What would be nice is to see someone decide to file a lawsuit against Amazon with the FTC regarding their review system. If we as reviewers technically have to reveal any association with the product that might influence our review, then a case could be made that either 1) HK might be in violation of that rule, and/or 2) Amazon is fraudulently manipulating sales via their review system, referring back to the same FTC regulations.
In a perfect world, it would open up some of the inner workings of Amazon's system and why some reviewers are protected like HK, when her reviewing exploits are obviously on par with Santa Claus being able to visit every house in the world over a 24 hour period... :)
And for those of you reading... this is my first post to the board (thanks for the invite, Malleus). I don't know that I'll be all that active, as I tend to avoid "pissing matches" over how much someone can review. Yes, I'm an Amazon reviewer, and just recently dropped out of the top 100. And yes, I *do* read a lot and review all that I read, as I enjoy writing. But my numbers have dropped of late, as I finished writing a book last year with a co-author, and I'm working on another one right now...
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Simon suffers a wipeout (Klausner Protection Squad™ strikes again)
Another day, another news. Well, a new victim rather, but nothing really new: Amazon wipes out yet another commenter who dared to talk about the fraud that Harriet Klausner is. Everyone knows Simon Davis (he's been around for quite some time). He's been intermittently active in the Klausner "trenches", and we all know that this means asking for trouble. Today is the day: he just got wiped out by Amazon. I learned about this shameful news from a comment by another poster (I'm adding both a link and a snapshot — just in case the original gets deleted and the link becomes useless):
And indeed, it appears that Amazon wiped out every single comment Simon has ever posted: here are just a few examples — here;
and here:
and more:
Amazon is exceptionally unsubtle about muzzling everyone who dares to bring up the dangerous topic of their love of shills on their site: can't touch this! Shameful and revolting, especially since it's done so in-your-face for those who know what goes on, yet to a casual visitor it looks like perhaps the comment was offensive and was removed legitimately. After all, there's no button "let's look at what this was before Amazon deleted it" one could click on and see whether the deletion was justifiable. Many times, in process of wising up to what Klausner and her likes actually do on Amazon, people say something like, "I wonder why this or that guy got deleted-by-Amazon. First I thought perhaps his posts were inappropriate, but now I wonder..." Indeed.
Now, I'm sure Amazon doesn't give a crap about comments: I've seen really bad, rude comments (and reported them too), and nothing ever happened to them: so it's not like Amazon watches what goes on on their site all the time — nor do they pay any attention to isolated "report-this" reports. So these wipeouts (especially of the total kind) have got to be engineered by the Klausner Protection Squad™ (and similar gangs of shills manipulating the social environment on Amazon's site). I wonder how they do it... do they call Amazon on the phone and bitch about poor little Harriet being abused, or do they have some special Amazon-supplied button that only shills know about, or do they "report-this" five million times on every comment of the poster they want to get rid of? Do they assemble forces, or do they use their sock-puppet accounts? Do both "purchase" and "no-purchase" accounts work, or it has to be only one kind? ... Do we have any disgruntled Amazon employees who could shed light on internal workings of Amazon's Klausner Defense Machine? How does it work in practice?
Well, anyway. Let's welcome Simon into the manly ranks of disappeared-by-Amazon. Not that we ever had any doubts about Simon's virtue, but today his human decency has been confirmed by the enemy itself — no higher compliment can be hoped for.
And indeed, it appears that Amazon wiped out every single comment Simon has ever posted: here are just a few examples — here;
and here:
and more:
Amazon is exceptionally unsubtle about muzzling everyone who dares to bring up the dangerous topic of their love of shills on their site: can't touch this! Shameful and revolting, especially since it's done so in-your-face for those who know what goes on, yet to a casual visitor it looks like perhaps the comment was offensive and was removed legitimately. After all, there's no button "let's look at what this was before Amazon deleted it" one could click on and see whether the deletion was justifiable. Many times, in process of wising up to what Klausner and her likes actually do on Amazon, people say something like, "I wonder why this or that guy got deleted-by-Amazon. First I thought perhaps his posts were inappropriate, but now I wonder..." Indeed.
Now, I'm sure Amazon doesn't give a crap about comments: I've seen really bad, rude comments (and reported them too), and nothing ever happened to them: so it's not like Amazon watches what goes on on their site all the time — nor do they pay any attention to isolated "report-this" reports. So these wipeouts (especially of the total kind) have got to be engineered by the Klausner Protection Squad™ (and similar gangs of shills manipulating the social environment on Amazon's site). I wonder how they do it... do they call Amazon on the phone and bitch about poor little Harriet being abused, or do they have some special Amazon-supplied button that only shills know about, or do they "report-this" five million times on every comment of the poster they want to get rid of? Do they assemble forces, or do they use their sock-puppet accounts? Do both "purchase" and "no-purchase" accounts work, or it has to be only one kind? ... Do we have any disgruntled Amazon employees who could shed light on internal workings of Amazon's Klausner Defense Machine? How does it work in practice?
Well, anyway. Let's welcome Simon into the manly ranks of disappeared-by-Amazon. Not that we ever had any doubts about Simon's virtue, but today his human decency has been confirmed by the enemy itself — no higher compliment can be hoped for.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Johnny Boy on Klausner
Hurried Klausner "reviews" something called One Night Is Never Enough, which produces a number of comments, one of which, by "Johnny Boy", is especially right on the money. Johnny says (click to enlarge):
Notes.
1. Actually, Krapusner writes on her own site:
2: Now, think of it, for people that smart, how hard would it be to disallow mass-posting of crap a la Klausner? (Allow everyone ten book reviews a month: this will let every real reader review 120 books a year — more than adequate for a simple mortal, methinks.) Or what about shutting down people who use multiple "verified" accounts to review the same item multiple times or to mass-vote for the same review? Or authors reviewing (five-stars) their own books, openly, posting under their own name? Or using stacks of bullshit, no-purchase accounts to vote on comments and "report this" buttons — a complete free-for-all a casual visitor isn't even aware of? Technically, none of this is difficult to put an end to, yet Amazon doesn't do it, so one must assume their lack of action is political, not technical, meaning that Amazon's reviewing system is defective as it is not by omission but by design: to all appearances, Amazon loves shills; enabling their massive attack on the consumer has probably been part of their "understanding" with vendors who sell through Amazon.
Unrelated: btw, yesterday I decided to conduct my semiannual test of the Klausner Voting Shield: I negged a review of hers. I was pleased to see the vote show up upon the next refresh, but yet another refresh showed the vote removed: which is a sign of active vote filtering. Once more, to those who don't know: I never vote on Klausner reviews (other than a test like this; previous took place near a year ago) and so I cannot possibly qualify as her "fan", negative or positive (we talked about this before). So why is Amazon protecting Harriet? No wonder she's clawing back up in rank lately. (More on that in our Does Harriet Klausner have a special dispensation from Amazon?.)
The only things I'd add are:
(1) most likely, Klausner did not read even in 1999 when her current account starts, and that I suspect because she'd worked in a similar area earlier — she had probably been producing these accursed blurbs since forever, it's just that before 1999 she didn't post them on Amazon (under this account, at least; I can't remember when Amazon reviews started, but Amazon itself started in 1995, initially without reviews; people do report seeing "a customer" reviews signed "Harriet Klausner" from earlier that 1999; myself I haven't seen them).
I suspect this "career" of hers began when she was, as she claims, an acquisitions librarian — which is not a librarian, really, but more like a buyer for a store (bookstore/library in this case). She was probably put in a position to determine or recommend what gets purchased, and there being no shortage of commercial entities eager to have their stuff purchased, you can bet your you know what, the Klausner postion could be profitably exploited — and that would have to be well before the advent of the internet and Amazon.¹
As far as how much she "read" back then, too bad we can't now go back to the beginning of her record and see: about a year ago Amazon made it impossible (earlier you could scroll through the whole thing; now it'll let you about a year back and then give you an error message that is made to look like something intermittent, "temporarily-unavailable-please-try-later" sort ot thing, which is a lie: in reality you can try later till you're blue in the face, but it'll never let you past the last year's worth of reviews in anyone's record. I do remember (from before that change) that the first review on the current Klausner account was from the second half of November 1999. But with Amazon's newly introduced hiding of traces we can't check a reveiwer's reviewing pattern anymore. Very smart of them, 'cause I was just about to start on a piece of software that would produce a reviewer's statistics from his reviewing history; now I can't get to this history, of course; they nipped the very idea in the bud before they even knew there was a bud. Pretty smart, eh?²
(2) About your
Did she read anywhere near as much as she posted? Of course not. That's impossible. Nobody, and I don't care how good of a reader you are or how much time on your hands you have, can read 90 books in one day or even two days. It's mathematically and scientifically impossible, unless you were literally to go nonstop (no bathroom breaks, no eating, nothing), which I am about 99.99999% sure Harriet cannot do.Are you saying that you could read 90 books in a day if you never took a leak? This is crazy, my man. I'm sure it's just a rhetorical slip on your part, but let's be clear about one thing: Harriet Klausner is a preposterous insolent fraud — no ifs and buts and taking or not taking a leak. That's what makes her the well-deserved No.1: while with many reviewers it's possible that they're dishonest, with Harriet it is absolutely impossible that she's honest. Nothing a simple mortal could possibly resort to could enable one to achieve what she claims to have achieved: she's been posting, on average, six reviews a day since November 1999! Taking (or not taking) a leak, posting subhuman gibberish, idiot proliferation of non-existing subgenres, endless errors of fact — things like that do matter, but they add very little to the fundamental fact that no human can read six books a day every day of every month for eleven years. And this six-a-day is the overall average: her shorter-term averages are far higer sometimes.
Notes.
1. Actually, Krapusner writes on her own site:
I was born in the Bronx where I obtained a Masters in Library Science. My thesis topic was the Impact of Science Fiction Reading by High School Seniors on Standardized Reading Scores. I met my spouse Stan when he read my palm in a Bronx outdoor cafe. [let's skip a bit of this nauseating marivaudage and get to the chase] [...] where [Harrisburg, PA] I worked in the local bookstore and provided some limited book reviewing services. [...]That was, as you can imagine, quite some time ago, well before Amazon's shill enablement and Harriet's taking advantage of it in the late 1999.
2: Now, think of it, for people that smart, how hard would it be to disallow mass-posting of crap a la Klausner? (Allow everyone ten book reviews a month: this will let every real reader review 120 books a year — more than adequate for a simple mortal, methinks.) Or what about shutting down people who use multiple "verified" accounts to review the same item multiple times or to mass-vote for the same review? Or authors reviewing (five-stars) their own books, openly, posting under their own name? Or using stacks of bullshit, no-purchase accounts to vote on comments and "report this" buttons — a complete free-for-all a casual visitor isn't even aware of? Technically, none of this is difficult to put an end to, yet Amazon doesn't do it, so one must assume their lack of action is political, not technical, meaning that Amazon's reviewing system is defective as it is not by omission but by design: to all appearances, Amazon loves shills; enabling their massive attack on the consumer has probably been part of their "understanding" with vendors who sell through Amazon.
Unrelated: btw, yesterday I decided to conduct my semiannual test of the Klausner Voting Shield: I negged a review of hers. I was pleased to see the vote show up upon the next refresh, but yet another refresh showed the vote removed: which is a sign of active vote filtering. Once more, to those who don't know: I never vote on Klausner reviews (other than a test like this; previous took place near a year ago) and so I cannot possibly qualify as her "fan", negative or positive (we talked about this before). So why is Amazon protecting Harriet? No wonder she's clawing back up in rank lately. (More on that in our Does Harriet Klausner have a special dispensation from Amazon?.)
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Thank you, Ms. Klausner for a wonderful, intriguing preview
Someone "Joel, Holden" writes (comments) under a Klausner review of Other Kingdoms:
Now, two things. First, "Joel, Holden", perhaps unwittingly, breaks the code here: this Klausner excretion is (as all of them are) a preview, not a review. Second, when I see someone praising Harriet ("Thank you, Ms. Klausner for a wonderful, intriguing preview. My copy is on the way."), I kinda feel funny. Is it possible to be such an imbecile as to be honestly pleased by a Klausner blurb? And so (perhaps it's paranoia, I don't know) I just have to suspect a "scratch-my-back" action by a pleased author/flunkey/publisher employee. Iow, someone shilling for the shill (many of you will recall similarly unctuous posts by Mark Blackburn and JP Pix in the Harp realm). Iow, it's Quality Comments™ (remember Quality Comments™¹ ?).
So, driven by my paranoia, I begin to trace out who the hell this "Joel, Holden" might be. First I click on his name and go to his profile page, where I discover that he is (surprise, surprise!) an author (whose nom de plume is apparently "Barry Eysman"; among other things on this page there's an Amazon UK page holding something like a catalog of "Barry Eysman"'s oeuvre). Going back to Joel/Barry's US page: he's got some reviews; let's visit there. Well, nothing eye-catching, the prose a bit purple, otherwise all right... not all five-star, there are some negatives too... looks fine to me. Except notice that like every second review of his contain a strange link — a link that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the book reviewed or the review itself. And (bet you know where it's going) if we visit those links, we'll find out that all of them lead to the books by? yes, by Barry Eysner.
So this is one of those guys who don't do things just for the heck of it: they've got a product to puff, and everything they do has to serve that purpose. It's like the reviewers who always include in all their reviews that they are "the author of" this and that, and so on, which has nothing to do with the book/review — which invalidates their reviews, 'cause you immediately think, all right, this guy posts reviews not to review anything but to promote his own stuff; this is not a real review: he's a member of the scribbling crowd who review (always five stars) one another's crap as a matter of course, adding nothing — other than a faint smell of shit — to the universe; to be ignored. And so getting back to this Harriet review: do you think Joel/Barry's is a bona fide remark, or is it Quality Comments™?
Note 1: Remember Quality Comments™? The site that sold their shilling services, where for a payment their employees would visit a designated website and post "realistic-looking" comments — "Our Blog Comments are of high quality! [...] Our promise to you is that the comments will look very real[...] The blogger won't recognize that its [sic] a paid post" — kinda like Astroturf? I don't know if that BuyBlogComments.com vendor is still in business, but we've blogged a lot about them — or rather about the phenomenon itself — like for example here
PS. No, the place is no longer online, unfortunately. But there's plenty of it in caches, like this page, for example (here's a google search on their name; if the pages are absent, use the cache).
Now, two things. First, "Joel, Holden", perhaps unwittingly, breaks the code here: this Klausner excretion is (as all of them are) a preview, not a review. Second, when I see someone praising Harriet ("Thank you, Ms. Klausner for a wonderful, intriguing preview. My copy is on the way."), I kinda feel funny. Is it possible to be such an imbecile as to be honestly pleased by a Klausner blurb? And so (perhaps it's paranoia, I don't know) I just have to suspect a "scratch-my-back" action by a pleased author/flunkey/publisher employee. Iow, someone shilling for the shill (many of you will recall similarly unctuous posts by Mark Blackburn and JP Pix in the Harp realm). Iow, it's Quality Comments™ (remember Quality Comments™¹ ?).
So, driven by my paranoia, I begin to trace out who the hell this "Joel, Holden" might be. First I click on his name and go to his profile page, where I discover that he is (surprise, surprise!) an author (whose nom de plume is apparently "Barry Eysman"; among other things on this page there's an Amazon UK page holding something like a catalog of "Barry Eysman"'s oeuvre). Going back to Joel/Barry's US page: he's got some reviews; let's visit there. Well, nothing eye-catching, the prose a bit purple, otherwise all right... not all five-star, there are some negatives too... looks fine to me. Except notice that like every second review of his contain a strange link — a link that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the book reviewed or the review itself. And (bet you know where it's going) if we visit those links, we'll find out that all of them lead to the books by? yes, by Barry Eysner.
So this is one of those guys who don't do things just for the heck of it: they've got a product to puff, and everything they do has to serve that purpose. It's like the reviewers who always include in all their reviews that they are "the author of" this and that, and so on, which has nothing to do with the book/review — which invalidates their reviews, 'cause you immediately think, all right, this guy posts reviews not to review anything but to promote his own stuff; this is not a real review: he's a member of the scribbling crowd who review (always five stars) one another's crap as a matter of course, adding nothing — other than a faint smell of shit — to the universe; to be ignored. And so getting back to this Harriet review: do you think Joel/Barry's is a bona fide remark, or is it Quality Comments™?
Note 1: Remember Quality Comments™? The site that sold their shilling services, where for a payment their employees would visit a designated website and post "realistic-looking" comments — "Our Blog Comments are of high quality! [...] Our promise to you is that the comments will look very real[...] The blogger won't recognize that its [sic] a paid post" — kinda like Astroturf? I don't know if that BuyBlogComments.com vendor is still in business, but we've blogged a lot about them — or rather about the phenomenon itself — like for example here
PS. No, the place is no longer online, unfortunately. But there's plenty of it in caches, like this page, for example (here's a google search on their name; if the pages are absent, use the cache).
Thomas-Sundstrom Book: the saga ends (?)
Following up on the previous post: Harriet has now posted another review there; now it's probably what it should have been, and it's now rated five stars rather than four. Both reviews got a positive vote (probably from the author: why are the authors even allowed on the site?). Here's a snapshot (just in case the saga hasn't eneded here) — compare and contrast!
Friday, March 25, 2011
Come on, Linda, you got four stars, what else do you want?
Our Lady of Fauxreview has reviewed Golden Vampire by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom, but, um, it seems there's a problem! Author does not recognise the book she wrote in this valuable Klausner review! Ouch. But then, Linda, please be reasonable: Harriet doesn't read no stinking books (and you knew that, 'cause everyone knows that, 'cause how can anyone read (and review) six books a day, every day for over a decade? Yet this is Harriet's average over the life of her account)! She only posts blurbs, without reading the books: how would she know which blurb goes where? And then, who cares what the text is if the rating is good, after all. It's a positive review, four stars (although, for Harriet, it's a rarity: usually it's five stars... maybe Harriet found the reviewing fee insufficient? We'll never know). Anyway, Dear Reader, check it out (while it lasts; I took a snapshot though, see below, click for normal size):
Taken down?!?! How dare you. How dare you. Nothing gets taken down that Harriet graciously indited. Re-write your book to match the review! OK, so: here we have an author and/or her publisher hoisted on their own petard — I doubt Harriet bought this book: the author, Linda Thomas-Sundstrom (or her publisher) has probably requested a review and supplied a freebie for Harriet to "review" (and maybe a fee, who knows... it's hard to believe someone would throw up multiple reviews, no matter how bad, every day if it were not for a pay). Any takeaway lessons here? Yes: do not hire shills to puff your stuff.
PS. If the review does get blown away, remember that it will persist a long while in the reviews list sorted by most-recent comment. In addition to the snapshot above, I mean.
PPS. 1 a.m. next morning: Kluckusner blurb is gone. Damn! Not only gone, but in a speedily conducted (non-"Amazon-Verified") damage-control operation replaced by a fully five-starred piece of perky, smooth-flowing professional copy, quite Klausnerian in content, but impeccable grammatically and completely coherent. I say, Harriet is far more fun; bring back Harriet's blurb. 'course our Maîtresse will not disappoint and will (and already did!) post more of her delightfully discombobulatory burbling little affairs — but not for this book! And that is a loss.
Oh btw, the new reviewer, "J. M. Dickson" (real name), has only three reviews (including this one) in his record, all of them for books by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom. The other two reviews (dated 2010 and 2009) have been "Amazon-Verified" (there was probably no hurry then — although they're also distinctly less well-written: just a couple of lines, fairly vacuous, definitely not like this latest one).
Actually, a bit of digging uncovered the fact that J.M. Dickson also is a writer of similar kind of books, so this begins to look more and more like a professional favour by one writer to another (iow, essentially the same as a Klausner review would be: not an honest review by an unaffiliated reader, but something concocted by the industry in order to move the wares).
Klausner blurb also survives (for now) as a google-cached page from her "go round" blog (snapshot below, for when the cache goes dead, which it will, with time; the post itself has been deleted).
Taken down?!?! How dare you. How dare you. Nothing gets taken down that Harriet graciously indited. Re-write your book to match the review! OK, so: here we have an author and/or her publisher hoisted on their own petard — I doubt Harriet bought this book: the author, Linda Thomas-Sundstrom (or her publisher) has probably requested a review and supplied a freebie for Harriet to "review" (and maybe a fee, who knows... it's hard to believe someone would throw up multiple reviews, no matter how bad, every day if it were not for a pay). Any takeaway lessons here? Yes: do not hire shills to puff your stuff.
PS. If the review does get blown away, remember that it will persist a long while in the reviews list sorted by most-recent comment. In addition to the snapshot above, I mean.
PPS. 1 a.m. next morning: Kluckusner blurb is gone. Damn! Not only gone, but in a speedily conducted (non-"Amazon-Verified") damage-control operation replaced by a fully five-starred piece of perky, smooth-flowing professional copy, quite Klausnerian in content, but impeccable grammatically and completely coherent. I say, Harriet is far more fun; bring back Harriet's blurb. 'course our Maîtresse will not disappoint and will (and already did!) post more of her delightfully discombobulatory burbling little affairs — but not for this book! And that is a loss.
Oh btw, the new reviewer, "J. M. Dickson" (real name), has only three reviews (including this one) in his record, all of them for books by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom. The other two reviews (dated 2010 and 2009) have been "Amazon-Verified" (there was probably no hurry then — although they're also distinctly less well-written: just a couple of lines, fairly vacuous, definitely not like this latest one).
Actually, a bit of digging uncovered the fact that J.M. Dickson also is a writer of similar kind of books, so this begins to look more and more like a professional favour by one writer to another (iow, essentially the same as a Klausner review would be: not an honest review by an unaffiliated reader, but something concocted by the industry in order to move the wares).
Klausner blurb also survives (for now) as a google-cached page from her "go round" blog (snapshot below, for when the cache goes dead, which it will, with time; the post itself has been deleted).
We Got Mail
We've received a note from someone claiming to be one of the Amazon (top?) reviewers, who wishes to let us (and the world? :-) know that not everyone on Amazon is a phony PoS like our dear Harriet, or — very distant, of course! — W.Boudville, Maestro Harp, John Matlock "Gunny", Midwest Book Reviews, Mark-O, Dr.Maraio, "Respected Leatherman" Roubel, etc., etc. Well, we can believe that! (Not that we'd be terribly surprised to find out otherwise, btw., but yeah, it is possible that not everyone in the "Top" category is a fake.) Anyway, here's the letter (name withheld because the correspondent did not explicitly ask to post it, and in cases like that we always err on the side of privacy):
Hi!Well... yeah, OK, no problem, we believe you.
I occasionally read the stuff that gets posted on your site & only recently did I really feel like I needed to post anything. It was in response to Malleus' post about top amazon reviewers. I couldn't post it on the site but here's generally what I had to say:
I can't speak for anyone but myself but I did want to let you know that myself & more than a few other "top reviewers" do actually read the books & use the items that we review. I just read somewhat quickly & thanks to my night job having some extended periods of downtime I get to indulge my habits of reading & reviewing. It's just something I like to do in my spare time & I've been lucky enough to get up around the top 300-ish. I don't think I'll get any higher than that unless I suddenly win the lottery & get oodles of time to read & review or unless some computer error levitates me to the top.
Just wanted to let you know that not all top reviewers are machines intent on rising to the top in the hopes of getting recognition or free stuff. I've seen more than a few that seem to just crank stuff out but a lot of us are just people who really like to review in our free time. The expensive goodies might be nice but in the end that's not what we really go in for.
I have to admit, getting accused of possibly being a hack or a shill sort of miffs me a little. I'll admit that I'm pretty easy to entertain (the stuff I like that I don't post reviews for is pretty embarrassing) but I don't pimp myself out in the hopes of reward. That's the opposite of what I want to be recognized for.
Thanks!
[name withheld]
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