5-Star Book Reviews: 20 for $500

[dr_mabeuse]

There's an interesting and depressing piece in the NY Times about a guy who started a book reviewing business and was making $28,000 a month before Amazon closed him down. Apparently, having a long string of 5-star reviews is vital to selling books on Amazon, but getting any kind of review, let alone a 5-star, isn't easy. So this guy made a business out of supplying them to eager authors: $99 for one review, $499 for 20, $999 for 50.

Of course he didn't write them himself. He had an army of reviewers he paid $15/review. The typical reviewer spent 15 minutes looking at the book and then dashed off a 5-star review and posted it to Amazon. It worked. The books with the long lists of glowing reviews sold well, and everyone was happy.

Paying for a review is nothing new, either on the net or even back in the days of hard-copy, but reading how widespread it's become and how the world of online publishing has changing is pretty enlightening, and a little disturbing.

Article here

 

[TxRad]

They done beat ya to this one.

http://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?t=825044

 

[elfin_odalisque]

Surely, there's nothing new here? Before the days of Amazon and e-publishing, publishers fought like puppies in a sack to get new authors reviewed by newspapers and mentioned on TV.

Is anybody seriously suggesting that treats weren't offered to newspapers and their reviewers to ensure a positive comment in the paper and a juicy quotation in the front of the paperback?

All the traditional 'barriers to entry' have been ripped away from publishing. You no longer need a publishing house, even a literary editor, and so a Tower of Babel has been created where anyone with a PC and wifi can launch their ' œuvre' on an unsuspecting public. Dan Brown used the media storm for Da Vinci Code whilst EL James has used the net for Fifty Shades of Grey.

We are living through a revolution as great as Gutenberg's printing press and I believe, sadly, that the future of books is only going to be possible in an on-line form with great dependance on hype and paid reviews.

You buy them for $1 and trash them when read if not worth keeping.

 

[topace]

And who ever created '2012' used a frenzy about the end of the world to sell tickets - nothing new there, it's just business to them.

 

[LJ_Reloaded]

And in other news, Amazon shuts down Capitalism.

There are far more folks than just this guy making money doing this.