Apologies, this is me in rant mode!
Does anybody out there take a product which has a thousand 5-star reviews (and hardly anything else) seriously?
Possibly, likely that depends upon how jaundiced a view one takes of the human condition, I suppose.
When it comes to books I get ticked off when I see stuff – that I know isn’t selling that well, because I know how many I sell when see a particular sales ranking – suddenly attracting a slew of 5-star reviews because I know that somebody, somewhere, is shamelessly gaming the system.
Call me old-fashioned, dumb, if you want, but I would hate to think anybody was giving any book under my name a free pass, or a false review because actually, I take pride in my stuff. Like I take pride in never encouraging anybody to give me a false review.
When I get a bad review at least I know I’m either being trolled, or somebody has had a viscerally reaction to my work. In fact, every author ought to get bad reviews because the writer who can please everybody all the time, like the mythical politician who can fool everybody all the time, does not exist. Besides, you have to figure that people sometimes write a review when they are having a bad day. Life is like that. 99% of simperingly great reviews cannot, therefore, be ‘real’.
I come back to people who generate, or even worse, in my opinion, those people or organisations who pay for (bribe, let us call a thing what it is), or otherwise encourage or solicit good reviews often from alleged readers who have probably never read so much as the title page of a given book.
Hey guys, you are beneath contempt!
To me, reviews are there to be honest, brutal; whatever; they are not there to be abused as marketing tools. Honestly, I would rather have a bad review than a dishonest one. If somebody has done me the courtesy of reading one of my books and hates it, let me know – at least that way I can thank them for reading my stuff!
I get asked: ‘Do you want me to post a good review?’ for this and or that and I always say: ‘NO, THANK YOU! READ IT BY ALL MEANS AND IF YOU ENJOY IT GREAT, BUT DON’T SAY YOU LOVED IT IF YOU HATED IT!’
And people look at me like I am an idiot. Am I?
Maybe, I am but at least I can look myself in the eye and say, that so far as I know, or can tell – which is not always easy – ‘most’ of my reviews (the periodic trolling apart) are an honest reflection of what my readers thought of a particular book.
I do not write to make everybody happy all the time, sometimes I write to be provocative, to ask questions and I confess, and I do not invariably have a necessarily rosy view of the human condition; but I do respect my readers. I try not to mislead or misinform them on the page, and I would hate it if some bloody algorithm over which I have no control, or knowledge of, or worse, somebody, attempted to falsely 5-star anything bearing my name.
We live in a world full of ‘influencers’, and people scamming in cyberspace (just like they always did in the real world in the so-called good old days).
Am I naïve NOT to try to game the system?
Am I naïve NOT to be spamming and scamming for dear life on every available social media platform?
Am I especially naïve for NOT cheating?
Probably, but let’s face it, people: if you are not true to yourself, what are you?
Here endeth the rant; I shall try not to let it happen again…for a while, leastways.