Writer Sanctum
Corporate Sector => What are Amazon doing now? [Public] => Topic started by: Anarchist on November 02, 2022, 02:47:29 AM
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Examples:
(https://i.imgur.com/LDqFElS.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/GLJZwB3.png)
Could be time to dust off your Goodreads-focused marketing (asking subs to leave reviews, etc.).
At one time this was a good guide on Goodreads (https://www.kboards.com/threads/how-not-to-use-goodreads-like-an-idiot.150750/).
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That's going to be confusing for people.
The Goodreads number system has a completely different meaning to Amazon's.
It's going to make most books look worse than they are.
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Thanks for the warning! Fortunately I'm not seeing it yet.
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I've only had it show up on one of my books. The ratings were equal.
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That's going to be confusing for people.
The Goodreads number system has a completely different meaning to Amazon's.
It's going to make most books look worse than they are.
Agreed. Goodreads ratings are lower than Amazon's in my experience.
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Yeah, I noticed this earlier today.
Not sure what to think about it yet. Time will tell, I guess.
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Found them only on a couple of my books. I guess the issue is that the Goodreads average seems to be the one Amazon is pushing. The star rating usually is visibly higher.
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Adds to the clutter already on the page degrading both the sales pitch and whatever limited value a rating may offer.
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So much for struggling to compete for ratings and stars:
Inside the Underground Market for Fake Amazon Reviews
Wired Nov 2, 2022
“Seedy scam networks are using social media to organize campaigns that influence product ratings. They’re a headache for shoppers—and tough to crack down on.
“...Reviews are important. Sales data is hard to come by, but higher ratings generally lead to higher sales…It’s not only about high ratings but also about visibility. Most folks won’t go beyond a page or two of search results, so if your product isn’t in there, you can forget about making a sale. ‘A quick search today on any big search engine or many social media sites shows how easy it is to buy reviews and how much more platforms could do to protect consumers and honest businesses from this deceptive practice,’ wrote Samuel Levine, director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection in a recent blog post.”
https://www.wired.com/story/fake-amazon-reviews-underground-market/ (https://www.wired.com/story/fake-amazon-reviews-underground-market/)
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My Goodreads averages are always about half a star lower than on Amazon, because the rating systems are different. For example, Goodreads suggests 3 stars for a positive rating, while Amazon suggests 3 stars for a poor read. So reviewers aren't on the same page about what the stars mean.
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My Goodreads averages are always about half a star lower than on Amazon, because the rating systems are different. For example, Goodreads suggests 3 stars for a positive rating, while Amazon suggests 3 stars for a poor read. So reviewers aren't on the same page about what the stars mean.
Which is exactly why Amazon shouldn't be displaying both without some explanation of the difference in the meaning of the reviews. Admittedly, it's hard to imagine how that could easily be done or whether most customers would bother to read it.
That said, it's pretty obvious that even Amazon reviewers don't really have common standards. I have five-star reviews that read like four-stars (or vice versa). And some people give one-stars to anything that isn't to their personal taste, regardless of general literary merit. (Personally, I don't give a one-star unless the book is plagiarized, an obvious scam, or written in almost incomprehensible English.) But I guess people's standards will differ no matter what.
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A person who did massive numbers of reviews for Romantic Times explained that she'd give any romance a 3 if it fulfilled the basic requirements of a romance: there's a love story that ends in an HEA.
That's fine for a contemporary romance, but it's not a strict enough standard for a historical romance. I'm more likely to DNF than to write a 1-star review, but that said, I would have no compunction in writing one. I don't write historicals so I feel free to review the ones I read. I'm the customer, and if I feel betrayed, I want to say so.
Also, there are huge numbers of typos, malapropisms, and peerage title mistakes in some Regencies and that is just infuriating. These authors either are getting inferior copy editors and proofreaders or aren't doing more than a SpellCheck pass, and boy does it show.
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Maybe they need a multi-level star rating system, like eBay has for auctions. I think there are four or five options, covering description, shipping speed, communication and so on. Not perfect, but it gives a better overview than a single star rating. For books, you could maybe have ratings for story/plot, how well-written, meets genre expectations, etc. Just something that gives a better overview than stars which are very limiting.
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The data's there, it was only a matter of time before they began to integrate the platforms. I'd wager this is only the beginning.
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As a customer, I don't have much use for ratings without reviews, particularly for creative products. As I mentioned above, people's standards are so different that a star rating without knowing anything about the rater's taste or criteria is meaningless.
From that standpoint, adding a second set of ratings to the product page, unless the Goodreads reviews themselves also transfer over, is just more clutter on a page that already has more than enough. And to the extent that some of them might be wildly inconsistent, given the different ways each rating is described, makes the addition of Goodreads even less helpful.
A short time ago, Doordash, the restaurant delivery service, starting adding Google restaurant ratings to its own rating system, so that both scores were displayed for each restaurant. That didn't last very long, I suspect because it didn't make a positive difference for customers.
That said, Amazon also owns IMDB, and it already draws on that for movie and TV ratings. Of course, IMDB has a ten-point scale, and Amazon offers no guidance about how to interpret it. On IMDB, it offers only guidance for what a one is (terrible) and what a ten is (excellent), leaving what the other ratings are up in the air, except that they obviously fall between the two extremes. So yes, I suppose they will inevitably make the same use of Goodreads as they do of IMDB.