# 5-star fake Amazon reviews for sale...and the technology to thwart them



## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

This story is from the front page of today's New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/20/technology/finding-fake-reviews-online.html?_r=1&hp

I knew that some authors put the touch on friends and relatives to post glowing reviews of their books on Amazon. But I had no idea that there are review factories that pay "reviewers" $5 for each bogus 5-star review posted to sites such as Amazon, TripAdvisor and Yelp. 
Fortunately, researchers are developing a computer algorithm that can detect fake reviews with 90 percent accuracy. No word on when and if it will be implemented.


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## Katie Salidas (Mar 21, 2010)

I knew that there were many people out there doing shill reviews, what I didn't realize was that it had become big business. Very interesting article. Thanks for sharing.


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## MariaESchneider (Aug 1, 2009)

And Amazon removes any reviews that it finds that come from any factories such as this...


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## 13500 (Apr 22, 2010)

MariaESchneider said:


> And Amazon removes any reviews that it finds that come from any factories such as this...


Good! Glad to hear that.


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## anguabell (Jan 9, 2011)

This is so sad. But I can't think of any way to prevent it from happening - unless the sites like Amazon and tripadvisor would require a proof that the reviewer really bought the book, visited the restaurant or stayed at the hotel they are reviewing. I don't think I would want to give my money to anyone who buys a positive review, regardless of how good their "product" might be - that's just the type of pitiful small-time dishonesty I cannot stand.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Well, on Amazon, there is a badge of some sort if the reviewer has a verified purchase.  So anyone with such a badge you know at least bought it.  That's no guarantee they really read it, of course.  AND, one could legitimately purchase a book elsewhere and post the review to Amazon.  

I personally find the most useful reviews are the 2, 3, and 4 star one. . . . .they're more likely to actually point out what they didn't like.  But, honestly, I mostly base purchase decisions any more on the blurb in conjunction with the sample.


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## libbyfh (Feb 11, 2010)

Ann: The blurb (ie description and review blurbs) ? Or the excerpt?


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## Brem (Jun 29, 2011)

I think there's a service for nearly anything. I had a feeling some books buy reviews. If you can buy twitter followers, get posts on your site etc, I imagine it wouldn't be hard to get people to write reviews on your book. It seems like it's being done more these days.


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## ashel (May 29, 2011)

There's a critique site, who's name I forget at the moment (which, really, is kind of frightening), that focuses primarily on screenplays, and, for the screenplays at least, in order to submit a critique you have to pass a non-trivial reading comprehension test. (like most critique sites, this one functioned on a token economy, where you earned points for critiques, and spent points to submit work.)

For books, at least, this shouldn't be too difficult to implement. I suppose the issue is who writes the test, right? Eh, maybe not so easy...


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## Gregory Lynn (Aug 9, 2011)

Brem said:


> I think there's a service for nearly anything. I had a feeling some books buy reviews. If you can buy twitter followers, get posts on your site etc, I imagine it wouldn't be hard to get people to write reviews on your book. It seems like it's being done more these days.


Buy twitter followers? What the hell is wrong with this world where people feel the need to buy twitter followers?


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## Libby13 (Jul 31, 2011)

That is atrocious.  I haven't even pressed my friends and family to review for fear the reviews will not sound genuine.  It's a little sad...


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## osnova (Oct 20, 2009)

My experience with trying to call Amazon's attention to fake reviews isn't encouraging.

There appeared a number of "publishers" of PD books who in the first couple of days of launch had over ten 10-star reviews for each book.  These publishers released the same books over and over using different covers and modified titles.  The reviews came from 20-30 accounts.  As soon as a negative review appeared it was "hidden" with a dozen of 5-star ones.  I researched all this and sent this research with links and my observations to Amazon.  They said they would look into it.  After about a month, they sent me an email saying that I did not include the links to the fake reviews (I did).  I resent my initial email but never heard back.  In this instance it was not even necessary to use any algorithm to find fake reviews, they were obvious.


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## intinst (Dec 23, 2008)

I don't see it as much different than the "Like" and "Tagging" threads here.


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## Elizabeth Black (Apr 8, 2011)

There are also fake negative one-star reviews, although I don't think there are review farms that buy and sell them. Those fake negative reviews come from people protesting a particular genre because they don't like it or have moral issues with it. It strikes me as similar to book reshelving in brick and mortar bookstores and libraries (sticking, say, a religious book in the science fiction section or a political book in the comedy section). They also come from people who have a beef with a particular author for personal reasons.

Fake positive reviews don't only affect books. They affect lots of different products but the way personal reviews are set up it's easy to fake a customer book review whether it's negative or positive.


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## Elizabeth Black (Apr 8, 2011)

People aren't just faking book reviews. They're faking "products tagged with this author" pages on Amazon. The latter is rather funny, though. Politician Christine O'Donnell's Amazon author page has been trolled, for instance. In her section about products associated with her, protesters have tagged her with items like the Hello Kitty Vibrator, the book "Witchcraft For Dummies, erotica books, the movie "The 40 Year Old Virgin", and various sex toys. Here's a link to her tagged products page:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/tagging/tag/christine%20odonnell/products?ie=UTF8&ref_=tag_dpp_lp_istp_in#?ie=UTF8&tag=youwonnowwhat&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957

Here's an article about the fake tagging from Raw Story:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/11/christine-odonnells-amazon-page-bombed-with-dildos/

The same has been done to Glenn Beck. I don't like it but I'll admit it's rather creative.


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## Rex Jameson (Mar 8, 2011)

Libby13 said:


> That is atrocious. I haven't even pressed my friends and family to review for fear the reviews will not sound genuine. It's a little sad...


Hopefully, my family won't even know about my books until after the first series is finished. And paying for these reviews is just shady (and useless, really). I can't imagine any readers being fooled by this. Besides, who looks at the 5 stars anyway? I certainly don't. I sometimes look at 4 stars, but usually it's the 3 stars or less than get looked at first.


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## James Everington (Dec 25, 2010)

I wonder if when the software is released to detect fake five-star reviews it will get a lot of five-star reviews...?


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## tim290280 (Jan 11, 2011)

Gregory Lynn said:


> Buy twitter followers? What the hell is wrong with this world where people feel the need to buy twitter followers?


Have you seen how many marketers there are on Twitter? It really doesn't surprise me they buy followers.

I think a lot of people will be put off by social media if people keep trying to be blatant marketers on it. Ditto with fake reviews. As much as people are idiots, they aren't stupid.


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## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

intinst said:


> I don't see it as much different than the "Like" and "Tagging" threads here.


^ This ^


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

intinst said:


> I don't see it as much different than the "Like" and "Tagging" threads here.





Geoffrey said:


> ^ This ^


I admit that I don't see the point of the 'like' and 'tagging' threads. . .and do find it it a bit. . . desperate? To beg for 'likes' and 'tags' I mean. But I really consider it mostly harmless and, personally, I never pay attention to either of those things when looking for books to read.

But I do think that _paying_ for fake reviews is one level deeper on the sleazy scale. 

I just proves that there are people who will take money for all sorts of things. And lazy or less than honest folks will probably be willing to pay them. It's definitely not likely to endear me to any author/publisher who I find does such things. But, at the same time, I don't go looking for it and trying to figure out if they've done so.

And I'd bet that it does "pay" in the sense that MOST Amazon customers don't have a clue it happens -- honest people don't spend time trying to figure out if the review they're reading is honest, 'cause they can't conceive that there's any way it wouldn't be.  OTOH, dishonest people -- or those who've been victimized -- are more likely to assume that no reviews have any value. Which is also probably not true.

But, as I say, I don't pay much attention to reviews, but it's mostly because I don't have any need for someone else to tell me whether a book is good. I read the write up and if it sounds promising I get the sample. If I like the sample I buy the book.


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## Steve Vernon (Feb 18, 2011)

Five dollars for a review?

That's absolutely disgusting.

I only charge two and a half bucks...


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## Geoffrey (Jun 20, 2009)

Ann in Arlington said:


> And I'd bet that it does "pay" in the sense that MOST Amazon customers don't have a clue it happens -- honest people don't spend time trying to figure out if the review they're reading is honest, 'cause they can't conceive that there's any way it wouldn't be.  OTOH, dishonest people -- or those who've been victimized -- are more likely to assume that no reviews have any value. Which is also probably not true.
> 
> But, as I say, I don't pay much attention to reviews, but it's mostly because I don't have any need for someone else to tell me whether a book is good. I read the write up and if it sounds promising I get the sample. If I like the sample I buy the book.


For some reason, I rarely read the samples but I do read reviews. I prefer it when there's a range of reviews to check out as I know there isn't a book written that someone doesn't hate. And, I want to see what people thought was good and not. If there are nothing but a small group of 5-star reviews, I assume they're fake or friends and ignore them - just like I ignore any review that seems to have an ideological slant to it. Many of the fakes reviews (or at least the ones I assume are fake) start by saying how wonderful the book is, how the reader couldn't put it down and finally how much they're waiting for the author's next book. They are usually very generic and make no reference to anything specific in book. If I can recognize a pattern, I'm not surprised a computer can do it better ....


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## ashel (May 29, 2011)

I'm not really sure what the purpose of tags are. I know they're supposed to help visibility in searches, but I just, for example, searched for "urban fantasy". The top results didn't seem to have many tags at all. So...not sure about the utility there. I can see how if it might get to be like a tagging arms race - authors become convinced that if they don't have them, their books will never have a shot. Again, a cursory search seems to suggest this might not be the case, but it's not, like, a rigorous study or anything.

Stuff like this is why some companies seem to be focusing on the "real name" thing...


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## Pinworms (Oct 20, 2010)

This is an outrage to me.  I plan on buying only books with mostly 1 star reviews from now on.


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## Harry Shannon (Jul 30, 2010)

Sample. Sample.

Some of this desperation is a response to Amazon proudly using a new computer system that takes tags and starred reviews into account when it features and thus markets our books. Without decent reviews, new authors know they cannot even get noticed. I never have figured out if tags actually make much of a difference.

Sample. Sample.

I get hooked mainly by the recommendations of other readers and fans, sometimes by book reviews by bloggers and some other authors I respect. Rarely a cover will grab me long enough to read more. And I always sample. If a few pages have typos or poor formatting, or the writing itself fails to grab me, on to the next book. Life is too short, and there are way too many books. IMHO as authors inspiring you to download a sample is all we have any right to hope for these days. 

As for selling reviews, it's morally repugnant, but the company and readers will outsmart it eventually. And if you sample and enjoy a book, it ends up not mattering either way. Trolls posting one star reviews designed to hurt a book, just frustrated people with an ax to gride who who have posted few no other reviews, are just as morally repugnant. Sadly, that has also become almost as common.

Someone said earlier they tend to believe three and four star reviews, and I'd agree with that. At least I tend to trust reviews that dare to point out the failings in a book as well as the strengths. They are--and feel--far more honest.


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## mattlynn (Jun 10, 2011)

I think you can always spot the fake ones. They just don't read the same way real ones do....

- Matt Lynn


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## scottnicholson (Jan 31, 2010)

Amazon could fix this instantly. Limit reviews to "real" name people who are verified purchasers of the product.

That will never happen, though. At the end of the day, Amazon wants people to have fun, hang out there, and spend money there. They are not overly concerned with the literary integrity of the free world or cutting out what is essentially a microscopically minor problem that the average customer could care less about. Unfortunately, weighting the star average of books, while a well-intended way of letting users pick the winners, leads to clever ways to circumvent the system. And why not? It could be your next meal or mortgage payment at stake if you're a writer.


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## Michelle Muto (Feb 1, 2011)

When I read reviews, I use my own BS detector and disregard reviews where it's clear the reviewer didn't read the book, reviewed the book but admit the genre isn't normally their thing, or it reads like family or friends left the review. With books, I notice reviewers leave the same review on multiple book sites. That's fine with me, and I realize they don't necessarily own multiple reading devices. Usually, the overall consensus helps me decide if I should download a sample for myself - and I always download samples first.


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## jackz4000 (May 15, 2011)

scottnicholson said:


> *Amazon could fix this instantly. Limit reviews to "real" name people who are verified purchasers of the product.*
> 
> *That will never happen, though.* At the end of the day, Amazon wants people to have fun, hang out there, and spend money there. They are not overly concerned with the literary integrity of the free world or cutting out what is essentially a microscopically minor problem that the average customer could care less about. Unfortunately, weighting the star average of books, while a well-intended way of letting users pick the winners, leads to clever ways to circumvent the system. And why not? It could be your next meal or mortgage payment at stake if you're a writer.


Limiting reviews to customers who actually purchased the item via Amazon would solve one problem, but probably another would arise. Amazon sells many different items besides books and limiting reviews to only verified purchases might cut down on the number of reviews. There are plenty of good reviews that weren't verified reviews. Plus virtually any system will be compromised in time. There is always a ***** in the armor to exploit. I discount many reviews for different reasons. Usually I find the 3 and 4 star reviews to be the most accurate. It is usually fairly easy to spot the real reviews vs the junk reviews.


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## Krista D. Ball (Mar 8, 2011)

genevieveaclark said:


> I'm not really sure what the purpose of tags are. I know they're supposed to help visibility in searches, but I just, for example, searched for "urban fantasy". The top results didn't seem to have many tags at all. So...not sure about the utility there.


I was checking a book of mine on Amazon and realized that folks had added all of these non-connected tags to it, including the names of other authors, etc. I managed to get rid of them, but it was still frustrating. Now, I feel like I need to check all of the time to avoid that kind of thing. But, I have better things to do...


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## Chris Turner (Jul 23, 2011)

A lot of interesting information here . . . shocking actually.  If I do read reviews, I tend to read the lower ranked ones like Ann, because generally, they're more real.  I think there's always going to be problems with any review system, so better to sample a story based on blurb.  It's almost faster to read the first page of a book then it is to wade through a bunch of reviews posted by readers whose tastes may be quite different than my own.


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

Chris Turner said:


> better to sample a story based on blurb. It's almost faster to read the first page of a book then it is to wade through a bunch of reviews posted by readers whose tastes may be quite different than my own.


So true!


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

Chris Turner said:


> It's almost faster to read the first page of a book then it is to wade through a bunch of reviews posted by readers whose tastes may be quite different than my own.


Exactly! If I do look at reviews for a book that I'm undecided on, I also look at what other books the reviewers have rated. If any are ones I've also read I'll know from them whether I'm likely to agree or not with the reviewer's opinion. But I rarely find they've reviewed books I'm familiar with so that's not usually very useful, either.


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## Katie Salidas (Mar 21, 2010)

As it is, anything with an overwhelming abundance of 5-stars makes me question the validity of them. I prefer (especially with books) to see a nice variety of reviews. No one has ever written a book that was loved by all, so I expect to see both negative and positive. In my opinion, a healthy dose of the in-between is best. Generally those 2-4 star reviews are the most honest anyway.


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## B Regan Asher (Jun 14, 2011)

Harry and others are absolutely right.  The wonderful thing about e-books is the availability of sample chapters.  I can't imagine buying an e-novel without evaluating the free material first.

But the other really good suggestion that several people here have made is to restrict reviews to actual purchasers.  It's such an easy way to eliminate the bulk of the nonsense.


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## journeymama (May 30, 2011)

I agree that the tagging thing doesn't seem to work. But I do think it's different from a fake review, because it's only asking people to confirm what your book is about. If you say your book is about teen romance, and you ask other people to agree with you, that's different from asking for a review saying you've written a GOOD book about teen romance.

That said, I wish I didn't sign up for tagging. Nothing good (sales) has come of it, and it may look suspicious on my page. And I would NEVER ask for a fake review.


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## Katie Salidas (Mar 21, 2010)

Tagging doesn't bother me as long as you are tagging for appropriate categories. The big thing that bugs me is when other author names end up being tagged on books that do not belong to them. I've had it happen to mine a few times and thankfully, though the tagging thread, I was able to remove them. I don't know why they do it, but it's annoying!


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## WriterCTaylor (Jul 11, 2011)

Goes to show some people are in this solely for the money. If they weren't, they would be interested in the true reviews, not the rubbish ones that are there to draw others in.


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## QuantumIguana (Dec 29, 2010)

Their algorithm will quickly be useless, as people will change the way reviews are done to fool the system. And 90% may seem pretty good, but 90% accuracy means 10% inaccuracy, so that some genuine reviews will get flagged as fake. And I am suspicious about their 90% accuracy claims. How would they know? I suppose they could select people to write fake reviews to run against their algorithm, but are these test fakes the same as the real fakes?


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## Tony Richards (Jul 6, 2011)

This is sick-making, but comes as no particular surprise. Several times a month, I'm approached through my website by 'publicists' who want me to give them several hundred dollars in return for seeding glowing reviews throughout the Internet. And there are people who are gullible enough to pay up. Don't they know that real writing success derives from real people actually liking your work enough to tell other real people about it? What a world!


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## Guest (Aug 23, 2011)

Review factories do seem kind of screwed up, but I can understand why writers would do it. I expect books with higher reviews get more attention from Amazon's search engine. Big ebooks from the big publishers will get a lot of attention and reviews. Indie writers might try to cheat with these services. It's not cool, and I don't approve, but I can understand it.


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## Evelyn Collier (Jul 7, 2011)

Geoffrey said:


> For some reason, I rarely read the samples but I do read reviews. I prefer it when there's a range of reviews to check out as I know there isn't a book written that someone doesn't hate. And, I want to see what people thought was good and not. If there are nothing but a small group of 5-star reviews, I assume they're fake or friends and ignore them - just like I ignore any review that seems to have an ideological slant to it. Many of the fakes reviews (or at least the ones I assume are fake) start by saying how wonderful the book is, how the reader couldn't put it down and finally how much they're waiting for the author's next book. They are usually very generic and make no reference to anything specific in book. If I can recognize a pattern, I'm not surprised a computer can do it better ....


I always read the sample. I never check the reviews or stars. Not because I think they might be fake, but because everyone has a different opinion. I want to see for myself not be influenced by reviews.


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## Atunah (Nov 20, 2008)

That is why I love to use Goodreads mostly now to find books to read. Its not the only way I find them, but its pretty good for me. I can find people that read the genre or genres I like and then I can go compare out books. That gives me a number, a percentage of "matching". Its of course not foolproof, but it is much better as its based on many books and reviews as suppose to just one on Amazon. So that way, I can look at the other books they liked I haven't read yet and chances are, I might like them too. 

On Amazon I would have to click on other reviews by reviewer and wade through everything one by one. 

I still browse a lot on Amazon too on the hunt for books, lots of that actually, but I always also check Goodreads before deciding.


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## kchughez (Jun 29, 2011)

Pinworms said:


> This is an outrage to me. I plan on buying only books with mostly 1 star reviews from now on.


 Hilarious. Thanks for the laugh

~KC


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## Mike McIntyre (Jan 19, 2011)

Several here have suggested ignoring 5-star reviews and honing in on the 3s, figuring they are more honest and revealing. For that formula to work assumes a lot of figuring, and I figure that the poster who said that it was faster to ignore the reviews and download a sample and read the first page and figure it out for yourselves has it figured out the best.


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## Amera (May 22, 2011)

I actually saw a book today that went from 50-60 reviews down to 12ish. Basically all of the 5 star reviews were deleted for some reason. I'm not sure if it is related to this in any way.


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## SpearsII (Jan 16, 2010)

I think, personally, I find reviews thin ice for judging a book. I was really on the fence of buying Andrzej Sapkowskis's _Blood of Elves_. The reviews where all over the place and some seemed to think it was not as good as his short stories (Blood Elves being the first novel translated into English). I cringed when I clicked buy, but I found that I really enjoyed the book. The bad reviews had me overly worried. I think good, bad, real, fake, reviews only are going to be a small factor for me. Unless I know the person how can I tell if I trust their taste in books? Reviews serve a limited function for me and the quality of the review speaks volumes as well.


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## John Dwyer (Apr 26, 2011)

Great article Mike. It's funny but I was talking to a friend the other day about reviews on Amazon and he mentioned that site where I can 5-star reviews for 5USD. I couldn't believe he was actually encouraging me to do this! This is deceiving the paying reader in a big way. Better to wait five years for a single good review than have a hundred of those lies associated with your work.
John


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## Iain Manson (Apr 3, 2011)

My experience suggests that fake reviews – by sock puppets, by friends and relatives, or bought – are rife. I agree that you can often spot – or smell – them, but I suspect that some are cleverly disguised.

The trouble is that I'm pretty sure they work. Most readers, I would guess, ignore books that have no reviews. It's all very well to say that a bad book will ultimately fail anyway, but what about a good book that wouldn't otherwise be noticed? I can't prove it, but my suspicion is that a number of successful indies wouldn't have made it had they not been prepared to start the review ball rolling themselves.

As for tagging, I'm in the tagging thread here, and I admit that I don't altogether like it. However, as others have said, tags only tell you what sort of book you're looking at; they don't pretend to address quality. Even so, I think I'd be happier if Amazon closed the thread.

So tell me: what would be a good name for a sock puppet?


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## C.G.Ayling (Aug 25, 2011)

Considering how trivial it is to get the sample, how substantial they are, and that they form the start of the book...

I just can't see how anyone can not take advantage of that.

Relying on someone else to tell you if you'll like the story, which is pretty much what relying on a stranger’s review equates too, seems like the political analysts who interject into the middle of someone’s statement to tell us what we should be thinking about what we thought we heard.

Are we really all such idiots? And if we are do we have any right to feel sorry for ourselves?


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## Brem (Jun 29, 2011)

I'm sure there are writers out there who actual do bad reviews of other writers. I imagine a lot of writers actually do it. It's disgusting, but true. 

And yeah, I can't stand how people pay people to help their popularity increase. It's lazy.


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