By way of bulicks, this post about author Yves Smith, who’s concerned about the Kindle edition of her new book getting bad reviews:
Her publisher, Palgrave, is part of Macmillan, which just won a fight to force Amazon to sell e-books at more than $10, but part of the fallout from that fight is that books which cost much more than that on the kindle often get one-star reviews on the basis of their pricing alone.
There’s a simple fix here, which is for Amazon to delete reviews that focus solely on a book’s price. Not that it’s in their interest to do so, because they want to keep their ebook prices low for now, to sell more Kindles, and they can point to such reviews as support for their stance. But if they did want to—I don’t know, what do you think? Price ought to be a factor in a review of any product, of course—the primary practical question a review is trying to answer is “Is this worth it?” But if the review is just a complaint about the price—which is really a complaint about the system as a whole, and not so much the specific book—is it right to let it stand?
This is hypothetical for Smith—her book isn’t out for another week, so there are no such reviews of it yet. And maybe there won’t be any—I just spent a few minutes trying to find one, and after scanning the very small handful of Kindle editions priced over $9.99 in the top 150 nonfiction and fiction titles, I couldn’t find such a one-star review. But mine wasn’t an in-depth search, and those reviews, they are out there: Author T.J. Stiles posted a response when his book received some (although they weren’t a result of the Macmillan flap; his post is from last May).
For Stiles, the issue was that the reviewers in question didn’t even seem to have read the book. I’d tend to absolutely side with him there: If you can’t (or don’t) speak to anything about a product besides its price, then the place for your complaint is not in the reviews. Again, price is a matter of context: To me, the Left Behind books are not worth a dollar, much less $6.49, based on what the reviews tell me about them; on the other hand, I’d happily pay $36 for this biography of Marshall McLuhan (even if it weren’t cheaper than the hardcover or paperback price), if the single review it’s received is at all accurate. (And this guy has a particularly excellent complaint. To which I would add: Part 3 is really where the series should have ended.)
Saying, “This isn’t worth more than $9.99 to me because of x, y, and z” makes sense. Saying, “This isn’t worth more than $9.99 to me simply because a book should never be more than $9.99″ is silly, and the sentiment is misplaced. If the $9.99 hardliners want to treat book-publishing economics like widget-making economics, despite the differences, then they have to ask: Would it be fair to review a car by saying, “Well, I don’t know anything about this car, but $25,000 is way too much for any car, so I’m giving it one star”? Or a dishwasher? Or a scratching post? (Yes, I have been reading scratching post reviews lately.)
Also note that since Stiles posted his response, the price of his Kindle edition has dropped—to $9.99. That’s the other thing: Prices aren’t static. And once they change, are one-star reviews that deal solely with dollar-cost serving any purpose besides possibly hurting the author’s sales? And if they’re not, shouldn’t Amazon delete them?
