{"id":10878,"date":"2019-04-03T14:11:51","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T19:11:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hilbertthm90.wordpress.com\/?p=10828"},"modified":"2019-10-01T08:27:20","modified_gmt":"2019-10-01T13:27:20","slug":"a-guide-to-writing-ethical-amazon-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amindformadness.com\/2019\/04\/a-guide-to-writing-ethical-amazon-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"A Guide to Writing Ethical Amazon Reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
This is a guide to writing ethical Amazon reviews. It applies to both the occasional reviewer and the prolific reviewer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Disclaimer:<\/strong> The weather is great. I’m in a good mood. This is not about me. I don’t even write under my real name anymore, so I honestly don’t care what people say about my books. I gave them all away for free for over a year, so I’m definitely not trying to sell them. This is genuinely about being a conscientious and ethical book reviewer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I have no delusions that people will follow the advice I give here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In fact, if you’re the type of person to violate any of these rules, then you’re probably not the type to care about ethics in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reviewing a book is an art. It’s subjective. It’s impossible to have any consistency across time or people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet, I do think there are clear ethical and unethical practices. This post is an attempt to formalize my thoughts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The problem with Amazon reviews is the same as the problem with social media. People have the ability to spout off anonymously with no consequences to their words and no accountability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It never even occurs to them that their actions might be unethical and harming someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hopefully, this will help you consider your actions, even if they make no difference in the end result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We don’t live in the age of publishers anymore. In the 1990s and before, there was essentially no such thing as a scam, because a book only got published if an agent thought a writer had produced something of significant quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then an (acquisitions) editor had to agree with that agent. Then a publisher had to agree with the editor. Then the book would undergo a developmental edit, copy edit, line edits, and galley proofs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Back then it was okay to give a 1-star rating to a book you hated, because your review didn’t carry any weight, and everyone understood that even at 1 star, the book still had a minimum quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This has changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nowadays, something like 10% of books on Amazon are literally scams<\/a>. They contain no content. I can’t get into all the ways people try to scam the system, but here are two common ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first is to include the whole book in several languages over and over before English. This way, when someone clicks forward to the start of the English version, Kindle Unlimited thinks the person has read a thousand pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another scam is to take huge amounts of text the scammer found on a webpage (Wikipedia or something) and then run it through auto-translators a bunch of times until it reads like semi-coherent nonsense. This way plagiarism checkers can’t catch it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These, along with other scams, are unreadable. They are not books. They deserve a one-star review to warn people of the scam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, this means you cannot ethically give a real book the same star rating or else you are indicating to the public that a real book is on the same level as a scam. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That’s unethical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It doesn’t matter how much you hate a book. If it’s not a scam, it’s not a one-star book. There could be a time in the future where Amazon implements a “scam” rating. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you can’t tell the difference between a book produced over a year with this level of worldbuilding<\/a> and this attention to prose style<\/a> and this attention to character<\/a>, then it’s probably unethical for you to be reviewing any book at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You think you’re helping future customers not waste their money, but you’re actually making it more likely for a future customer to disregard real 1-star scam books by crying wolf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It seems like this should go without saying…but, scan a few reviews and be amazed at the number of people who write an Amazon review without reading a book. Some people review a book that hasn’t even released yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This needs<\/em><\/strong> to be said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s unethical to review a book you’ve only read one chapter of. It’s borderline if you quit halfway through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There’s no hard line here, but I recommend only reviewing books you’ve finished. At the very least, don’t speculate on the ending—or whether stuff makes sense—or if it all comes together without actually finding out if it’s true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your speculation is not the book.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n I don’t care how smart you think you are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don’t care if you qualify your review and comments with disclaimers that you didn’t finish the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No one needs to hear your opinions on something you haven’t experienced, especially if it didn’t make sense to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most great novels leave something for the end. I’m not sure why there’s a tendency to pan anything that isn’t fully explained in the opening pages. That’s just bad storytelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you think a book can’t make sense, use that as motivation to read it. The author might surprise you. The only other option is to shut up and let someone who actually read it offer their opinions on the ending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I seriously can’t believe that needed to be said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And on a related note: review the book, not the author. <\/p>\n\n\n\nRule 1: One-Star Ratings Should be Reserved for Scams<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Scams<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
2. Read the Book Before Reviewing It<\/h2>\n\n\n\n