Justine Larbalestier

reading, writing, eating, drinking, sport

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Amazon meanness (updated)

Further to Maureen’s wittiness on the topic, I thought I’d add some (sadly) serious thoughts.

First, I’ve heard from pretty much everyone that reviews by punters on Amazon have zero effect on book sales. Let me repeat that for the amazon-review obsessed writers: Amazon reviews have zero effect on book sales. We writers are tieing ourselves in knots over nothing. Do not worry your pretty little head about your amazon reviews—it will not hurt your sales or your career—just your feelings.1

Update: I was referring to nasty Amazon reviews having no effect. Should have made that clearer. Also I have since heard from folks who have worked at or with Amazon that Amazon’s own research shows that punters’ reviews on Amazon has no stastistically significant impact on sales. They may sway you, but that puts you in the minority (according to that research). The vast majority of people going to buy books on Amazon already know what they want. They do not browse. (On the other hand punters’ reviews seem to have an impact on the sale of appliances etc.)

It’s also important for writers to remember that book sales on Amazon are not a very signifcant chunk of the overall book market. I’ve heard estimates that range from 3% to 7% as to what that share is. You can sell badly on Amazon and still be selling very nicely indeed elsewhere. /end update

The reviews on Amazon that make me crankiest are the toxic attacks on writers which almost always say little about the book they’re purportedly reviewing:

I went to tihs riter’s websight and they are bigheads and narcarsitac adn this book sux and they smell bad and there girlfrend is a ho.2

I have taken to pressing the “report this” button cause “reviews” like that really are inappropriate. Review the book, not the person. We all know some writers are jerks, but that’s got nothing to do with the books they write. Some of my favourite books were written by people I’d rather not ever have a beer with. Or, you know, be on the same continent as. Doesn’t stop them being fabulous writers.

What is it with Amazon reviews that brings this viciousness out in certain people? Would they say stuff like that to the writer’s face? What is it about the internet that makes some people feel free to be mean in a way they never would if the person were standing in front of them?

As it happens this syndrome has a name: “online disinhibition effect” and a bunch of research is being done on it.

So next time you’re starting to add something cranky to a comment thread or on amazon or wherever perhaps you should ask yourself if you would say what you’re about to share with the greater online universe to the person’s face. If you wouldn’t then don’t post it.

I wish someone had given me that advice a long time ago. Sadly I’ve been online since 1993 and, um, I have sent many an email and comment that I really really wish I hadn’t. The worse thing, of course, is that stuff will come back to haunt you. I guess that’s why so much online viciousness is posted anonymously. Wish I’d thought of that!

So, anyone want to share (anonymously if you prefer) some of your online misdemeanours? Anything you regret? Am I the only one who’s succumbed to “online disinhibition effect”?

  1. No laughing matter, of course. I believe I’ve mentioned the horrible condition that most writers suffer from: thin-skinitis. [↩]
  2. In case you were wondering: No, I’ve had no such nasty reviews written about me. I mean I’ve had reviews from folks who didn’t like my books but no attacks on me personally. [↩]

Posted by Justine at 22:18, 11 March 2007 under Bloggery, Reading, State of the World | 18 Comments »

Comments

  1. Dawn Says:

    I, uh, am a rather shy person in real life. Not only am I very shy, but I take a lot of crap because I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings nor do I like to stand up for myself or even often spout my stance on certain topics for fear of conflict. I’m a wuss, I know. This one time a girl at school was being very backstabbing to one of my friends and very two faced. I created an web account on a blog that was made up so that I could post on hers and bash her to pieces. It felt good, and I liked it that people were both supporting what I said and bashing me back. Probably after I die and I see my life-movie I’ll regret it. For now, I don’t. As long as I don’t get caught.

    March 11th, 2007 at 10:55 PM

  2. PixelFish Says:

    Online misdemeaners: Hrm. My sins tend to be small, but then I am biased. One particular “sin”: I and my friends got involved with a flame-war about people who thought they were really vampires, a superior species to humans, etc….we took issue with the fact that they were encouraging young vulnerable teens who felt like they were different from everybody they knew to explore their vampire side. The kids were asking how to find somebody who would let them share blood, and these people were encouraging them, which we thought was irresponsible. Where my friends and I may have stepped over the line is when we made fun of the “vampires” education and social lives.

    Also….I have bitched about books I thought were REALLY bad….by name. I notice you don’t do that here, always bitching discreetly and only mentioning plot points. I wonder if someday I’ll actually meet some of the people whose books I bitched about and get really embarrassed.

    March 12th, 2007 at 2:00 AM

  3. Rebecca Says:

    “Amazon reviews have zero effect on book sales”

    yep. i can back that up. i’d rather make up my own mind, instead of letting reviewers (even professional ones) do it for me.

    urgh. this brings to mind something that happened my senior year of high school. i didn’t actually have a hand in it (thank god) but a couple friends started having a major blowout in the comments of a blog entry. they said stuff they’d never have said if they’d been in the same room together. as for me, i have a tendency to post too much information on my blog. which is why i developed a rule for myself, which is essentially that everything i post must stay posted. it (usually) makes me think a little harder while i’m writing entries that other people might see.

    i like your idea of clicking the “this review wasn’t helpful” button. :D

    March 12th, 2007 at 2:10 AM

  4. Rebecca Says:

    “I, uh, am a rather shy person in real life.”

    yeah, me too. i started using my blog to say the things i couldn’t say out loud. kinda similar to you, and i definitely don’t regret it either. i have some of my friends now as a result. :)

    March 12th, 2007 at 2:13 AM

  5. megan Says:

    Re: Amazon reviews, I think it’s most accurate to say “stupid Amazon reviews don’t affect sales.” I often check Amazon reviews, particularly when I’m deciding whether I want to read a book by an author I’ve never read, and which book of theirs I want to start with. If I see a review like the one you made up above, with crazy spelling and no real content relating to the book, of course I ignore it. But if there are several well-written reviews making similar criticisms about something that’s important to me in a book (e.g., if they all say the characters are barely developed and uninteresting), then I’m a lot less likely to buy the book than if the majority of the well-written reviews are positive.

    Re: online misdemeanours… I don’t know why, maybe it’s just my personality, but I’ve always been pretty careful about what I say even online. Though when I was a teenager I did get into a lot of arguments with people I disagreed with who had ridiculously horrible beliefs (racist, sexist, or some other -ist). I’d spend hours feeling worked up about it and writing three-page-long responses and never convince them of anything. Since then I’ve learned to pick my battles. ;)

    March 12th, 2007 at 8:15 AM

  6. Chris S. Says:

    “online disinhibition effect”

    I’m so glad to hear this is a documented phenomenon. I thought I was alone in believing that there was a huge gap between what people say online and what they would say in person.

    According to marketing precepts, while each negative response can represent up to 10 actual responses, each positive response will likely represent up to 1000 actual responses. We’re more likely to carp than to compliment. So remember: each of those positive reviews is a thousand times stronger than the negative ones. Yay!

    March 12th, 2007 at 10:45 AM

  7. Craig Says:

    I agree with megan, about stupid or online reviews don’t make a difference. Well written, thoughtful ones do effect whether or not I’ll buy a book….

    March 12th, 2007 at 12:55 PM

  8. Elle Says:

    Justine, you are my fave procrastination. This online disinhibition thing is so easy to understand, cos we’re sitting in a room somewhere, just us and the computer, having a vent, a whinge or imparting all the vitally interesting and important comments and brilliant thoughts we have that nobody else can be bothered listening to…. aren’t we? No?
    BUGGER.
    Well, that’s what it feels like unfortunately. I reckon if we were looking at a screensaver of a stadium full of people to remind us that our comments etc are actually going out there to potentially squillions maybe we’d think twice.
    Re “those” person bashing reviews… some people have far too much spare time.
    Have a good one!
    Elle.

    March 12th, 2007 at 5:50 PM

  9. 9. Justine Says:

    Dawn: It’s the shy ones you have to watch out for! Seriously, some of the meanest flamers i know are total pussycats and darlings in real life. Maybe they should have named it the “Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde online syndrome”.

    Not that I’m suggesting you are a Mr Hyde, mind!

    Pixelfish: Think of the authors! We are innocent and our skin has so few layers . . .

    Rebecca: Just as long as those things you can’t say out loud aren’t making anyone cry. Especially not authors!

    Tis true about the friend thing. I have so many dear dear friends I would not have met without the intramanets.

    Megan & Craig: See my update above for what I meant. But it does seem that you two are outliers. Which is good thing. Outliers are the creative ones. It’s a well-known scientific fact.

    Megan: It may not sway people, but it’s really important to call people on their racist, sexist homophobic bullshit. And now you’re on the record as one of the goodies. Yay you!

    Chris S: That’s an excellent theory. I’m clutching it to my bosom and re-naming it “fact”.

    Elle: It’s fitting that such an accomplished proctastinator as myself should enable other people’s procratinating. Yay me! Yay you!

    That’s a brilliant idea. Imagine if everytime you were about to post something public an image popped up of all the people who could possibly read it. That would give me pause. Especially if some of those faces were people I know and whose opinions really really really matter to me.

    March 12th, 2007 at 5:59 PM

  10. Rebecca Says:

    “Just as long as those things you can’t say out loud aren’t making anyone cry. Especially not authors!”

    No worries. I do my best not to make anyone cry. Especially authors. :)
    Last summer, when I left Austin for four months (ag!), the blog was invaluable in maintaining and strengthening the friendships I’d started in my second semester of school. I also tend to say a lot more when I can write it down instead of speak it. The internet thing can be just as good as bad–in my experience, the fact that i’m not there in the room with someone allows me to think more carefully about my responses to things.

    March 12th, 2007 at 9:03 PM

  11. Colleen Says:

    I am always amazed by the sorts of things folks will say in comment discussions – this was never more true then in the chaos that followed the Harlan Ellison/Connie Willis thing at the Hugos last year. People went ranting crazy (on both sides) in the discussions that followed and as you know I was beyond shell shocked by how one prominent editor responded to my very understated questions/comments. (Many folks emailed me to say that I wasn’t rude and didn’t deserve the responses I got from him.)

    What blows my mind when people, especially people with highly recognized names, are pointedly rude in public postings on the internet is that they don’t seem to think that it matters what the people they are blasting think of them. In other words, my lowered opinion of the person is irrelevant – because I am irrelevent. And yet you don’t know who you are talking to on the internet, not really.

    You don’t know that you might be sending out insults into the blogosphere that could later come back to bite you hard.

    What goes around comes around is what I try to live by. That’s why I work so blessed hard at my reviewing and leave a site if things get downright nasty. (Something I should have done back during the Hugos and will most certainly always always do in the future.)

    March 12th, 2007 at 8:30 PM

  12. Jeff VanderMeer Says:

    I think that because people are more inclined to rant online, I am more willing to forgive them, recognizing that the other thing about the internet, in terms of lowering inhibitions, is that it creates a forum for really interesting discussions. These also might not occur if not for the condition Justine describes. It’s just part of being human.

    JeffV

    March 12th, 2007 at 10:19 PM

  13. Ysabeau Wilce Says:

    I totally agree, Justine! There’s no point in being mean—even if it doesn’t affect sales at all—it’s bad karma and totally unnecessary. Happily, mean reviews usually reflect more on the reviewer than the reviewee. But can I add a moan about people who write spoiler reviews? It might not be quite as grave a sin as writing a mean review, but in some ways it’s more damaging. I can ignore a mean review, but I can’t easily forget reading all the plot-points. Being spoiled won’t make me not purchase a book, but certainly it will diminish my enjoyment–and it’s hardly fair to the writer, too–who spent so much time polishing his/her lovely plot, only to have some punter dispose of it in a five sentence Amazon review. (Or an extremely long blog review as recently happened to me–booo.) A review doesn’t have to be a book report. Just give me an opinion, not a synopsis!

    March 12th, 2007 at 11:41 PM

  14. camille Says:

    tobias buckell addressed this topic in a post jan. 3rd, titled “why you gotta bring my mom into this?”, and even better the next day with his author/critic faq, which summarizes;

    …”because every time an author gets ripped, they die a little inside and get a little weirder.”

    March 13th, 2007 at 4:27 PM

  15. Peter D. Tillman Says:

    You said:
    “I have taken to pressing the “report this” button cause “reviews” like that really are inappropriate. Review the book, not the person…”

    Not a bad idea. In case you don’t know the mechanics, somewhere around 4 “report this” reports gets the offending review auto-pulled by Ammie’s software.

    Cheers — Pete Tillman, a semi-regular Amazon reviewer

    March 20th, 2007 at 4:44 PM

  16. Patrick Shepherd Says:

    there’s been a fair amount of discussion about the ‘report this’ button on the amazon customer review discussion board. while it’s certainly a useful function for reporting things that really are inappropriate (like your example) it has also been used by certain authors to remove quite legitimate reviews (of the book, not the author) that they don’t so happen to like. the trouble is, it seems that reviews are removed whenever the magic number of ‘report this’ buttons have been pressed, without someone actually looking at the offending review to see if it really is inappropriate. and some reviewers, like book authors, think of their reviews as their own children, and don’t take kindly to seeing them disappear.

    May 17th, 2007 at 3:02 PM

  17. Peter D. Tillman Says:

    Ammie’s pretty good about restoring reviews that are arbitrarily removed, if the reviewer complains. community-help@amazon.com is the place to complain, if it happens to you.

    Cheers — Pete Tillman

    May 17th, 2007 at 6:53 PM

  18. Patrick Shepherd Says:

    I know they will – you probably know me from over there as hyperpat, the guy who cracked their ranking algorithm.

    May 18th, 2007 at 12:34 AM

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