How Amazon Ruined the Book Review

Why I’m Glad I Learned to Write Before Kindle

Back in the day, if you’d studied writing at one of England’s great universities, you would have come away with the skills of a novelist but also a poet, essayist, and literary thinker. The dons prepared you for a life in letters. They believed a writer must excel in all aspects of the written word.

When you published your work, it was subject to the weight of serious literary criticism.

Writers steeped in the canon (meaning they’d read everything worth reading) would give their analysis based on a lifetime deep reading to find its proper place in history. The dustbin or the hallowed perch of academia.

Thanks to Amazon opening up the job of book critic to the consumer, now we have thoughtful comments such as, “OMG, I lurrrrved this book.” Or, “Meh! Amazon makes me write 20 words so Meh twenty times.” How times have changed.

I’ve been accused of reading milk cartons when nothing else was available, so no surprise I devoured book reviews early on.

I’d read The New Yorker book reviews before looking at the cartoons, and I subscribed to the New York Times Sunday Book Review for my weekend guilty pleasure.

Many years ago, a writing teacher once steered me to an opening in The San Francisco Chronicle for a book reviewer. I drooled at the idea of getting $100 a pop and free books to do what I loved most, read and discuss books. But I wasn’t sure if I had the qualifications.

“But you’ve read everything,” he said. “You’d be perfect for the job.”

So I learned that a voracious reading habit was the minimum requirement for book critic. Alas, I didn’t have the confidence or probably the time to go after my dream job.

However, when I began writing, I read book reviews with a new purpose.

By then, I had craft on my brain. I was obsessed with the challenge of turning the stories in my head and my heart into coherent words on the page. I began reading book reviews with new eyes. I realized that writers like John Updike did not just discuss an interesting new writer or important book in his reviews. He positioned a book in the perspective of a writer’s body of work, its meaning in the world.

Through his reviews, he was teaching me how to read more critically by describing in great depth a particular writer’s use of language to shape an idea or bring a character or scene to life. In reaching deep into the craft, meaning and scope of a writer’s work in his reviews, he chipped away at the mystery of writing and helped rescue my passion from a plague of insecurity and confusion.

His reviews were teaching me to write. But so were the other reviewers in magazines such as The Atlantic, Harpers, The New Times, The New York Review of Books, writing about books, plays, music and opera. I learned from all of them.

In my classes, the best teachers echoed many things I learned from Updike and others. I realized as I continued studying how much those reviews, dense with insights about writing, history, and life, helped me sharpen my own skills. In my own writing classes I’ve made sure to teach my students how to read and learn from book reviews.

And then came Amazon and Kindle.

So when Amazon came along, I was spoiled for well-written reviews. Bear in mind that I have a love-hate relationship with book reviews. In time I published my own books and I’ve been subjected to reviews.

However, when I began publishing e-books on Amazon, their option to allow readers to comment became part of my life. On balance, in my writing career, my critics have been more favorable than negative, just to dispel an argument that my perception of Amazon reviews is tainted by sour grapes.

Amazon reviews among writers, however, have mixed reviews. The feeling is that reviewers can’t be trustred. What’s that all about? Stay away from Goodreads, I’d heard, their reviewers come at you with their knives out.

Some writers crow about a five-star review from someone who says they “lurrrvvved” their book, but then come undone when get trolled by the next scathing, mean-spirited troll.

And I’ve seen reviewers leave disgruntled comments about the book they bought on the strength of positive reviews, claiming they’d been misled by ignorant reviewers.

So what’s up with Amazon book reviews? Can we trust them?

Amazon lures in book buyers by telling them their opinion counts. I have no problem with consumers rating a product. But the option to review a book puffs up the reader’s sense of importance.

In truth, Amazon reviews are not reviews in the sense of the long respected book review. They are opinions. And we all know what they say about opinions.

A consumer is entitled to rate a product and a book is no different. But with Amazon product reviews, the consumer can tell you if a product worked. Book reviews are purely opinion based. And you know what they say about opinions: they are like a**holes. Everybody’s got one.

Amazon book reviews disguise a very clever marketing ploy.

By allowing readers to rate their books, Amazon gets valuable information about where to spend their resources on promoting books, how to pitch to potential new buyers, and no doubt many other money-making pearls unknown to me.

What does the reader get in return? it depends. A reviewer can say almost anything about a book and a writer has almost no recourse to refute it. Some people try to accumulate many reviews for the status of Top Reviewer. I wonder how thoroughly they read the books they review. Some readers use Amazon as a place to vent on topics unrelated to the book. Or, they take potshots at authors, just because they can.

Reviewers comment based on their personal beliefs and tastes, not the quality of a book. Though it hasn’t happened to me, reviewers have knocked books on subjects such as witchcraft because they were offended their religious beliefs. So why are they reading them?

Who benefits from an Amazon review?

I have no doubt that ultimately it’s Jeff Bezos. But that’s the world we live in. Writers benefit if they accrue many 4 and 5-star reviews. Or, they can be targets. Oh, yes, scammers will scam. Damn a book with faint praise and leave a link for your own or a friend’s book, saying it’s so much better.

For a writer of ebooks, reviews can give you clues to potential markets as well as how to meet reader’s expectations. And that’s what success as an Amazon e-book writer is all about: giving the reader what they want.

But if you desire to learn about craft as I did with book reviews, you may find jewels of insight here and there, but it would be my last pick for writing advice because reviewers aren’t writers.

For the consumer, you’re getting an opinion.

If you like the same types of books as the reviewer, you might be in good hands. But if the reviewer has a bone to pick with the subject matter that you don’t (too much sex, she says, but that’s what you like), or is engaging in trolling because he’s had a bad day, or pushing a friend’s book, you have no idea if you’re getting an honest assessment of a book. To make it worse, some people read a book, enjoy it, then trash it in the reviews for a reason to return it and get their $2.99 or so back.

In many genres, some readers inhale books at the rate of a book or two a day. If they get a happy ending or the door to the bedroom is wide open, or not wide open enough, you’re only going to get a rant or an emotional reaction to a book. But such narrow comments may not help you decide to hit Buy.

The best thing about Amazon book reviews is that the books are cheap.

If you don’t agree with the hive mind on a book, you’re only out a few dollars. I’ve found the best way to know if you’re going to like a book is by reading the description, not the reviews. Hit the download button for yourself.

And if you’re buying one of my books, please don’t forget to leave a posivite review. Whether you liked the book or not. Just kidding. Maybe not.

But whatever you do, don’t read a book and then return it. That’s a practice we have to stop.