5 ms·

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

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 that the writers of these BS reviews hadn't read the book at all, since they didn't mention anything specific whatsoever. However, each of the 1-star reviews DID manage to mention a competing book that was "better". And all the bad reviews mentioned the same exact competing book. It was ridiculously obvious that someone was bashing my book to push a competing book instead, without any actual substance. At first I cared, and asked Amazon to remove the reviews, which they did. Then more BS reviews came back, I had them removed, they came back again, and eventually I just got tired and stopped caring.

thebiglebrewski 12y ago
Wondering what your book was! I'm writing Linux for Hobbyists right now and wondering if it's a bit too niche.
- dougmccune 12y ago
  It was Adobe Flex 3 for Dummies. Niche book on a tech topic that flamed out after a few years. If you've never written a book I'd still probably recommend doing it once. But don't expect to make any money, besides whatever advance you get. But it's still damn cool to be able to say you wrote a book.
  - thebiglebrewski 12y ago
    Wow, that one's super niche haha!! Sure, I'm self-publishing. Just glad to say I'm an author and hoping to make a little bit of cash too, we'll see.
    - seestheday 12y ago
      I always thought that technical book writing wasn't about making money directly, but for up selling in other areas. I.e. improving your resume, looking prestigious to potential consulting clients, or landing paid speaking gigs.
      - Ovid 12y ago
        This is correct. I was doing well in my career before the book, but it really took off after the book. However, I was already co-author of one book before that, and I blog prolifically, so that skews this. The way it works is simple. Publishers hope to sell about 5,000 or so copies of your typical tech book. That's enough to keep the publisher going, but not enough to really make money for them. The publisher keeps those "filler" books going to keep up street cred and hopes to sometimes land the "killer" book that makes them a nice profit. I can't share the sales info for my book, but let's just say that I think the book is doing better than one might expect for its category. If you want to write a tech book, you want to go with O'Reillly. My advance was much larger than what O'Reilly would offer, but they sell more tech books in the long run. However, O'Reilly's Perl book section is saturated and they generally don't take new authors. What I did to reposition my book was a strategy I wish more tech books would take: I focused on jobs. Instead of teaching every esoteric niche of a language (though I covered it well), I focused very heavily on skills that employers look for. I've been doing this for a long, long time and am very familiar with employer needs, so I was well-positioned to do this. That has led to my book doing better than expected: here's what you need for a job! I now have a successful Perl consulting firm (http://www.allaroundtheworld.fr/ http://www.allaroundtheworld.fr/) and that book, while I can't prove it helped, definitely didn't hurt. Oh, and my publisher has spoken to an Amazon rep and a contact I have in Amazon tells me that they're aware of the situation and are looking into it. I don't have much hope, but who knows?
scrabble 12y ago
That's awful. Has no one automated the process of checking for bogus reviews and reporting them?
- nine_k 12y ago
  How do you tell a bogus review from a real one, except by having it actually read by a human? This would be pretty expensive.
  - bhartzer 12y ago
    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.
    - notahacker 12y ago
      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.
      - mattm 12y ago
        But these are all Kindle books which you can't request refunds for.
  - Iftheshoefits 12y ago
    Reviews that all mention the same book, or even have little or no content, and have the same rating are suspicious and easily detectable by a trivial scan and compare against existing reviews. A harder problem is when the bogus review content becomes more "clever" (e.g. random rating differences, "entropy" in the content e.g. by misspellings, etc.).
  - nanidin 12y ago
    Probably apply ML techniques. Similar to how spam is classified - build a classifier that determines the likelihood of a review being bogus, then flag it for human review if it exceeds a certain threshold.
abandonliberty 12y ago
It was only a matter of time before the review system was attacked, and they are losing. From sponsored "impartial" reviews to niche items with way too many reviews and a mismatched helpful/not helpful or Q&A area, Amazon reviews are starting to lose their value.
kaybe 12y ago
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.
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  That's actually a good idea, because you can vote on reviews on Amazon and it might become the 'most helpful negative review.'
elsyx 12y ago
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 http://amzn.com/1503234924

thebiglebrewski 12y ago

Wondering what your book was! I'm writing Linux for Hobbyists right now and wondering if it's a bit too niche.

dougmccune 12y ago
It was Adobe Flex 3 for Dummies. Niche book on a tech topic that flamed out after a few years. If you've never written a book I'd still probably recommend doing it once. But don't expect to make any money, besides whatever advance you get. But it's still damn cool to be able to say you wrote a book.
- thebiglebrewski 12y ago
  Wow, that one's super niche haha!! Sure, I'm self-publishing. Just glad to say I'm an author and hoping to make a little bit of cash too, we'll see.
  - seestheday 12y ago
    I always thought that technical book writing wasn't about making money directly, but for up selling in other areas. I.e. improving your resume, looking prestigious to potential consulting clients, or landing paid speaking gigs.
    - Ovid 12y ago
      This is correct. I was doing well in my career before the book, but it really took off after the book. However, I was already co-author of one book before that, and I blog prolifically, so that skews this. The way it works is simple. Publishers hope to sell about 5,000 or so copies of your typical tech book. That's enough to keep the publisher going, but not enough to really make money for them. The publisher keeps those "filler" books going to keep up street cred and hopes to sometimes land the "killer" book that makes them a nice profit. I can't share the sales info for my book, but let's just say that I think the book is doing better than one might expect for its category. If you want to write a tech book, you want to go with O'Reillly. My advance was much larger than what O'Reilly would offer, but they sell more tech books in the long run. However, O'Reilly's Perl book section is saturated and they generally don't take new authors. What I did to reposition my book was a strategy I wish more tech books would take: I focused on jobs. Instead of teaching every esoteric niche of a language (though I covered it well), I focused very heavily on skills that employers look for. I've been doing this for a long, long time and am very familiar with employer needs, so I was well-positioned to do this. That has led to my book doing better than expected: here's what you need for a job! I now have a successful Perl consulting firm (http://www.allaroundtheworld.fr/ http://www.allaroundtheworld.fr/) and that book, while I can't prove it helped, definitely didn't hurt. Oh, and my publisher has spoken to an Amazon rep and a contact I have in Amazon tells me that they're aware of the situation and are looking into it. I don't have much hope, but who knows?

scrabble 12y ago

That's awful. Has no one automated the process of checking for bogus reviews and reporting them?

nine_k 12y ago
How do you tell a bogus review from a real one, except by having it actually read by a human? This would be pretty expensive.
- bhartzer 12y ago
  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.
  - notahacker 12y ago
    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.
    - mattm 12y ago
      But these are all Kindle books which you can't request refunds for.
- Iftheshoefits 12y ago
  Reviews that all mention the same book, or even have little or no content, and have the same rating are suspicious and easily detectable by a trivial scan and compare against existing reviews. A harder problem is when the bogus review content becomes more "clever" (e.g. random rating differences, "entropy" in the content e.g. by misspellings, etc.).
- nanidin 12y ago
  Probably apply ML techniques. Similar to how spam is classified - build a classifier that determines the likelihood of a review being bogus, then flag it for human review if it exceeds a certain threshold.

abandonliberty 12y ago

It was only a matter of time before the review system was attacked, and they are losing. From sponsored "impartial" reviews to niche items with way too many reviews and a mismatched helpful/not helpful or Q&A area, Amazon reviews are starting to lose their value.

kaybe 12y ago

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.

anigbrowl 12y ago
That's actually a good idea, because you can vote on reviews on Amazon and it might become the 'most helpful negative review.'

elsyx 12y ago

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 http://amzn.com/1503234924