Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!

I’ve only recently become aware of reviews on sites like Amazon from the point of view of an author, rather than that of a reader.

As a reader, I’ve rarely, if ever, reviewed books I’ve bought from a website. But I’ve decided to change that.

(Before anyone thinks this is a whine, this isn’t about people who give bad reviews, as you’ll see at the end)

The reason is that I’ve seen the effect reviews can have on sales. There are three types of bad review. The first type is from someone who doesn’t like the book. I got one such on my Monkees book on Barnes & Noble. These are fine – people see a one-star review like that, and they either think the criticisms sound valid or they don’t.

The second type is the missing-the-point bad review. I got one of these on the Monkees book, this time on Amazon US. Here, the reviewer just expects a different type of book than the one they bought, and complains when it’s not something it never claimed to be. These can be annoying to an author (I admit to moaning about that review on Twitter and Facebook – gratifyingly but embarassingly that made a couple of other readers go and give the book better reviews) but they don’t do any long-term damage. Sales of my Monkees book on Amazon have actually gone up since that review was posted.

Both those types of bad review are useful to readers. There’s a third type, though, the malicious review. I got one of those on my Beatles book on the Nook store last month – a reviewer just making up lies about the book, saying I admitted my only sources were Alan Pollack’s essays and the Anthology series, for example.

Before that review was posted, I used to sell about one copy of that book per week on Nook. In the five weeks since, it hasn’t sold a single copy. The review *sounds* convincing, but is written out of malice, rather than as an accurate assessment of the book. And it’s putting readers off.

And that’s really annoying, because there are hundreds of people out there who’ve bought that book and enjoyed it. Some of them have said so in comments here, others in emails or tweets to me. If nothing else, the vast majority who bought it have neither asked for a refund (which Amazon will give without question in most cases) or given it a bad review. And I caught myself thinking “Why don’t most of those bastards post reviews? I don’t even want *good* ones, just *accurate* ones would be nice. It wouldn’t take them two minutes”.

But then I realised, it’s my own fault.

I just bought and read Andrew Rilstone’s marvellous book on Tolkien and Lewis. I loved it (though I wish he’d kept the chapter heading “Lipstick On My Scholar” from the blog version). Did I bother to review it? No.

I’ve bought, read and loved every book Greg Egan has written, all in the last year. Have I posted a single Amazon review? No.

In fact, I don’t even remember if I’ve ever reviewed *anything* on Amazon. For all I know, Charles Stross’ The Fuller Memorandum, which I’m currently reading for the third time, is sitting there with a one-star review and no other reviews, and thousands of people who would have bought it otherwise have been put off.

So I’ve decided to make amends. I can’t very well post reviews of every book I own – I have several thousand – but from now on, I will post an Amazon review of every book I *buy*. I’m also going to post, now, a review of the most recent book I’ve bought (The Freelancer’s Survival Guide by Kristine Kathryn Rusch) and a couple of Andrew Rilstone’s books (because he’s a self-publisher (as, actually, is Rusch) and so needs the reviews more).

This is NOT – I repeat *N-O-T NOT* a request to my readers to go off and post reviews of my books. I’m not talking about special treatment – rather the opposite.

I’m asking you to, whenever you buy a book *from now on*, *BY ANYONE* go on to Amazon and give it at least a short review (even if you didn’t buy it from Amazon, it’s the single biggest bookstore in the world). Accurate reviews – good or bad – will help people find what they do and don’t like, and if everyone posts accurate reviews of the books they read, malicious reviewers won’t be able to do any damage (and people who use sockpuppets to hype their own books won’t either).

And if that means I get a ton of *accurate* one-star reviews, so be it.