[Roger Slater]

I find product reviews very helpful when I am buying a toaster or a printer, but less so when I am looking for a book to read. There are so many crappy books out there with glowing reviews by Amazon users. Why would I be convinced by a review from someone I don't know? I don't think I've ever bought a book because of reader reviews on Amazon. And while Susan may admirably avoid reviewing books by people she knows well, I am quite certain that countless reviewers do not share her scruples. Many reviews you will find are by close friends, family members, or even the author, not to mention colleagues and friends from critique groups. At times the same friendly reviewer may review the book more than once, using different sign-ins. While it is indeed gratifying for an author to have ositive reviews accompany his listing, I'm not convinced it is an effective sales tool. Though, as usual, it should go without saying that I may be wrong.

[Rick Mullin]

Well...c'mon. Apparently Susan reviewed Jehanne's book. Which is great! I don't know how well Susan and Jehanne know each other, but they know each other. Their circles appear to me to be concentric. And they should review each other's books at Amazon.

My book did, in fact, get one Amazon review, a glowing review from a supportive friend who is also a poet and an editor of a journal we like and Quincy Lehr and a guy with a reputation who isn't going to just blow smoke in a public forum. I know of one sale prompted by that review. One is probably it, but that really doesn't matter as much as the review itself, which is much appreciated. It is a discussion of the work. I wish it were part of a conversation--that would be cooler than two sales.

Let's not take ourselves too seriously. An Amazon review, which is not the same thing as a review in a journal, can support a friend and a community of friends. No harm in that. And even a kind review gives a potential reader an idea of what the book is about. We all have reputations to consider, and none of us would just blow smoke in public. Further, no one expects anyone to review everything! Stellar reviews can and should be doled out with discrimination.

Personal note: I accept four star reviews.

RM

[Janice D. Soderling]

I am not questioning the integrity of Susan or Quincy, because I "know" them and trust them.

I am just talking about the general usefulness of Amazon reviews to influence me in book buying. There is also, if I remember correctly, a place on Amazon where one can post "information" about the author and I know at least one disreputable author who has written about himself in glowing terms.

Let's face it, Amazon is a commercial enterprise with a single goal, to sell as many books as possible.

They aren't good for independent bookstores, they aren't even good for books, since their business direction seems to be to replace books one can hold with kindle ebooks. From a business standpoint that is smart. No warehouse costs, no costly pulping of books that no one buys.

Many times I have looked for a book of poetry and found that a slim volume costs a thousand kronor or more, but hype messages suggest that instead I acquire Gossip Girl or someother dimwit book as an ebook for free and for nothing.

Amazon is not about literature. Amazon is about making money and that is fine by me as long as there are other businesses to provide competítion. But everybody knows what happens when a monopoly exists, when alternative markets are gone.

And everybody knows how much to trust a source that doesn't care who writes the reviews as long as someone buys the book.

Again, this is NOT a bash of Susan, Jehanne, Rick, Quincy or other honest and talented authors or reviewers.

Just saying.

[Rick Mullin]

But Janice, you're mixing politics with art. ~,:^)
RM

[Roger Slater]

I agree with a lot of what you say, Janice, except for the swipe at e-books. I know we are all more than a little fond of holding traditional books in our hands, but I've had a Kindle now for two months and absolutely love it. The experience of reading on a Kindle is much more like reading a "real" book than reading off a computer screen, and just about everyone I know who has given the Kindle a try has agreed that it's a wonderful way to read.

Most of the time, the experience is very similar to reading a paper book, but there are benefits that paper does not offer, including (a) having up to 3,500 books and magazines available in a single 8 ounce reader wherever you go, (b) being able to bookmark and annotate what you read, (c) being able to instantly call up a dictionary definition of any word you read, (d) having instant access to countless thousands of free, public domain books, from the complete works of Shakespeare to Dickens to Wharton, and (e) being able to read the first chapter or two of just about every book, including new books, for free.

I agree with you about the limited utility of reader reviews on Amazon, but I don't see them as a problem so much as a feature that I don't care to make much use of. I'd rather have them than not, frankly. In independent bookstores, I often found books labeled as "staff picks," but I was never much influenced by the index cards in which some store clerk told me why a given book was worth my thirty dollars. Apart from not knowing the taste of the clerk, it was just as likely as it now is on Amazon that the pick was driven by sales factors or the comments were written by a friend.

One problem with the Kindle, by the way, is that poetry tends to be formatted incorrectly. So many Kindle books, including Wilbur's latest, leave out stanza breaks and have other grave errors. They claim that the Kindle format limits their options, but they are wrong. You can also put your own personal documents on Kindle, and I have done that with poetry and gotten it to be formatted correctly, so if I can do it, I can't see why Richard Wilbur's publisher can't do likewise. But for prose, Kindle is fabulous.

[David Anthony]

When I buy high-selling books from Amazon I pay close attention to the reviews. They get lots of reviews and you can mostly rely on the consensus, IMO.

Poetry books are different, of course, and you have to look closely at who says what about whom.

But, however, I thought Susan posted a very fair review of one of my books on Amazon, and she did not gush.

Best regards,

David

[Quincy Lehr]

Oh, Amazon does suck, but take it from me, Janice, directing denizens of poetry boards to independent online booksellers who stock one's book results in zero sales. Almost every online sale of my book has been through Amazon.

There's another side to Amazon reviews, by the way, which Rick indicates--Amazon reviews can indicate interest in and engagement with a book. After all, clout from "official" sources doers not always equate with medium-term reader engagement. I'm rather gratified that my book has gotten a couple of recent positive notices in the blogosphere almost three years after its release, and that the thing continues to sell--in spite of virtually no Establishment support in the U.S.

[John Whitworth]

But Rick, in England anyway, a reviewer and an author in a journal often know one another. Les Murray gives me a good review (bless him) and I certainly know him. We have drunk beer together in a hotel in Deal and eaten in a restaurant in Tonbridge. I 'know' though not well, the poetry editors at the Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement. They are both poets, and they both live in London which is only an hour away, so I would.
Probably in the States, the distances being longer, this sort of thing is less the case, but in, say, Dublin and Edinburgh it is much more so.

[Rick Mullin]

John,

I agree that it is completely appropriate for a reviewer to know the author she/he is reviewing. I didn’t say anything to contradict that, or mean to, when I said that an Amazon review and a journal review are different birds.

I look at it this way: When established writers publish books, The Times of New York finds it nearly impossible to come up with a “neutral reviewer” of any standing. The bigger the name, I assume, the more impossible it is to come up with someone who doesn’t know, or couldn’t gain by praising or slamming, the name.

Few of us are well known. We're poets, damn it! It's easy to get people to review us from Palookaville. But it's okay, in my book, if reviewers know the reviewed. Concentric circles, in fact, indicate a level of familiarity and understanding that is rare in Palookaville circles.

Also, I’m a trusting sort. So, when I read Susan’s review of David’s book at Amazon, I assume she is giving it to me straight. That’s just the way I am.

With a firm handshake across the Atlantic!

Rick

[Quincy Lehr]

[No longer relevant.]