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Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book

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Re: Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book

#111

Post by Ovid »

castelle wrote: post #108

So, here's the thing about Amazon rankings. They're not a meritocracy, and you might think that good reviews help you and bad reviews hurt you. They do/can! But it's closer to SEO than that. Amazon ranks things by what sells, and yes, higher-ranked things sell better, but it's more complicated than just that. Not everybody finds Perl books by looking in the Perl category. I'm looking at the third book you highlighted…

The books aren't about Perl; they're gaming the Amazon system. That being said, it was interesting when you commented about sales rank. Yeah, they sell more than I do, but you can frequently buy the for $0.99, when my sells for a real price. That might make them break even, but since they're (I'm assuming) self-published, they're probably making far more money overall.

Re: Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book

#112

Post by Ovid »

doktrin wrote: post #53

I'm also surprised that Amazon has such a poor handle on their product reviews. Obviously fake reviews absolutely litter the site. Speaking as only a consumer, it makes the process of purchasing much more cumbersome than it ought to be. It's not reasonable to expect Amazon (or anyone, really) to detect fraudulent behavior with perfect accuracy. I have to agree with the OP, though, in that they should be able to do a…

> Many fake reviews are blatantly fake, and could easily be flagged by a relatively naive set of heuristics.

Yes, that's true, but I think this is a question of scale. Amazon is the world's largest e-commerce site (well, I think they're #2 after Alibaba now) and I've worked on some of the world's largest sites. Even "trivial" solutions become much harder at that scale.

Re: Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book

#113

Post by anigbrowl »

kaybe wrote: post #93
dougmccune wrote: post #15

Anything with less than a real critical mass of reviews (less than hundreds) is way too easy to entirely game on Amazon. I wrote a book quite a few years ago on a niche tech topic. To be entirely honest, very few people read it. The positive reviews of the book were almost all from people I knew personally. Then the 1-star reviews started coming in. Each 1-star review had no actual content in the review. It was clear…

How about leaving a 1-star review yourself to explain the spamming? Anyone considering to buy the book will not just look at the rating but also see what complaints people have (at least I do, to see if they mention something I would have a problem with). I haven't really thought this through, so I'm open for arguments here.

That's actually a good idea, because you can vote on reviews on Amazon and it might become the 'most helpful negative review.'

Re: Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book

#114

Post by elsyx »

dougmccune wrote: post #15

Anything with less than a real critical mass of reviews (less than hundreds) is way too easy to entirely game on Amazon. I wrote a book quite a few years ago on a niche tech topic. To be entirely honest, very few people read it. The positive reviews of the book were almost all from people I knew personally. Then the 1-star reviews started coming in. Each 1-star review had no actual content in the review. It was clear…

I recently came across this[1] book, which was suggested to me after having purchased Randall Munroe's "What If?" xkcd book. At least this book is relatively up-front about what it is in its description, but it's clearly a blatant attempt to piggyback on the original book's success.

There are a few legitimate reviews that indicate this book doesn't really have much content, and then 2+ dozen fake 5-star reviews praising the book highly and saying how much better it is than Munroe's book. If you look at the review history for any of the 5-star reviewers, they all seem to be reviewing the same products, and often they are reviewing 3-5 books per day.

I reported the reviews via feedback, but never received a response. Ultimately it's just disappointing to see this kind of thing happening.

[1] http://amzn.com/1503234924

Re: Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book

#115

Post by mattm »

notahacker wrote: post #91
bhartzer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expensive or not, Amazon has an obligation to make sure their review system has high integrity and is not "gamed" or no one will trust Amazon reviews anymore.

Not to mention the fact that pushing $3 spambooks that probably have high refund rates ahead of $30 expert guides in the rankings could and should lose Amazon money.

But these are all Kindle books which you can't request refunds for.

Re: Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book

#117

Post by Ovid »

OP here.

I really can't say as much as I would like (there's stuff I can't share), but my publisher had a face-to-face with an Amazon rep and internal action was taken. Amazon's investigation is apparently over. The internal position seems to be "we're making money, there are words on pages, so there's no problem here." Amazon's investigation was short and sweet. Some bogus reviewers were removed, but Felicity — one of the worst offenders (http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A1NT2YXTUES4RW/ref=cm_c...) — is still there, despite the obvious fact that these are fake reviews. Many other obviously fake reviews remain. In fact, a new fake book with fake reviewers showed up. I genuinely do not know if this response is because of a careless employee or if Amazon discourages employees from shutting down profit streams.

Re: Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book

#119

Post by tsotha »

FilterJoe wrote: post #52

I wish Amazon had a "This looks fake" button above each review. I would click it multiple times per week. Most fake reviews are easy to spot. The simple test: Could this review have been written about any other book in this category without changing a word? I see fake reviews all the time for Kindle books written by indie authors. A mark of quality in a book is when there appear to be no 5 star fake reviews, but seve…

The problem is your "this looks fake" button would be as easy to game as the current system. People with a financial interest in a book would be marking every negative review as fake.

Re: Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book

#120

Post by tsotha »

>why are three books in front of me in the Perl category about Swift, HTML, and PHP?

This is a big problem for more than just niche books. When I tried to find a new fiction book by browsing categories I found the same books listed in every major category, i.e. it's difficult to believe the same book ought to be listed in Sci fi, horror, self help, history, and current events.

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