**This post originally appeared on dvmulligan.com on 4/28/15**
Longtime readers of this blog know that sometimes I get a little hung up on a topic, and when I do I have to write successive blog posts in order to sort the whole thing out and move on with my life. Thus, another post on my recent experience of learning that Amazon rejected a reader review of one of my books because its computers concluded the reviewer knew me personally.
Let's start with Amazon's goal in policing reader reviews. According to the Email my colleague received from Amazon about why his review had been rejected, "Customer Reviews are meant to give customers unbiased product feedback from fellow shoppers. Because our goal is to provide Customer Reviews that help customers make informed purchase decisions, any reviews that could be viewed as advertising, promotional, or misleading will not be posted."
This is a slightly different way of stating the sentiment on Amazon's review FAQ page: "Customer Reviews are meant to give customers genuine product feedback from fellow shoppers. Our goal is to capture all the energy and enthusiasm (both favorable and critical) that customers have about a product while avoiding use of reviews to outright advertise, promote and especially mislead."
As someone who hopes that prospective readers will be enticed by my product page to buy my books and to then enjoy and favorably review them,I definitely want my product page to be populated with genuine, energetic, and enthusiastic feedback. I absolutely do not want the reviews there to mislead prospective readers, because, if they buy my book with wrong ideas it, they will be disappointed and will review it negatively. So it seems that I, as an author, believe that Amazon's policy suits my interests.
Unfortunately, when enforcing the policy, the objective apparently shifts from ensuring genuine feedback to giving unbiased feedback. Let's parse some definitions, shall we?
Genuine means authentic.
Unbiased means impartial, showing no prejudice
Are genuine and unbiased synonyms? Nope. Not even close. And yet one is used to replace the other in Amazon's explanations of its review policy.
This is a problem because it is possible for a review both both genuine and biased, and it is possible for a review to be both inauthentic and biased, but it is actually not possible for a review to be unbiased.
Reviews, by their nature, convey opinions. Opinions are biased. The bias upon which an opinion is formed may be either personal or factual, but the end result is the same: An opinion is a judgement, an impression, or point-of-view--an opinion is biased. Unbiased opinion is an oxymoron.
Nonetheless, in an effort to ensure genuine reviews, Amazon has conflated what is genuine with what is unbiased, a false connection that rests on the absurd idea that such a thing as an unbiased opinion even exists.
I can understand how this confusion came about: Simply, it is easier to verify personal connections between two registered Amazon users, and therefore to assume bias based on personal acquaintance, than it is to verify the authenticity of a review.
In order to create the appearance of monitoring reader reviews to give customers confidence in what they find there, Amazon has to do something, and so it has set up a series of checks and balances that can easily be carried out by a computer program that can monitor things such as IP addresses and Facebook connections. It's not personal, at least not in the initial phase where a review is flagged. The appeals process seemed to involve a human, although I can't be certain of that.
[Side note: How does Amazon know who your Facebook friends are? I'm sure it has many ways, but if you've ever used the "Share on Facebook" button after a purchase, you probably gave Amazon permission to see who your friends are.]
Even though I felt confident that Amazon was wrongfully attacking my colleague's integrity by removing his review, their insistence on rejecting reviews by known associates made me question myself. Are my friends and family so biased that their kind words about my books cannot be seen as genuine? Are their reviews artificially inflating my books' ratings?
So I did a little "statistical analysis," and I'd like to share the findings with you.
As of this writing, Watch Me Disappear has 32 reviews, with an average rating of 4.09. 12 of those reviews are from people I know in real life (ranging from my little brother to the wife of one of my dad's coworkers). 6 of my friends and family (F&F) reviewers gave it 5-stars, and 6 gave it 4-stars, so on the whole, they did rate it higher than strangers, however, 7 strangers gave it 5-stars and 8 gave it 4-stars. When I took out my F&F reviewers' ratings, the average went down to 3.85. Thus, my F&F reviews are boosting the average, but by a very small margin.
Also as of this writing, The Latecomers Fan Club has 22 reviews, with an average rating of 4.18. 8 of those reviews are from F&F, and 4 of those F&F are people who also reviewed WMD. Half of them gave it 5-stars, and the other half 4-stars. 4 strangers also gave it 5, and 7 gave it 4. When I took out my F&F reviewers' ratings, the average went down to 4.0. Again, the difference is strikingly small.
I know that I can't generalize about ALL indie books based on my own results. Undoubtedly there are self-pubbed books for which F&F reviews do inflate ratings. That said, in my case, F&F reviews aren't out of sync with the reviews from other readers, and so it would not improve the credibility of my book's rating to remove them. Further, in considering these numbers, I don't know what's sadder--that nearly half of my books' reviews are from F&F or that of all the people who know me and who read my book only 16 have written reviews.
But actually, that second point goes straight to the heart of the matter: Amazon argues that reviews by F&F must not be trustworthy due to personal bias, but that argument fails to consider the fact that many F&F will never review a book, for a wide variety of reasons, not limited to a lack of time, a lack of interest, and an unwillingness to post a review they do not genuinely believe in.
What I'm saying is that if F&F reviews seem more favorable than the reviews of strangers, maybe it's not because F&F are inflating their reviews, but rather it's because F&F who don't feel they can write favorable reviews don't write any reviews at all. (Remember what mother always said: If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all).
I know this is getting all twisty-turny, but let me break it down a little and see if I can clarify.
The policy: As far as Amazon is concerned, the only acceptable reviews are from total strangers, and if you gave those total strangers your book for free in exchange for a review, they must disclose that fact.
The idea that reviews from strangers are more trustworthy than reviews from F&F rests on
three faulty assumptions:
I. Anyone with a personal connection to an author will be more generous in his/her review than a stranger.
Problems with this assumption:
1. Amazon casts a broad net when determining what constitutes a personal connection, making no difference between a casual acquaintance and a close friend. Say you work at a company with 200 employees. Someone you know, but not well, reads, enjoys, and wants to review your book. If you have both logged on to Amazon at work, Amazon will see your related IP addresses and reject that review. I have 241 fans on my Facebook author page, about 100 colleagues, 400 college classmates, 200 high school classmates, hundreds of former students--are all those people too connected to me to write reviews? If they are, my ability to use their help to reach new readers is completely hamstrung.
2. It is possible for someone to both know an author personally and to genuinely, deeply enjoy her book.
3. Reviews from an author's F&F make up only a small fraction of an author's actual real-life contacts, and there's no reason to assume they have anything other then honest intentions. It's very difficult to get anyone to find the time to go write a review. In fact, considering how hard it is to get the people who know and love us to write reviews, it's amazing that we indie authors ever get anyone to write reviews, let alone strangers.
4. Sometimes people who know the author are actually biased against the author. Are negative reviews also rejected for personal connection?
II. Authors want their F&F to write unqualified 5-star reviews, whether or not F&F actually liked, or even read, our books.
Problems with this assumption:
1. While some authors may be okay with asking friends to lie, most of us are honest people who not only wouldn't ask friends to lie, but we also wouldn't want them to. We only want F&F to give us glowing reviews if our F&F genuinely believe in those reviews. We aren't trying to compromise our friends' integrity.
2. Most authors understand that ultimately having lots of reviews from F&F is harmful to our books' reputations. We aren't trying to get every person who has ever met us to write reviews. What we actually want is to get our books beyond those who know us personally. Reviews from strangers are huge sign of success, but having F&F get things started--priming the pump, so to speak--is often the only way to get any momentum. That's not being manipulative or dishonest--that's using the network we have to create buzz. We start with the people we know and hope for a ripple effect outwards.
III. Reviews from strangers are more trustworthy than reviews from people who know the author.
Problems with this assumption:
All reviews are biased. That's actually the point of reviews. Most people who bother to write reviews either LOVE or HATE whatever they're reviewing, and their reasons are not always based on facts. Maybe a reader has a personal bias against a type of character she finds stereotypical, or maybe she has a personal bias in favor of books set in Edwardian London. These biases will make a difference in how she reviews a given book. Why are these biases acceptable, but having a bias towards an author is not? And, is it not possible for a person to be biased in favor of a particular author based on appreciation of her past works and a desire to see her career succeed, whether or not that person has ever met the author? Trying to remove bias from reviews is, simply, a fool's errand.
Additional causes for concern
1. Is it acceptable for Amazon to use our personal information and monitor our relationships? I don't know about you, but I find this creepy. Amazon isn't a social network. It's a superstore. I like to keep my social life and my shopping separate. (And if you're thinking people can avoid this by using aliases, think again. It's not the name under which you one posts that matters; it's the account to which the review is linked, and the IP addresses that account has used)
2. Is this standard being applied to traditionally published authors as well? Most likely no. For one thing, publishing houses manage their author's books, so a book's product page is not connected to its authors IP address and other personal information, which means it would be harder to trace connections between the author and reviewers.
I would really like to hear from other indies about how Amazon's policing of reviews has affected your book. Have you had reviews taken down or rejected? Do you rely on F&F to help spread the word about your book and to write reviews? What are your thoughts?
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