Re: Book Reviewing Authors Furious With Amazon – But I’m Not

Authors and publishers work too hard putting out professional products to have the effort undermined by any jerk that figures out how to post on Amazon.

If somebody doesn’t like a book, they should properly read something else.

Or, if they believe their criticism is of a professional level at least equal to that of the author and publisher, they should seek out a legitimate, professional publishing venue for that criticism, i.e. a newspaper, a magazine, et cetera, so that their work is first vetted by professionals and presented in a professional forum and format, NOT IN ALL CAPS an nut w/ intt shrthand n gremmar n spillin’ gooooofs.

To let any jerk or moron post negative things about a book on Amazon is akin to letting a disturbed person stand outside a competent doctor’s office door saying, “This doctor is a quack.”

Scott

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Hi Angela,

How appropriate that I received your newsletter regarding Amazon and the book reviews.

Just last week, someone “reviewed” my latest release, Said the Spider to the Fly, and posted it at Amazon. It’s obvious while reading his comments that he never read the book. He simply lashed out at me, the author, claiming I had “tired plot lines”. That would be fine if I really believed he felt that way, but he never made one comment about the plot, or even named one character. He DID say about the pricing being so cheap because the quality of the story was cheap. Uh, the author has no control over Amazon’s pricing.

But the reviewer, Gary W., didn’t leave any links to other books. The only other thing he’s reviewed there? A Nintendo game.

Thanks for letting me share. 🙂

Lula / Miss Mae

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ANGELA CHIMES IN…

I never bother to check my books’ Amazon reviews because they can be so distorted. But, because of this article, I decided to do so. My book, QUERY LETTERS THAT WORKED! Real queries that landed $2K+ writing, would have had all 5-star reviews if not for the numbskull who gave the book 3 stars because it was written for magazine writers, not book authors. My other book, BOOK PROPOSALS THAT WORKED! Real Book Proposals That Landed $10K – $100K Publishing Contracts, is for book authors. Giving a book a lower rating because it “should be” for a different audience (meaning it should be an entirely different book) is ridiculous. It’s like criticizing an eating-disorder book because it wasn’t written for alcoholics.