Amazon reviewers are coming under fire and seemingly for good reason. It's been reported by some sources that there has been a conspiracy of sorts among reviewers to intentionally give bad reviews to some books and to elevate others.
The Salon blog had an excellent article chronicling some specific infamous reviews. Go here to read the entire article. Don't miss it.
But here are a few highlights:
One reviewer wrote of the Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank:
'I didn't like this book because it was boring. That's all that needs to be said. It was very very very very very very very very very very very boring. If you have to read this book shoot yourself first.'
And of To Kill a Mockingbird one said: 'Looking for a sappy, cliched, novel to read? One predictable as most young-adult books and more degrading than harlequin romances? Well, To Kill a Mockingbird is your book. In this novel, all Harper Lee gives as a theme is "life isn't fair." I think most of us couold have figured that out without a book that should have started where the first "part" ended. Ms. Lee merely portrays a terrible, biased, southern society that seemingly places its main goal on ruining everyone elses life. Her female characters are flat, simple-minded women. Wether or not this is due to its setting is irrelevant. Lee places guilt on a group of people instead of individuals (the Ewells) as it should be. Thank God Ms. Lee only wrote this book; surely her next would degrade society even further. I'm sure it too would be deemed a classic as long as it dealt with politically correct subjects that are far too worn out to remain interesting.'
One more - on the Bible the reviewer said: 'Man, this book is boring. All this weird stuff happens and it's harder to get into than Lord of the Rings. And what's up with the red writing and the LORD says stuff. All caps = rude, peter paul and mark, whoever the heck you are. And this is just badly written. James Patterson could do better.' Whew.
Makes you want to see your book on Amazon don't it?
1 comment:
I've mostly been lucky in the reviews I've got but they sometimes do make you wonder. One reviewer said of The Darkness 'There's a heavy dose of human suffering in this book that makes me want to call it a novel rather than a thriller or a mystery'. To me that sounds like a compliment but I don't think it was intended that way.
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