Being honest about what we think of romances (and movies, and covers, and man titty, and Jeremy Renner gifs) is our intent here. I want the comments to be a safe space for you to talk about personal and challenging subjects – subjects that romance deals with frequently, such as sexuality, emotions, assault, overcoming obstacles, vulnerability and happiness. I don’t take myself seriously at all, but I take the community at Smart Bitches very seriously.
So I’m half-caffeinated and fully angry about the comments decorating yesterday’s Books on Sale post that included a Dana Marton boxed set. More than thirty comments, all disturbingly similar, all praising Marton’s books and prompting Des Livres to ask, “What is this? A street team?”
Good question.
What makes me angry is that these are all well-meaning comments from people who may very well love every single letter in this boxed set, but on the whole, the comments amount to clutter and noise, signifying spam. Instead of making the book look praise-worthy, they make the book look suspect. Plus, the sheer number of them seems dishonest and disingenuous.
This is an example of why 5 star reviews are so often meaningless for readers.
I know authors love them. I like them, too! I’ve written three books. I totally get the thrill of, “Hot damn! Five stars!” And the similar thrill of someone commenting, “I really, really liked your book.”
But when the comments are all very similar and appear to be a coordinated effort to blanket the crap out of one page on a site with relentless squee-age, it does more harm than good.
Here’s my reaction:
- “35 comments? On a sale post? What the…?”
- Look at comments.
- Lip curling frustration.
(Please note: that reaction is not conducive to my buying a book.)
My perspective is that a flood of comments and reviews like these don’t help anyone: not the reader, and not the author. I’m more suspicious of a few of them because I wonder if they were purchased from a click farm or something, given some of the punctuation use and language patterns.
But most of all, because I value your honesty in the comments here, especially when you disagree with me or with another review, I’m bothered that it might interfere with the conversations we have.
Amanda, who posts the Books on Sale with me, agrees: I do think getting feedback in the comments about sale books is helpful. Since I help put them together, I see a lot of good discussions, especially when I’m unfamiliar with the book and I’m seeing the Bitchery’s opinion since I have none. That sort of interaction is conducive to buying books, I think, and not a deluge of comments which only serve to drown out other commenters.
“And it’s not that we don’t want to hear readers’ opinions. Of course not! I mean, Devil in Denim got panned in the comments, but I’m glad it sparked a discussion. However, 30+ comments on sale post has the effect of a bunch of people screaming into a megaphone. It’s just a lot of noise and not much substance. Those comments could very well all be genuine, but I doubt it.”
Like I said, there is a difference between broadcast promotion and a conversation between readers about we like and don’t like. I’m very confused how one might not see the difference between spam and genuine conversation, or the resulting damage of too much spam. The en masse demonstration of how much a group of readers enjoys an author’s books is more often a turn-off than a turn-on.
But I’m curious. I have a particular set of feelings about the site and the comments section — for obvious reasons. My bias, I has one! You can probably see it from space! (It’s huge.) And spam may be very much in the eye of the beholder, defined by the person reading it and not by the person writing it.
What is your reaction when you see a flood of positive comments or reviews about a book? As a reader, does this accomplish anything for you, positive or negative? Does it turn you off to buying that book or that author, or does it not bother you at all? Why is that? I’m curious about your reaction.
ETA: 12:13pm ET
I have been corresponding with Dana Marton, and she gave me permission to share this with you:
I saw the 20+ responses yesterday and almost fell off my chair. I did mention your feature on FB and that you asked if anyone read the book. Just didn’t want to be featured and have no comments. I figured maybe 1 person would say something. I don’t have a street team or a hugely active following. I asked the other day if anyone read my new release to please review it, and got 2 extra reviews.
FWIW, I really do think that all these people read the books and only meant to help. I recognize most of the names from FB as readers who keep in touch with me. I thought if readers who read the book said they read the book that would be okay, esp since you asked if anyone read the book. Now I just feel stupid. Sigh.
Dana also told me that earlier this year, she saw a different blogger writing that s/he was upset that a featured author didn’t tell her readers about a post on that blogger’s site. The lack of comments in that case was upsetting. Definitely mixed signals and different blogger goals there, and more evidence that it can be difficult to understand the nuances of different communities online.
There’s Squee and there’s Form Letter Squee. The stuff from yesterday was clearly the Form Letter variety. I was reminded of those requests to contact your congressman where the activists write out exactly what to write to said congressman about the issue du jour. I bet the legislature likes those as much as I like faux-Squee. It’s okay to have the feels, but be specific, be genuine, and demonstrate that you actually read the book. Then I might be moved to buy the book rather than moved to put your favorite author on my do not buy list.
@Chacha1:
WHICH ONES HAVE YOU TRIED. PLEASE TELL ME. 🙂
Note from the author:
I wasn’t going to post because I think readers should have communities where they can freely express opinions and not have authors watching over their shoulders. I don’t comment on blogs usually. I don’t comment on reviews, bad or good. Not even on the one that I’m dying to comment on. (It faults Deathwatch because the heroine thinks too much about chocolate. Whaaat?)
I’m sorry if yesterday’s posts from my readers came through as spammy. I’m running a sale and my assistant sent the info to a few dozen blogs. I mentioned SBTB on my FB page, since Sarah asked if anyone has read the book. I couldn’t believe how many people came over to say something about it. There was no coordinated effort to spam any site at all. Out of the dozens of blogs I’m scheduled on, I mentioned only this one. (Which happens to be one that is different from most other blogs that want authors to mention the post and send their readers over. Gah. What were the chances that I’d pick one that didn’t? I swear, if there’s a 50-50 chance between picking right or wrong, I’ll pick wrong every time.)
For the record, I don’t personally know any of the readers who posted. None of the posts are from fake accts from me, or from my friends, neighbors or family members. I’m pretty sure they’re all legitimate readers as they also follow other authors and actively talk about romance novels on FB all the time. I’m pretty sure they read my books, as they’re active on my FB page. So, as far as I know, none of the reviews here were fake.
As far as them being positive… Again, these are readers who came here because of my FB post. People who hate my books don’t follow me on FB. So the people who saw my FB post were those who like me enough to follow me. I don’t have a street team.
Everyone is welcome to think what they wish about me and my books. But I will stand up for my readers. I love my readers. I’m so excited that I now actually have the kind of following where people will go and post about my books. So I needed to make it clear that they’re not fake, or dishonest or being in any way compensated. Maybe here I seem like a complete nobody who can’t possibly have a following, but I do have about 40 books out, was a Rita nominee, even won the Daphne duMaurier Award of Excellence once, had books translated into a dozen languages and even published in comic book format in Japan etc. I am a real author, and I have real readers. I swear. No scam. 🙂
My immediate reaction to all the squees was annoyance and disbelief followed by more annoyance. I felt as though the bitchery had been hijacked. I’m someone who loves to fire the squee cannon, but the uniformity of the posts felt as though (a) they weren’t really trying with any sincerity or effort, just wanted to overrun a place most of them don’t frequent and (b) were clearly vying for Ms. Marton’s attention and good opinion.
It’s unfortunate, especially when (so far) one of the comments fired back at SB Sarah. Yeah, that’s not going to endear anyone to this author.
@ Becky: Pardon the hell out of me, but coming to someone else’s blog and telling that person to “chill, bitch”? So not cool, it breaks the parameter.
Fact: very rarely does a SALES post here get more than a handful of comments.
Fact: when it does, at least a few of the comments are negative
Fact: most of the time, even when there are many comments to a SALES post, it takes hours to pass the 20 comments mark
Fact: when you have a lot of comments to ANY post, it’s a conversation, not repeated, unconnected, out of context squeeing.
Fact: if you have more than ten comments in any post here, there will be at least one frequent commenter’s name in there.
So it’s not out of the realm of cool reason to wonder whether there was spamming involved, when all those boxes are ticked negatively.
I know a bunch of book girls, and when I see a post about an author we all love, it do share the link to the post in a private group on facebook–I was’t part of what happened yesterday. I don’t follow that author. However, it’s possible when I do share, the book girls come over and comment, but they don’t usually. It’s not a coordinated effort to push for sales.
I know some authors ask their teams to go comment if they know a book is featured on a blog, but the author usually has advanced notice–a planned blog visit.
I don’t want to be kicked off your blog for sharing, so if you prefer I don’t share with my book girls group–basically and online book club–I won’t in the future.
excuse my grammar mistakes in the above post–I missed them when I proofed. in too much of a hurry
This is why I don’t bother to read 4/5 star reviews at all. On amazon I only look at the 1 and 2 star reviews. If the review is only a few sentences, I ignore it because that means they are not well thought out and won’t give me the information I need, namely what is it exactly that you disliked about the book and will it be something that I will dislike as well. The best reviews are detailed, succinct, and very specific about their criticism with spoiler appropriately labeled. I also appreciate when people clarify whether they have read other books from the author/in the series, or even books with in the same genre so I can discern whether we have similar tastes. I’ll only go and look at 4/5 star reviews after I’ve already completed or given up on a book.
To second what azteclady said in her first comment, this is a community. You start to recognize names and styles of comments. You respond to what others have said. The sales comments did not feel familiar to me. Some of the commenters may be regulars but that was not the feel I got from it. Sure, some of us squee without specifics. But more of us are likely to have a specific thing we like or throw in what may be a problem for others. BTW, I am always thrilled when someone references something I have said in a comment. I enjoy being part of this community.
I think I agree with most of the group–whether or not that was meant as a street team incident, it definitely read like one. Her explanation totally makes sense, and more than that, the comments from everyone else talking about how they interpreted the comments, I think that’s the really valuable part of this experience.
The sheer sameness of the 30+ is what made it feel like a street team/bot attack. I mean, the majority of the commenters didn’t even mention which book(s) they were talking about, which for me is a MAJOR spam flag–if you could put the comment in another post without changing anything, it’s going to feel fake. Likewise, if people had said anything that made it look like they’d read more/the whole post (“I haven’t read X and Y, but I loved Z”), it wouldn’t have seemed so automatic/form letter.
No one minds the idea of 30 people loving a book/author so much that they have to squee about it, but if you’re one of those 30 people, you’re going to be the most helpful for your cause if you can be specific/detailed about what makes you squee about the book. Because I don’t know you, and what you like to read. I don’t know if this book hit your unrequited troll-love catnip SO HARD that you didn’t even care about the subplot about baby-eating. And if you’re just saying “OMG, it was the best book ever” I’m going to be really pissed when I hit the baby-eating subplot without a warning.
So I’m going to remember these things the next time I want to squee incoherently about a book, and try to add a little coherence to my squee, for the good of all of us.
Positive or negative, I don’t pay attention to reviews that are more about the reviewer than about the book. I know I have specific things that appeal to me in novels, and some things that turn me off, so I read comments to get more information about my personal turn-ons and turn-offs, not because I’m particularly interested in knowing that this person “loved it so much OMG” or thought it was “the best book ever”. Unless I specifically follow their reviews because their tastes are similar to mine, I don’t give any value to comments of this kind.
I tend not to assume that positive comments are spam unless I have a specific reason to think so. Usually I simply skim if I can’t see the information I’m looking for. So yeah… if it’s just squee, it’s not going to be very useful to convince me to get that book.
I feel like I generally have pretty okay spam-dar (like when I click on a book on Amazon that sounds vaguely interesting, and it has 15 reviews, and they are all 5 stars but generic and only two sentences long, and it’s a romance novel, but a bunch of the vague reviews are by people with male-sounding usernames… probably not going to spend any more time looking into this book) but it always confuses me that people think that will work. (Not saying that’s what happened here, this sounds like a well-intentioned thing gone awry.)
Because I don’t want to buy a book based on a bunch of glowing spam reviews, and then realize that it’s not a good fit for me as a reader. I want to buy books I’m pretty sure I’ll like. And wouldn’t an author rather have a buying audience that’s a good fit for her work, rather than a buying audience that is going to be disappointed and leave grumpy reviews, because of how they were never her target audience to begin with? So I find it very mystifying as a marketing idea, getting people to hype up your reviews or comments or whatever. (Again, not saying that’s what happened here, but it clearly happens elsewhere.)
Case in point: I recently bought WRITTEN IN RED (or is it WRITTEN IN BLOOD? the Anne Bishop book.) because of glowing reviews here, on goodreads, and on amazon. I generally make sure, with a new-to-me author or series, that I at least poke around the low-rated reviews, but in this case, the low-rated reviews were swamped by positive reviews, and they’d (on amazon) gotten downvoted a lot, so the signal:noise ratio was really skewed toward the glowing reviews. I bought the book. I started reading it. I loved the first 15%. Then it took a rapid, sharp, unrecoverable dive.
I wound up leaving a critical review, because the book was so much not what I had hoped for: it didn’t have a plot, the main character was a hyperintense, unenjoyable Mary Sue, weird sexual politics, self-harm, NO PLOT, had I mentioned NO PLOT, had I mentioned the endless droning about mail clerk job responsibilities. If I had seen reviews talking about that stuff float to the top of the usefulness algorithm pile, I would probably not have bought the book, because it would have been so clear that this was not my type of reading jam. Instead, I felt like I had been bait-and-switched by, basically, the extremely glowing Anne Bishop fans upvoting each other and downvoting critical reviews.
And I just don’t see who is helped by that. One of the reasons I like shopping with Amazon is that their business paradigm is not “sell consumers as much crap as we possibly can”, but “sell consumers things they will be happy with”, which means that sometimes you take an early hit on sales numbers to have an overall happier customer base who will come back again and again. Which seems, to this reader, like an approach authors should also consider.
I recently left a critical review (not “mean”, just factual) on another book on Amazon, and what I think is interesting is that clearly that book has an audience, and my critical review, based on comments people are leaving, is actually HELPING the book find its audience, because me saying “Hey, this book involves a lot of dubious consent, here are some specifics so you can see if that works for you” enables people who enjoy dubious consent (I am not judging! I like weird stuff in books, just not dubcon.) to find something they are pretty likely to enjoy, while also allowing people who do not care for dubious consent to avoid it. So I say, don’t fear the non-positive review, your audience IS out there, and your correct audience does not need to be manipulated or convinced into enjoying your work, they just need to know it’s there so they can find it! And sometimes that path goes through reviews from people who didn’t enjoy it, which I think is a liberating idea if you can embrace it!
PS: I love that the SBTB commenting community is not so gushy all the time. I feel like “smart, kinda cynical people talking about romance novels” is exactly the review niche so many of us desperately want to see filled so we can find things to read that aren’t The Worst. Thank you for existing, blog and commenters!
I had a look at the comments, as I think I only saw the first couple yesterday. Scrolling through, they actually started to creep me out, they were sort of stepford-reviews; not glaringly gushy but something worse. I don’t think you’d get me in the same room with those books after that feeling 🙂
After thinking more about this, and re-reading the original post, I think part of what happened is that Dana Marton and her fans took SB Sarah’s “Have you read this series?” question very literally and they just answered the question – yes they read it and it’s great.
As a member of the bitchery, I know that “Have you read this series?” means, “If you’ve read it, tell us what you liked / didn’t like / made your head explode so the rest of us can decide if we want to buy it.” That’s where being a regular makes a difference. And as a reg, I do look for other commenters that I know have similar or overlapping tastes to mine.
This must be hard for authors to navigate – every review blog is its own island with a specific culture and expectations. And it’s hard to distill the nuances into the FAQs. And the locals can be unfriendly if their/our unwritten rules are violated.
@ denise:I do not speak for the Bitch-in-charge-of-everything (that would be SBSarah) but I believe I speak for a number of regular commenters here when I say that we enjoy having new people come and talk about books–whether they like the same we do or not.
That was not, unfortunately, what transpired yesterday, hence the negative reaction.
@ Vicki: The Pink Palace of Bitchery is truly a wonderful place to hang out with people who love romance–and books in general.
I’ve been lurking in the Bright Pink Palace of Bitchery for over a year now but have only recently begun commenting, and I admit to having a moment of “oh, no! Now it’s starting to look like GR over here” when I saw the Marton comments this morning. While I sincerely hope that this was a misunderstanding (a group of first-time visitors commenting without reading the post or looking at the site?), it was very hard not to be suspicious.
One of the reasons why I truly value the community here is that I can get nuanced and critical reviews (and orcas), without having to wade through pages and pages of cookie cutter 5-star reviews and dancing .gif files. SBTB is the reason why I started reading romance again, and I would be incredibly saddened if the site lost its edge, so to speak.
I know I’m overreacting, but this hit a nerve. Can we have some more clippy bookmark kittens on top of headless soldiers, please?
LOL @ SBSarah. To be honest I haven’t had Spam since we were on our honeymoon in Hawaii 13.5 years ago. I need to remedy that deficiency STAT.
@cleo I think your post nailed it on the head!
As a relatively new self published author I am wading into this territory of self-promotion, trying to get the word out about my book. I am a faithful romance reader and have always found SBTB a place where I can be introduced to new authors with quality reviews so that I can buy books that set off my catnip alert with a measure of confidence. That said, I am also randomly googling review sites now to see if there is any place I can let people know about my baby…I mean book, so that I can hopefully have someone read it. I have no idea what the culture on each site is and frankly it is a bit overwhelming to try and figure it all out and still WRITE! Especially given the discouraging thread over on DA today. I have great reviews on Amazon…all 8 of them…only one is from my mother! LOL i would love a review from someone I from someone I don’t know, but who knows my genre and can give me real feedback. But how do I convince someone to give it a chance without begging my friends and family (who did graciously buy it) to leave a review. It’s a weird space to be in. I guess I’m more inclined to read these reviews with a grain of salt given that it seems like Dana Marton, as an established author, simply got her followers engaged, and God how I wish I was in that position. However, these reviews simply told me that a lot of people like her, not necessarily anything specifically squee-worthy about this set. I’m probably not going to buy it because it doesn’t seem like my thing, based on the blurb.
@SBSarah once again your JPEG googling skills are astonishing. I had no idea SPAM came in so many varieties! Thanks for keeping your eyes peeled for it on the site, and for asking for feedback in this very strange case. The fact that we can have this conversation here is just one of the many reasons SBTB a is a must-read blog for me.
Also, sorry for the missed edits above. Typing on my phone at 6:30am is never a good plan…
I do wonder if well meaning readers realize that such a strong positive response tends to make many readers runaway from the book. A few years ago a blurb for a book caught my attention but when I read several reviews on Amazon I decided not to buy it because of all the squee level reviews. Review after review filled with love but little details. Plus no negative comments about it at all. It made feel that these readers were either made up or this book was suited to an audience that I wasn’t a part of.
It is strange coming to the sale post and this conversation a day late. First I thought the new site was “acting up” by closing comments on a new post. I think that happened once before. Then I wondered why a sale post had so many comments, imagining that someone must have really disliked one of the books on sale, and stirred up a big discussion. Then I started reading. An early comment confused me, mentioning no title on a post of several books. By the third I was shaking my head wondering “who are these people?” and by the fourth I understood why comments were closed.
I bought this set when it was on sale in August. Not my usual romance reading, but one of the plots sounded interesting — I enjoy the “what are you doing in my house” set up — and my book budget is
tight. Since I’m not much of a reviewer and I read these about 6 months ago, forgive me if I just say that I enjoyed all three and when I read the sale post earlier this evening I had a memory of pleasant reading. If the author was not involved in the comment nonsense, I feel bad for her to lose so many potential readers, and for readers to miss enjoyable books.
Thanks for this interesting discussion.
I see no way that fake reviews can be controlled.
The publishing world has always been filled with agents/publishing houses/authors who’ve known how to manipulate the market, throwing lunches and money and influence and obsequiousness at the now more outdated ways of making a book more prominent than its competition. Sad, but true.
And – even so – in the days prior to social media, plenty of other books (including ones that were self-published) burst past that cronyism to become best-sellers, or even lower-selling literary gems, because they were great works, their reputations spread through word of mouth and serious literary criticism.
I do read and write reviews of HRs. I couldn’t care less if a book has 30 five star reviews, unless ten of them are the reviewers I’ve learned to trust. I am interested, however, when a book attracts hundreds of five star reviews, as that seems more difficult to manipulate. And I often buy HRs that may have only one or two reviews, because I’m a fan of the author, or the book sounds interesting – as one of my other reading interests is poetry and that genre seldom attracts hundreds of reviews. One and two star reviews are often illuminating, as well.
Finally – poor old Spam. I may appear a dummy, but I had never previously realised that the term was connected to this product, which I remember from my childhood with no affection – although a Vietnam vet friend of mine once told me that it was a staple of their diet and is still much used in some parts of Asia.
When I’m shopping for a book I usually ignore the 5-star reviews and look straight at the 1 and 2-star reviews. Nobody’s faking those. And they’re good for IDing trends that will turn me off, like the overbearing alpha male, weak writing, boring plot, woman who orgasms three times in the space of 30 seconds (seriously that is not how sex works), etc.
And what is a “street team?” Are they like a team of promoters or lackeys? And how much do they usually charge? (Haha, I kid… mostly.)
Several years ago, on Lois McMaster Bujold’s elist, some of the more active posters thought it would be a Good Deed to upvote Bujold’s latest book on some site (newspaper, perhaps?). Mind you, the elist was international, and suddenly all these votes on a local site popped up. Ms Bujold got wind of it and emailed the list thanking them for there caring, and telling them to knock it off (but much more elegantly phrased. Stunningly polite, of course.
I’ll admit I was a bit creeped out by all the comments on yesterday’s post when I started reading them (and I always read the comments). The lightbulb went on when I went back and saw the “have you read this” question and figured street team/author blog comment. So, people were invited to comment and then went a bit overboard in their support. Eh, it’s clear we all know to take that kind of thing with a grain of salt.
After reading thru the comments on this post, I guess what’s troubling me a bit more is that the talk about community is starting to sound more like clique. As long as they’re not true spammers/robots, are there criteria for who’s allowed to comment and who isn’t? Comments like, “You’re not a regular” and “We don’t recognize your name” are pretty off-putting and proprietary. (Unless it’s Sarah; she has the right to be proprietary.) Like me, I know that a lot of people lurked quietly, sometimes for many years, before jumping into a discussion and making a comment. (Probably many more are content to forever remain in lurkerdom.) Sarah has made this a welcoming place and I’d hate to see that change by making lurkers and new readers reluctant to participate if they so wish because they don’t want to be smacked down by the vocal regulars in the club.
If the Bitchery had just said, “Yeah, that’s not how we do things around here, but come back and tell us why you like Marton’s books so much” maybe that would have opened the door to a better discussion. There are a lot of folks who aren’t big fans of romantic suspense so it could have made for some good back-and-forth. As it is, I doubt if any of yesterday’s posters would ever want to return now.
But maybe I’m just an old-fashioned Pollyanna.
(BTW, I bought the boxed set last year, but haven’t read it.)
Speaking for myself, I didn’t look at names until after I read a few strange (very strange for SBTB) posts. Because the comments were so similar, had the impression that one person was creating all the comments and just having SBTB on.
I usually really enjoy the comments on this site. Usually the comments illuminate the books – like the one above about Written in Red which i thought was great. (both the negative comment and the book). plus you often get great insights into fantastic people and their worlds – including orcas.
But i was affronted by those contentless comments praising Marton. There was nothing in them about her work and why I should read it. Or should not. Now we can see it as a sort of culture clash – but at the time it was a distasteful shock.
@ Susan: I believe that the comments talking about recognizing names, which I mentioned at least once, refer to the fact that when it’s a conversation about a book and not a street team or similar event, it’s more common than not to see the handles of people who comment here regularly at least once, and more so on the longer threads.
I may have missed it, but I didn’t see anyone saying “we don’t recognize your name” (implying, I gather, “who are you to comment here?” or some such?). What I know I said is, I would have expected to see at least one or two familiar names somewhere in the first thirty comments–along with actual conversation.
I am not quite sure how that translates into clique.
OMG I swear this is pure coincidence but I did a post set to go live tomorrow morning on this very same thing though focused more on Amazon reviews. When fans of authors review bomb a book, it has the opposite effect. Readers with any kind of thinking power are NOT going to buy said books as they know a book with tons of vague praise is bogus with a good chance the book isn’t that good. It’s a matter of overkill or trying to hard.
@azteclady: Am I being too sensitive? Maybe. But I went back and reread all the earlier comments (not just yours) and still picked up that vibe even if those weren’t the exact words being used.
The squee-ers yesterday crossed a line, but I cut them slack in my mind because they weren’t acting out of greed or malice, but an overabundance of excitement and, perhaps, loyalty. To me, the squeefest merited acknowledgement/discussion and an invitation to a more productive interaction with Marton’s fans about those books and the genre, but not quite the level of condemnation it received. But I confess that, in the past, I’ve had people respond nastily, seemingly just to score points of some kind, to what I thought were pretty innocuous comments on my part. That’s a very quelling thing for someone who has to make a giant effort just to participate at all. I love that SBTB is normally such a safe place, so maybe I was internalizing things excessively by putting myself into the newcomers’ position and seeing too harsh a schooling by an established group when that wasn’t the intent?
For what it’s worth, I think @cleo hit the nail on the head. Sounds like a series of unfortunate events stemming from a misunderstanding of SBTB’s community culture. It’s also good to hear from @LML … that’s the kind of review that makes people interested in picking a book up. I may go ahead and grab the set based on that comment.
I wish I had been more thorough before I made my original comment. I have now read the author’s response. Her explanation of what happened seems plausible to me.
My subsequent comments were made in a general sense and were not meant, in any way, to suggest that she had set up fake reviews.
I acknowledge Sarah’s right to close down any comment thread, but I don’t envy her the decision. For example, I’d have been more than tempted to close down after the 15 yes, yes, yes, one after another approvals of Don’t Judge a Lady by Her Cover – a book I heartily disliked, and even disapproved of – and yet I notice it has made the top 10 choice list for SBTB, so what do I know?
Finally – I feel sorry for the new poster who seems to have been caught up in the controversy and re-posted her feelings about this happening. I encourage her to stay connected, as this is generally a great site.
I didn’t read all these comments (darn trying to check SBTB at work) but wanted to say thank you to Sarah for this conversation and for giving the author the benefit of the doubt. I would also guess that it was one of the author’s followers who commented many times, thinking they were doing a service. One bad apple, you know? For all we know it was a 13 year old who thought they were doing their good deed of the day.
PS I do understand the difference between the string of DJLC yes comments and this latest situation. In the former case, the posters were undoubtedly already well known to Sarah and perfectly entitled to disagree with me and share the reviewer’s love of the work.
I’m another who skims 5 star reviews and looks for the 1 and 2 stars. I find the negative reviews are more likely to tell me specifics about why I may or may not like a book, regardless of how long the review. That was what struck me as strange about the comments in the sale post – the lack of detail was unusual for comments on this site.
I don’t really get the street team thing – do they just get free stuff for spruiking the author? Little naive me did not realise this was such a widespread practice… now a lot of the reviews I’ve seen on amazon are starting to make a bit more sense!
K F, I totally agree about the nonsensical Amazon reviews. A lot of terrible books have dozens of 5-star reviews, and I wonder, “What are these people smoking?” But I guess it’s the work of whatever these street teams are? Do they come with a publication deal, as part of a marketing plan or something?
See I don’t want to totally discount the power of positive reviews- I found a lot of beloved books via glowing reviews on here or DA or even amazon (including the Anne Bishop books mentioned above, which I just looooved and had none of the above issues- different strokes for different folks), but I do agree it’s off putting when there are tons ad tons of positive reviews and they are all similar. I guess I try to read the positive ones and if they all sound similar I discount them. But if there is a glowing five star review that describes why the reader liked it and things about the plot, I take it into consideration. Likewise, if I read a one star review and all it says is “didn’t like hero” or (my favorite) “this book is smut”, then I discount those. In general, I think that when talking about books or movies or music, if you want your review to be meaningful and make people buy the thing or understand your reservations, you have to give details!
I have been burned by the plethora of five star reviews-I bought a book that I think was free at the time on kindle with hundreds of glowing reviews and it was easily one of the worst books I’ve ever read. I’ve got a handwritten rant somewhere that I wrote at like 1am after I gave up on it 60% through in fury. Ugh.
@ Danker – the term “Spam” references back to an old Monty Python skit where the Spam product was the main offering at a restaurant. I first heard the term in the early 1990s.
@Susan- For me the community I spoke about had more to do with the back and forth conversations and not so much any names I recognize or do not in a comment thread.
@Danker- I love reading comments from someone who hates a book everyone else loved (even if I liked it myself). I love the chance to have a glimpse into someone else’s mind and while it’s not always fun to be the curmudgeon, I personally feel that has long as we’re just talking about things in the book we don’t like and why, it’s one of my favorite conversations.
I think we need a blog post in praise of the thoughtful negative reviews. I will often buy a book because of a negative review. Maybe the reviewer hated the crazysauce or thinks it had to much sex and hey! that’s just what my day needed. Or maybe the reviewer didn’t like that the heroine was a doormat, but I am having a wallowing-in-self-pity day and feel like pressing on the bruise a bit by identifying with a fellow doormat for a few hours. One person’s trash is another one’s treasure as they say. As long as it’s specific in its criticism and not just “OMG, I hated it!” (aka unhelpful reverse-squee), I say embrace the negative review, authors and readers!