you do it? What would your approach be? A special site, or a site ring, or a dynamic group of totally independent yet connectable pages/sites? How would you approach the credibility-maintenance aspect?
Think of this (and share; if you're not a member of this blog, feel free to email; if you'd like your email published here, mention it).
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9 comments:
I know I've mentioned this article from the L.A. Times before, I hope this address will work. It has some interesting thoughts on the decline of newspaper space devoted to book reviews.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-schickel20may20,0,7430993.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
The author says that reviewing should be more than idle opinion-mongering, more than just egotism and self-importance.
Amazon has produced an endless parade of hucksterism and shilling due primarily, I think, to the pernicious effects of the rating system. But I think they are aware that without the ratings 99% of their current crop of reviewers would dry up. (wouldn't that be a gift to all mankind?)
The link worked, but just in case I added a clickable link on the front page at the bottom.
The article is good, but hey... I'll gladly consider even an opinion -- as long as it's an honest opinion by someone who actually read the book, rather than a puff piece from someone on a publisher's take who didn't bother.
My 2 cents, for what it's worth: the tallying of helpful/non-helpful votes and the ranking of reviewers both deserve the heave ho. A comments section, which the reviewer could not edit, appearing at the foot of any review would be enough to allow reader input, while ruling out any incentive for the teen age fan club bloc voting which, unfortunately, too often substitutes for real commentary at Amazon.com these days.
Oh yeah, Stanley, I agree. But let's look at it more abstractly, meaning not necessarily using the Amazon system as a starting point.
How would you make sure that the reviews submitted are genuine? Suppose we took care of the quantity aspect and everyone is given a reasonable monthly posting quota. What else would you do?
The quantity aspect is tne most easily controlled. Making sure the reviews are genuine and not jacket cover fodder is another more difficult task. I'm not sure that there could be a litmus test but if you had no rankings but allowed comments on reviews that could help in keeping reviewers honest. If they knew that someone could point out that they had cribbed sentences, or paragraphs, from other reviewers it would discourage that type of dishonesty.
That pretty much requires an editor reading every review -- which is good, of course, but if the number of reviews grows, will require a large staff :-). Even Amazon can't afford it (or, maybe they can, but don't want to bother). Now, what about the stuff that can be automated? I'm thinking of well... kind of like gathering statistics; say:
1. Total number of reviews.
2. Start posting date.
3. Average number per month (day? year?)
4. St deviation (variability).
5. Same for ratings given (!)
6. Same numbers for any past month (?)
7. Whether and/or when a reviewer reviewed on demand (feasible? Cannot be verified, I think... an honour system? )
What do you think of this? And can you think of anything else meaningful in some way that can be extracted automatically from a poster's record ?
To Barbara's observations, I'd add the requirement that no reviews be accepted for posting by a moderator or a team of trusted vetters of any books Not Yet Published, No Longer Available, or obviously Products of Vanity Presses and Their Self-promoting Authors. I think we could all still get on with the absence of the few "mute, inglorious Miltons" this draconian step might cause. Coupled with the other restrictions already spelled out, this move would further help bring into existence that honest amateur book reviewing site we'd all like to write for.
Hmm... I gotta say, I don't have anything against self-publishing. Why would you bar them? Actually, I think I'd even give them extra space... if honestly written, of course.
What I have in mind are steps to keep self-publishing authors from getting shills to promote their works for them, an abuse that we're all too familiar with. Also, I don't think a self-publishing author the appropriate person to write a review of his own book, so it might be easier to keep an ideal site honest by just ruling out the vanity presses and their writers.
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