It's a Gordian knot of bad faith and absurdity.
Firstly, the matter of e-book authors writers paying a supplier for positive (5-star) reviews from "readers" who may not have read the books in question. (That's actually 2 matters - firstly, the automatic 5 stars, and secondly, and the one I assume the hoo-hah is about, is the availability of the paid service.)
Now this could not happen - the reviews wouldn't convince potential buyers - if customer reviews hadn't already been a large feature of Amazon's database, if people hadn't already been using them to make buying/reading/viewing decisions.
I've used the customer reviews there many times to decide about DVDs I wanted to use for some of the DVD film-festivals at work a few years ago. I needed them particularly for things I wasn't personally familiar with (Korean TV series, films from Mongolia and Iran, some older new-wave films from China I hadn't seen, and so on). I liked Amazon customer reviews because they are, generally, without guile. If people got bored half-way through, or even ten minutes into, they said so. There were usually enough reviews of a title to form a balanced judgement before setting in motion a lot of possibly needless activity in setting up the festival, and to save myself a lot of embarrassment.
So that was valuable knowledge. I appreciated its existence.
And, once more, there are 2 things to consider here.
Firstly, how can I go on trusting Amazon customer reviews if they can be bought and paid for?
Secondly: why do I value Amazon customer reviews for their honesty, if the old-media, "professional" reviews, are also honest?
Answer: because the professional reviews are not honest.* They are every bit as pre-paid as the "scandalous" e-book reviews - they just work in the 2.5-4.5 star range. (Their question seems to be: Is this book a good or bad example of its type?)
(Publishing is an assembly-line; the assembly-line mass-produces predictable objects. The potential book should announce its similarity to previous books; it should not take place in a particular locale, but be equally local to all potential readers...) (But that's old news. This development began in the mid-'60s, when profits were first going to be "maximized" and corporate mergers were still just proposals and plans. It took another 10 years for the doing away with the mid-list to become an explicit, effective policy. Norman Spinrad was one of the first to raise that alarm among writers, in 1978.)
The function of professional reviewers has always been to keep the books selling, and, hemi-demi-semi-consciously, reviewers feel the pressure. (How many times have you read a negative review that revised itself into positivity before your eyes and its own end?)**
This is another kind of silencing of dissent, trivial, creepy, and indicative. If you can't tell the truth about a book you've read, what can you tell the truth about?
In an understandable effort to create an island of sanity/probity in this steaming swamp of payola, this anyone will do anything for money - which is a definition of slavery, among other things - 49 British authors wrote a letter to the Daily Telegraph, condemning the widespread use, by authors, of fake identities to puff their own pieces and slam those of their "rivals". (See the introductory article here.)
Yesterday I came across a hard copy of Steve Lawhead's The Spirit Well (Nashville, Thomas Nelson, 2012). This is a transcript of the first two pages. (Emphases in the original.)
==
What Readers Are Saying about The Bright Empires Series
"His mastery of the art of description is beyond belief. (I had to stop several times to jump up and down because I loved his style so much, seriously.) His level of attention to details like period mind-set and speech is a delight to behold (especially for die-hard background-first novelists like me)." - Sir Emeth M.
"This is a story that has it all: mystery, history, damsels in distress, and a mind-bending meditation on the nature of reality. It is in equal parts Raiders of the Lost Ark, National Treasure, and Jumper. Highly recommended." - Chad J.
"Filled with descriptions that beguile all five senses and all the beauty and charm of the language I have come to expect from Lawhead, this book is a fascinating blend of fantasy and sci-fi." - Jenelle S.
"... a hold-your-breath beginning to a new series. This novel mixes ancient history, time travel, alternate realities, mystery, physics, and fantasy, to create a story so compelling that I find myself recommending it to any who will listen." - Sheila P.
"[A] sure winner for eager sci-fi readers... The vivid imagery and witty lines help keep the reader on the edge of their seats." - Jerry P.
"Time travel and high adventure abound in this brand new title from veteran author Stephen R. Lawhead." - Ben H.
"Imagine Narnia merged with Hitchhiker's Guide, and you have a starting point for the adventures of Kit Livingstone." - Rick M.
"Lawhead vividly describes the sights, sounds, and smells of the markets in Prague, the streets of Restoration England, and even the dry heat of Ancient Egypt... The premise of ley-line travel is fascinating yet mysterious, with scientific definitions that are detailed without being too technical. The characters are personable and complex, and it's easy to get caught up in their search for that elusive map." - Malinda D.
"... an excellent, mysterious storyline that draws the reader in." - Kieran
==
Let's leave aside the fact that The Spirit Well is volume 3 of the series and that at least one of the quotes does not strictly apply to the item in hand.
What I immediately notice is that:
*the punctuation is surprisingly correct for the level of prose - "I loved his style so much, seriously"
*the pitch-points/selling-points (bolded) are surprisingly concise for people who are "beguiled" by Lawhead's prose, which is flat, sloppy, flatly under-imagined and flatly overwritten, awkward in contemporary scenes and awkward in period.
None of these accolades is credibly sourced. They sound like some Amazon reviews but they don't sound quite real. They smell of over-eagerness; they have such a sameness of tone and intent, such a single thrust of argument, they smell of some sort of fix.
A major publisher including such "reviews" in the book itself, is, to me, an even greater scandal than writers puffing themselves, no matter how deceitfully and underhandedly.
These pages in the book are not accessible to greedy individual authors, mavericks who suffer an unfortunate ethical insufficiency, and who will be discovered, eventually, pass through the mandatory brief public shame and so be absolved, i.e., forgotten and left to begin again under a pseudonym.
The beyond-Amazon, hard-copy corporate sponsorship of this kind of review is not being mentioned. The "scandal" is being confined to the behaviour of flesh and blood individuals. Corporate persons are exempt from, defined as above and beyond, whatever rage results from the hijacking of the mouths they call ours.
===
Firstly, the matter of e-book authors writers paying a supplier for positive (5-star) reviews from "readers" who may not have read the books in question. (That's actually 2 matters - firstly, the automatic 5 stars, and secondly, and the one I assume the hoo-hah is about, is the availability of the paid service.)
Now this could not happen - the reviews wouldn't convince potential buyers - if customer reviews hadn't already been a large feature of Amazon's database, if people hadn't already been using them to make buying/reading/viewing decisions.
I've used the customer reviews there many times to decide about DVDs I wanted to use for some of the DVD film-festivals at work a few years ago. I needed them particularly for things I wasn't personally familiar with (Korean TV series, films from Mongolia and Iran, some older new-wave films from China I hadn't seen, and so on). I liked Amazon customer reviews because they are, generally, without guile. If people got bored half-way through, or even ten minutes into, they said so. There were usually enough reviews of a title to form a balanced judgement before setting in motion a lot of possibly needless activity in setting up the festival, and to save myself a lot of embarrassment.
So that was valuable knowledge. I appreciated its existence.
And, once more, there are 2 things to consider here.
Firstly, how can I go on trusting Amazon customer reviews if they can be bought and paid for?
Secondly: why do I value Amazon customer reviews for their honesty, if the old-media, "professional" reviews, are also honest?
Answer: because the professional reviews are not honest.* They are every bit as pre-paid as the "scandalous" e-book reviews - they just work in the 2.5-4.5 star range. (Their question seems to be: Is this book a good or bad example of its type?)
(Publishing is an assembly-line; the assembly-line mass-produces predictable objects. The potential book should announce its similarity to previous books; it should not take place in a particular locale, but be equally local to all potential readers...) (But that's old news. This development began in the mid-'60s, when profits were first going to be "maximized" and corporate mergers were still just proposals and plans. It took another 10 years for the doing away with the mid-list to become an explicit, effective policy. Norman Spinrad was one of the first to raise that alarm among writers, in 1978.)
The function of professional reviewers has always been to keep the books selling, and, hemi-demi-semi-consciously, reviewers feel the pressure. (How many times have you read a negative review that revised itself into positivity before your eyes and its own end?)**
This is another kind of silencing of dissent, trivial, creepy, and indicative. If you can't tell the truth about a book you've read, what can you tell the truth about?
In an understandable effort to create an island of sanity/probity in this steaming swamp of payola, this anyone will do anything for money - which is a definition of slavery, among other things - 49 British authors wrote a letter to the Daily Telegraph, condemning the widespread use, by authors, of fake identities to puff their own pieces and slam those of their "rivals". (See the introductory article here.)
Yesterday I came across a hard copy of Steve Lawhead's The Spirit Well (Nashville, Thomas Nelson, 2012). This is a transcript of the first two pages. (Emphases in the original.)
==
What Readers Are Saying about The Bright Empires Series
"His mastery of the art of description is beyond belief. (I had to stop several times to jump up and down because I loved his style so much, seriously.) His level of attention to details like period mind-set and speech is a delight to behold (especially for die-hard background-first novelists like me)." - Sir Emeth M.
"This is a story that has it all: mystery, history, damsels in distress, and a mind-bending meditation on the nature of reality. It is in equal parts Raiders of the Lost Ark, National Treasure, and Jumper. Highly recommended." - Chad J.
"Filled with descriptions that beguile all five senses and all the beauty and charm of the language I have come to expect from Lawhead, this book is a fascinating blend of fantasy and sci-fi." - Jenelle S.
"... a hold-your-breath beginning to a new series. This novel mixes ancient history, time travel, alternate realities, mystery, physics, and fantasy, to create a story so compelling that I find myself recommending it to any who will listen." - Sheila P.
"[A] sure winner for eager sci-fi readers... The vivid imagery and witty lines help keep the reader on the edge of their seats." - Jerry P.
"Time travel and high adventure abound in this brand new title from veteran author Stephen R. Lawhead." - Ben H.
"Imagine Narnia merged with Hitchhiker's Guide, and you have a starting point for the adventures of Kit Livingstone." - Rick M.
"Lawhead vividly describes the sights, sounds, and smells of the markets in Prague, the streets of Restoration England, and even the dry heat of Ancient Egypt... The premise of ley-line travel is fascinating yet mysterious, with scientific definitions that are detailed without being too technical. The characters are personable and complex, and it's easy to get caught up in their search for that elusive map." - Malinda D.
"... an excellent, mysterious storyline that draws the reader in." - Kieran
==
Let's leave aside the fact that The Spirit Well is volume 3 of the series and that at least one of the quotes does not strictly apply to the item in hand.
What I immediately notice is that:
*the punctuation is surprisingly correct for the level of prose - "I loved his style so much, seriously"
*the pitch-points/selling-points (bolded) are surprisingly concise for people who are "beguiled" by Lawhead's prose, which is flat, sloppy, flatly under-imagined and flatly overwritten, awkward in contemporary scenes and awkward in period.
None of these accolades is credibly sourced. They sound like some Amazon reviews but they don't sound quite real. They smell of over-eagerness; they have such a sameness of tone and intent, such a single thrust of argument, they smell of some sort of fix.
A major publisher including such "reviews" in the book itself, is, to me, an even greater scandal than writers puffing themselves, no matter how deceitfully and underhandedly.
These pages in the book are not accessible to greedy individual authors, mavericks who suffer an unfortunate ethical insufficiency, and who will be discovered, eventually, pass through the mandatory brief public shame and so be absolved, i.e., forgotten and left to begin again under a pseudonym.
The beyond-Amazon, hard-copy corporate sponsorship of this kind of review is not being mentioned. The "scandal" is being confined to the behaviour of flesh and blood individuals. Corporate persons are exempt from, defined as above and beyond, whatever rage results from the hijacking of the mouths they call ours.
===
*Writers glad-handing each other's work is not just a recent occurrence: writers reviewing each other favourably and arranging exchange professorships / lectureships / fellowships for each other goes all the way back to the New York Review of Books, which was founded by publishers, notably Random House. (NYRB also pretty much founded the travelling writer's lecture business, another medium for promoting some writers, some books, some ideas.)
All this is detailed in The End of Intelligent Writing, by Richard Kostelanetz (Sheed and Ward, New York, 1974). This book is invaluable about the history and shape of U.S. publishing - and if nothing else, will explain why is is so important to know that Jason Epstein was Jeff Bezoz' mentor.
**In the Australian case I see the fear that bad reviews will kill a genuinely tiny industry. Unfortunately, that industry can also die of good reviews. The precariousness of Australian book activity, like that of the other English-language publishers, comes from trying to make a branded, assembly-line industry out of an essentially unpredictable, low-margin business.
