QUILLBLOG

The problem with reader reviews

Russell Smith uses his Globe and Mail column today to attack Amazon’s longstanding practice of posting unfiltered reader reviews. Whether you agree with him or not, he undoubtedly speaks for many here: uninformed customer reviews have long been an irritant to authors and publishers the world over. (Negative ones, anyway. The ones that say “OMG best book ever!!!” are presumably just fine.) Smith notes that these days authors often ask their friends to praise their book on Amazon; in fact, authors have been juicing the stats for a while.

The most entertaining part of the piece comes early on, when Smith shows that although he hasn’t published a novel in five years, his fiction-writing skills are still sharp.

I remember when Amazon first came along, and authors first saw with a kind of disbelief what damage to your sales could be wrought by one aggressive idiot sitting in his mom’s basement in a town you’d never heard of. That guy – and it was usually a guy; guys are angrier – that guy could decide he didn’t like your book because you made some joking reference to The Lord of the Rings that insulted his entire life, or, more likely, he simply decided he didn’t like you personally, because of what you were wearing when he saw you on that one stupid television show that only a bag* would go on anyway (it’s the host of the show who bugs him really, but really, only a bag* would go on the show with that uberbag*).

It’s hard to argue with the idea that customer reviews aren’t exactly elevating our literary discourse in general. But as several commenters point out in response to Smith’s column, in the marketplace of ideas and opinions, don’t the more thoughtful and convincing entries carry more weight anyway?

And although Smith closes by noting that “there will be jobs for professional critics, even in the digital age, for some time to come,” it’s worth repeating that for most authors and publishers, the really important distinction is between positive and negative reviews, not between thoughtful and banal ones. After all, insulting caricatures of amateur reviewers have their counterpart in the imaginary villain – a snide, ignorant, jealous Philistine – who’s conjured up whenever a book gets slammed in a “real” magazine or newspaper.

*Probably not the words Smith originally wrote. Quillblog would love to see the relevant directive in the Globe and Mail style guide.