More ebooks stuff
Thursday, 25 February 2010By 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?
The terrific author Kristin Hannah has a couple of these for her latest book. 19 five star reviews and 4 one-stars, three of which bitch about price. I find this shocking. Do these reviewers not realize that they can get this book, and every other, for FREE from the library? That is TEN DOLLARS LESS than the price of the ebook they’d be willing to buy.
Consumer greed, like corporate greed, is a strange, irrational thing, and I feel for these authors. I hope readers have the sense to read the actual reviews to see exactly how useful they are, or aren’t, so they don’t miss out on some truly wonderful stories.
But doesn’t Amazon deleting reviews for any reason just feel wrong?
Yes, these reviews are dumb. But so are people who buy books based solely on the star-rating of anonymous-and-unqualified-past-having-the-capability-to-locate-amazon.com-on-the-internet critics, without delving any further into the context of those star ratings.
It sucks that authors are getting 1-star ratings that have nothing to do with the quality of their work. But does it matter? People say meaningless things on the internet all the time, and they are not immediately adopted by everyone as concrete fact. Consumers should be trusted to give the same weight to these reviews as they do to my Marshall McLuhan Was Probably Illiterate Tumblr.
I bought a printer yesterday. Before purchasing, I checked the user reviews. It had three 4-star reviews and one 0-star review. The 0-starrer judged it such because the wifi connection on his obviously defective model that could easily have been returned for a replacement did not work. I looked past the overall 3/5 star rating and read the actual reviews. Then I bought the printer.
I guess what I’m saying is that everyone should be more like me.
@Conor: It does feel wrong, but on the other hand, it’s not a free-speech zone. They do delete or redact some reviews for certain reasons, and maybe “This reviewer has not actually read the book he is reviewing” should be one of them. Because although, yeah, people should actually check out the reviews before they make a decision, the whole reason for aggregating reviews into an average rating, represented by an easy-to-understand star picture, is so that people don’t have to. I don’t think it’s a big deal for a book with a lot of five- and four-star ratings and a handful of price-based one-stars. But for a book with a lot of four-star ratings that a bunch of angry Kindle owners happen to glom on to? If it brought the average rating down to three or two and a half stars, I’d be upset if I were the author.
I mean, the answer to like every problem on the Internet is that people should be more like you—oh my God I can’t believe I wrote that—but if that answer worked, there wouldn’t be any problems in the first place.
I sort of agree with @Conor. When I see a bunch of good ratings and a random one star, I always scan the one star to see if the person is just a moron or actually has a legitimate beef with whatever the review is for. I don’t think I know anybody who has ever bought anything based solely on the fact that it had the top amount of stars allowed for whatever site.
I think the bigger concern isn’t whether a one-star rating is unfair to an author when it’s based on nothing to do with their work, but rather that the whole system of allowing non-moderated, universal-access rating is too easily abused to the point it becomes worthless. I noticed this a lot when I was recently looking for a new cel phone. There were a lot of one-star ‘this service/phone sucks!’ reviews that were no more than ‘this service/phone sucks!”. There were also a lot of 5-star reviews that were clearly posted by the PR department of the phone manufacturer or provider.
But. back to Amazon…
I sort of agree with @Josh too. It’s a corporate site not a free-speach site and Amazon should run it how they like. It’s then up to the consumer to decide if what they’re offering is worthwhile or not.
As for authors with a bunch of four-star ratings being slighted by angry Kindle mobs, they should maybe stop obsessing. Yeah it sucks, but so does having the guy at the book store trash your book because he hates the cover art. The answer is to go back to writing the next book or go out and pro-actively promote your current one.
Wow…sorry that’s all over the place. I really need some coffee.
@Shawn: Yeah, your second-to-last graf there more or less says it, practically speaking.