Book reviews:
Seeking the elusive truth
Seeking the elusive truth
From The Independent Publishing Magazine
Amidst the recent book
review scandals, which have tarnished the whole industry and made readers
question the source and validity of many book reviews, Leslie Ramey, co-founder
of Grub Street Reads, asks if now is the time for an impartial review
system and seal of approval. She presents another option for readers and
authors.
It’s not news for anyone in the business of writing and selling
books that fake book reviews are a common, almost accepted, dirty secret within
the industry. Readers, for the most part, remained blissfully innocent that
many of the glowing, 5 star Amazon reviews on the novel they just purchased may
have been faked by the author or written by a paid lackey who never even read
the book.
Dirty laundry, however, has a way of crawling out into the
sunlight. A recent expose in the New York
Times on a defunct company that charged authors as much as
$999 for positive book reviews fanned the flames of scandal. This was quickly
followed by the discovery that well-known crime novelist R J Ellory was
not only writing positive reviews for his books through a series of fake
accounts, but also slamming the books of other authors.
TIPM has covered this growing scandal in detail, so instead of
delving into the specifics, I’ll just sum up with what I consider to be the
most stunning factoid to come out of this whole mess. Cited in the NY Times
article, data expert Bing Liu estimated that about one third of all consumer
reviews on the Internet are fake.
Ouch!
We all know that readers are swimming (some say drowning) in the
massive amount of books coming to the market through traditional and
self-published routes. Aside from recommendations from family and friends, book
reviews and ratings were one of the few ways readers could judge the quality of
a book. In fact, a 2010 report by The Bookseller found
that book reviews contributed to roughly 13% percent of book sales. These book
review scandals are sure to land a huge blow to reader confidence and take away
one of the few tools self-published authors had to prove the quality of their
work.
So, if books reviews can no longer be trusted, where do we
readers and self-published authors go from here?
Some authors have publicly pledged to never take part in “sock
puppeting”. While this is a laudable action, I doubt that it will make much of
a ripple in popular reader sentiment. Let’s face it, book reviews are easy to
fake and easy (though not necessarily cheap) to pay for. This scandal has
raised awareness of the issue, but I doubt it’s done anything but temporarily
stemmed the tide of fake reviews.
Now that the scales have fallen off the eyes of readers, they
may never trust in book reviews again, which means it’s time to find an alternative
and unimpeachable way to establish a book’s quality.
Alright, now it’s confession time. I wasn’t exactly
displeased when this book scandal broke, because my business partner, Jessica
Bennett, and I have recently launched a company – Grub Street Reads – with the goal of
creating an unimpeachable, third-party quality standard for independently and
self-published books.
As a voracious reader, I know how confusing things have gotten
over the last couple of years with so many self-published books flooding the
market. Many of them are excellent, but a lot of them are…well, I like to say
they’re still in “rough draft form”. It’s easy to get burned, which is why so
many readers value reviews.
I also happen to be a self-published author myself, and I speak
regularly with other self-published authors, so I know how untrustworthy
reviews can be. Even the honest ones are usually written by sympathetic friends
and family who just click 5 stars to avoid tears and accusations at the dinner
table.
There have long been calls from writers and readers for an
unbiased, third-party system to establish a quality standard for the indie and
self-published book market.
Thus, Grub Street Reads was born. Our premise is simple. We
believe that all good stories, no matter their genre or the specifics of the
plot, share fundamental traits like well-developed characters, a consistent
plot, strong pacing, and few, if any, grammatical errors.
The GSR endorsement is given to those novels that meet these basic quality standards.
It’s that simple. Grub Street Reads functions as a third party vetting system,
and our endorsement proves that a novel has been tried and tested and earned a
passing mark (not given by the author’s mother or spouse).
I know that I’m bragging, but I can’t help but be excited about
GSR. Jessica and I believe, and studies show, that
consumers value seals of approval. It tells them that the endorsed product has
met a standard, which makes it a less risky purchase . . . .
Peter’s Piece
Books, hotels
and a million other products and services claim endless five star reviews and never-ending
high praise, but how many are genuine?
There is a
better way, a way in which the reader does his or her own review. In a bookshop
the reader can flick through the pages, read a paragraph or two and make a decision.
That’s in a bookshop. But fewer books are being sold in bookshops as the e-book
surge brushes them aside.
The
prospective buyer of my books can download a free sample charge (usually 15%) without
obligation to buy. It is a genuine free
sample which makes almost all readers want to buy the book.
But even when
readers decide to download my other e-books they can start with a free sample of the book. Using this reader’s-own-review strategy my
e-book sales now exceed my print book sales.
No one knows
better than the reader what he or she wants to read.
You be the judge -
download a free sample
of any of these books now
Great reading now available from Amazon or Smashwords
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