Amazon's Review System is Utterly Broken

I've heard a lot about Amazon's review system having issues with fake reviews. Amazon has clearly acknowledged it is a problem and has gone so far as to sue vendors who pay for reviews.

But I saw an example today that makes me think the system may be broken (pun intended, you'll see why) beyond all repair.

A book was released which you can view here. Forgive me for not actually naming the book in this blog post as I don't want to generate free publicity for it by adding to its visibility in Google search returns.

Anyway, it is crystal clear that the book is horrible. Readers feel ripped off and fume about how horrific the editing is. Now, one has to take bad reviews with the same grain of salt as good reviews - as any book can be maligned for no valid reason (perhaps someone has a personal conflict with the author in real life and decides to attack them through negative reviews).  Which while not the focus of this post, is another area Amazon falls short in - not just removing fake good reviews, but similarly, identifying and removing fake bad reviews (which long term will be just as damaging to their business).

In the case of the book in question here, all you have to do is open the "look inside" preview to see the one-star reviews are justified. This was a bait-and-switch scam where an author of a successful series, for some inexplicable reason, decide to throw out crap and churn the reader base they had amassed for a quick profit.

Yet, despite the book clearly being bad, there are still FIVE five-star reviews and SEVEN four-star reviews (at the time of this post). It is 100 percent guaranteed that each and every one of those reviews is fake.

On my own books, The Fall of Man: Days of Judgment for instance, my reviews are 100 percent genuine reader feedback. And I'll admit, it peeves me off a little that authors such as I (who accumulate reviews slowly from legitimate readers) have to share a marketplace with marketing hacks that game the system.

On the one hand, I can appreciate how hard it is for Amazon to control reviews. I mean, if someone purchases the book, who is Amazon to say that their review is illegitimate right? Which means all an author needs to do is have 10, 20 or 30 people willing to buy the book and leave a fake review (heck, they don't even need to buy it, merely have an Amazon account. Purchasing it merely gets the "verified purchase" logo on the review).

Given authors make 70 percent royalties, it's no big investment for them to pay for those purchases (just 30 percent of whatever their book costs). All they really need are the people willing to go along with the scam.

In the long run, the one most hurt by all this, is actually Amazon. As confidence in their review system drops to zero, that is going to impact their bottom line. Furthermore, if a competitor can come along and offer a trustworthy review system, that could literally destroy Amazon (not just with books, but with all their product offerings).

On the flip side, is Amazon doing all it can to stop all this? It's hard to say. They are apparently going after the businesses that provide paid-for-reviews. But that just stops the large-scale operations, it doesn't stop the low-level scam tactics.

And is this issue limited to just Amazon? Hell no. Every online vendor has this issue. It's just that Amazon is the 800-pound gorilla so it catches all the attention.

So what's the solution? I honestly don't know... which is why as much as I want to get angry at Amazon, I sort of can't. It's bad for authors, it's bad for Amazon, and it's bad for customers - but what can be done?

In the long run, the review system does work in that fake reviews will eventually get offset by bad reviews - nothing spurs a customer more to leave a bad review than getting scammed. But that doesn't stop a percentage of customers from getting suckered initially and it doesn't stop the gradual, yet continual, degradation of trust in the review system itself.

My advice to Amazon? 
They need to come out with very clear rules about their review system and when those rules are breached they need to go ballistic on the offending accounts.

I say they need to be "very" clear because as it stands today whatever their review rules are, they are buried somewhere deep in their site. When someone leaves a review a pop up box needs to appear that warns them of the consequences of fake reviews on Amazon and what constitutes a fake review.

I hate endorsing psychological fear tactics; the stick over the carrot if you will. But Amazon needs to escalate their management of this issue before the review system becomes so useless that it may as well not even be there.