June 8th, 2010 | 
Author: Some books on Amazon have rave reviews. I know that authors and their associates have been know to write fake reviews to make their books look good.
How can I get real, independent evaluations of books on Amazon?
Some books on Amazon have rave reviews. I know that authors and their associates have been know to write fake reviews to make their books look good.
How can I get real, independent evaluations of books on Amazon?
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For every good review on amazon, there are a handful of bad ones to go with it. I assure you, almost nothing on amazon has ever gone without at least one honest opinion.
Any book review is going to be a personal opinion and nothing more.
Your best bet is to read the blurb on the back cover, and use Amazon’s “look inside” feature to read a couple of pages and see if it’s what you’re looking for. Don’t rely too heavily on reviews — they’re nothing more than an individual opinion, whether they’re written by the author himself or not.
The only time I really pay attention to reviews is if there is a disproportionately large percentage of negative reviews. Every book is going to get some bad reviews at some point….but if the majority are 2 stars or less, they’re worth considering.
Amazon is a law unto itself – my book’s recently been re-published and we posted the official reviews from the first publication because the only things that had changed were the cover and a bit of the intro text but Amazon put a note on the reviews saying, ‘applies to an out of print or unavailable edition’ – and nothing I can do can get them to change that!
Also, I’ve read some smashing books that have no reviews or have negative reviews on Amazon, and I know that a lot of small press authors don’t encourage reviews on Amazon. They don’t want their books ordered through Amazon, but through their own publishers or local bookshops who need the trade.
You can’t. You will have to go to sites that actually specialize in proper reviews.