Don't like comments? Delete and repost!

Some reviewers resort to delete and repost completely shamelessly, without even attempting to hide it:

Amy E. Barker says:
I don't care for the comments feature that Amazon has provided with the reviews. I've seen too many people abusing it. I had to delete several reviews recently and repost them because of the number of nasty comments attached to the reviews. You can report them as abuse but Amazon doesn't seem to be doing their job lately.

And sure enough, a lot of commentary has been censored by this reviewer. Well, I'm glad Amazon "doesn't seem to be doing their job lately" -- if the "job" means censoring commentary, Amazon is to be commended for not "doing their job". It'd be even better if they removed this delete-and-repost functionality altogether! It's not needed for anything legitimate, and effectively its only use is blowing away comments.

PS. And look at the reviews!

Hmmm...

Here's one natural-looking exchange.

Why do crap books demand 5 stars just because you got them free?

Some months ago I was contacted by author Brandon Simpson who wanted me to review his book, Demystifying Spanish Grammar as I have reached a reviewer rank in the 180s. He sent it to my address in the U.S. and it took a while to get to me. But last week, I read it and began formulating an honest review of this fairly bad, amateur and self-published work. Imagine my surprise when I got to the Amazon listing and found twelve 5-star reviews already there, with Grady Harp's leading the pack. Why do top reviewers feel a need to give 5-star reviews to self-published dreck?

Are they afraid that self-published authors will stop sending free review copies? Well, in that case, so what? The vast majority of these publications can't be unloaded for cash at a used bookstore, so you lose nothing if people stop sending them. Some of the top reviewers are doing just fine padding their collection of reviews with fluff pieces on items major publishers will notice and care about. There's no need to do so much for one dude in Kentucky who thinks he is so skilled in Spanish just because he got a B.A. in it.

When I tried to post my 2-star review, it did not appear on the page, and is presumably being held for evaluation. For what it's worth, here it is:

As I am an Amazon Top Reviewer, Brandon Simpson sent me a copy of his book DEMYSTIFING SPANISH GRAMMAR. Unlike some others here, I'm going to give the book the evaluation it really deserves, because learning a foreign language is a serious business, and people deserve the best tools. Simpson received a B.A. in Spanish and has worked as a Spanish tutor. He noticed that his pupils had especial trouble with a handful of Spanish grammatical concepts: 1) the use of accents, 2) the difference between "ser" and "estar", 3) the difference between "para" and "por", 3) the distinction between the imperfect and the preterite, and 4) the use of the subjunctive. He decided to compile helps on precisely these issues.

The result is all but unusable. When dealing with foggy areas, like the difference between the preterite and imperfect of "estar", Simpson asked random Spanish speakers instead of citing trustworthy studies prepared by trained linguists. There's little coverage of the considerable differences between Latin American and Spanish usages, nor literary Spanish (which form the small town American student will probably encounter more than the spoken language). The book appears to have had no professional editing and is amateur in all respects. On the back cover we find "This Book Will Demystify... the Dreaded Spanish Subjunctive!!!" Using exclamation points so abundantly doesn't inspire confidence. Inside, misspellings and lack of punctuation abound. Typesetting was done in a word processor, Microsoft Word, instead of a suitable typesetting engine and the result is hard on the eyes.

I'll give the book two stars because the grammatical paradigms within aren't wrong. However, the student of Spanish would do better to get the [[ASIN:0007224206 Collins Gem Spanish Grammar]], a nice little pocket-sized reference of all aspects of the language, including a number of completely conjugated verbs, still widely available available on the used market.

The Cleaner in hot pursuit (Chippindale update)

This guy, The Cleaner, is doing an amazing job. Take a look: it seems like an awful lot of Chippindale reviews have been crudely cribbed from somewhere else. I'm amazed at how The Cleaner digs up the originals -- that's an "amateur sleuth" (as Harriet would say) for you! Outstanding job; The Cleaner should send a bill to Amazon for doing what they should be doing.

Caught with Pants Down: The Chippindale Affair Heats Up (Update)

Things turn more and more hilarious in the Chippindale(s) realm (or sad, depending on your view). Let me remind you where we left off in the past: J.Chippindale was accused by one-eyed-Jack of posting comments to his own reviews under a sock-puppet account "SpellingBee". Now, just to whet you appetite, a brief quote:

Initial post: 27 Jun 2008 22:45 BST
SpellingBee says:
Yep, these are great little books

J. Chippindale says:
Yes they are very good value for money and packed with information

one-eyed Jack says:
J Chippindale and Spellingbee are one and the same person. The sadness reaches new depths.

SpellingBee says:
This man is so conceited he even has the temerity to tell me who I am. Now that is creepy. Maybe I had better check with my mum. In fact he hasn't even got the gender correct, how wrong can one person be, but hey why let the truth stand in the way of one of OEJ's famous statements. Mind you if he stays true to form he will probably hedge his bets by saying that someone else has told him, or he has it on good authority, safety in numbers and all that. He may even say that someone high on the management ladder at Amazon has told him in confidence, but that would not be wise as they would certainly have to check their facts first and realise that it was not true. You see whereas OEJ says he knows who I am, strange as it may seem, I am the one person who actually does know.

one-eyed Jack says:
SpellingBee's real name is Jonathan Chippindale. And that's a FACT.

Misfit says:
He'll probably delete the review to remove the comments but there's alway the google cache. From Spelling bee's wish list,

Wish List BUY A GIFT CERTIFICATE
This list is for: JONATHAN CHIPPINDALE

Interesting reading and how the Bridal Registry (AKA wish list) done her in, http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2008/07/08/top-ten-things-authors-should-not-do-at-amazon/

And indeed, if you visit SpellingBee's profile page, you'll see that the SpellingBee's actual name name is Jonathan Chippindale ! I was reading this thing yesterday laughing my ass off; highly recommended. Not only this particular review, but all of the latest ones (linked to at the top of this message).

PS. One thing I'd like to tell anyone visiting there: PULEESE do not click Chipplidale's notes unhelpful. They deserve to be proudly shown and also it's a pain in the butt to have to open them all the time. As the poet said, don't touch this. In fact, give the already closed ones a few helpfuls so as to open them.

PPS. Btw, this is something our friend 1eJack might want to know: Mr Chippindale now claims that at least some of his reviews have been written not by him, but by someone else (members of his family, as he claims for now, but who knows what whill happen in the future, perhaps someone else will be helping him soon?).

This is the same error that John Matlock "Gunny" made in the past. There seems to be some sort of Amazon policy that if more than one person posts reviews under the same account, this reviewer cannot be rated. Iow, it's OK to post results of a collective reviewing effort under a single name, but this name cannot then be a Top Reviewer (and rated at all). One of such reviewers is "Midwest Book Review": they openly state that it's a team and they are not rated. They post over a hundred one-paragraph reviews daily, all five stars, but they're not a Top Reviewer. How come Mr Chippindale uses literary help from his grandson and daughter, yet remains a Top Reviewer (No.18)? If Amazon finds out, he'll lose his rank !

Once more Harriet neglects to read book before reviewing it

Posted by Ann:

I just read her review on Barnes&Noble.com, for my latest Victorian Romance, released two days ago, and she has the plot all wrong. No way could she have read the book. I appreciate the five stars, but...

Deja Vu, All Over Again

Self-published author Robert J. Gagnon, modesty-challenged as Amazon self-promoters so often are, has seen fit not only to review but to award his own book, "Life At Fifteen," 5 stars. It is hardly surprising, given this lapse, to discover that Gagnon's other head cheerleader is the equally self-effacing artists' representative, Grady Harp. Mr. Harp, going on to rave over another book called "Days of the Embassy," spills the beans that Mr. Gagnon, apparently within minutes, ascended from mere self-published author to owner of a new publishing company responsible for this volume, too. Harp implies such publishing coups may well put the major houses to shame. Now if only he could persuade Gagnon to publish a new edition of "War Songs," which the public has so oddly neglected, we might happily conclude that Mr. Harp has received the most fitting payback.