Monday, October 27, 2008

Spreading Like Wildfire

People started to notice the overturn of the old rules of ranking on Amazon. First, there's a new post from our old friend Vick Mickunas, a worthy read as always.

And then, our other old friend, John (of the old but evergreen "Here's a shocker" thread on sfsignal) had a few words to say about the news: "Klausner's tumble from the top...".

"Dear Author" noticed too: check it out.

2 comments:

Deborah Hern said...

Well, I take a week off from the intarwebz, and a whole kerfluffle occurs!

First, I'm glad Amazon has done something - anything - about this problem. I'm not a fan of HK, as most of you know. Childishly, perhaps, I enjoy correcting factual errors in her "reviews." But I do wonder what this kind of hit does to her on a purely personal level. I would imagine that quite a bit of her "self" esteem is wrapped up in being Number-One-Extra-Special-Super-Reviewer. Even if it's not her-own-self that writes all of them, obviously.

In short, I wonder if she will struggle to retain her previous Top Rank, hiring more minions perhaps, or quietly disappear. Unlike the many outraged Reviewers Formerly Known As Top-Rated, who are sitting in the sandbox, kicking and screaming. And providing quite a bit of entertainment to the rest of us.

Malleus said...

Debora, I think it's not crucial for her to be No.1 (btw, she still is; Amazon marks reviewers with the highest rank they achieve in either hierarchy, old or new). I suspect for Harriet reviewing is a job -- a paid job, I'm sure, and it's paid, we'd have to guess, by someone who stands to benefit, and that would have to be publishers. I think what's important for them is that the blurbs be posted; whether it is by a No.1 reviewer, or not, has got to be less important. And all Amazon did is about rankings, not posting: the shills are still operational and entirely unaffected; their rankings and vote counts decreased, but that's all. So, I doubt there's any trouble on the Klausner end. I'm sure we'll witness more familiar blurbs soon.