Amazon slashes space for book reviews
America's newspapers are cutting space for book reviews to control costs, and who can blame them? Book reviews suck up space, and they're one of the least popular features of newspapers.
Is it a coincidence that Amazon.com is cutting space for customer book reviews by 50 percent on its site? WTF? Unlike newspapers, book reviews are Amazon's most popular feature, and cost them nothing to display!
The change does away with Amazon's familiar one-column display of six reviews. Now just three reviews will be displayed in their entirety, followed by a link to other reviews. The new display, to be rolled out to Amazon's entire customer base in July, looks like this (click to enlarge):
Another unpopular change: The new design is dominated by the three reviews voted "most helpful" by other shoppers. Traditionally, the most recent reviews were displayed first, along with a pair of "Spotlight" reviews. But with the new design, only snippets of some recent reviews will appear in a sidebar on the right.
Many of Amazon's most active book reviewers are outraged, complaining that most shoppers won't click through to read the newer reviews, reducing their chance of attracting votes.
"This new design is a terrible disincentive to all reviewers, especially newer ones," said frequent reviewer Daniel Jolley. "It's just a fact that most users simply do not go beyond the first page of whatever they are pulling up online. You're effectively banning most reviewers from ever being on the main item page, even temporarily."
Jim Robinson, an Amazon employee who is guiding the update, defended the new design and said it was unlikely to discourage readership of recent reviews. "While designing the new review display, we gave this possible drawback a significant amount of consideration," Robinson said on this Amazon-sponsored reviewer discussion board. "Many aspects of the design, some visible, others less-so, are meant to keep this from happening. We will watch closely to make sure it does not become a problem."
It's clear that Amazon is trying to reduce clutter on its book detail pages. Shoppers must wade through dozens of features competing for their attention, such as author blogs, related books and advertisements. It seems another feature or two is piled on every year. Amazon recently reduced the amount of space devoted to its wiki and "customer discussion" features, which appear near the bottom of detail pages and are seldom used.
Amazon is also adding a chart at the top of book reviews indicating the number of reviews awarded at each star rating of one to five.
Let's hope that Amazon remembers that its customer reviews are one of the most popular features on its site, if not the entire Web. Those reviews help sell a ton of books every day of the year. If Amazon reduces their visibility to the average shopper, it seems obvious that sales would suffer.
Steve Weber is author of Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors
Is it a coincidence that Amazon.com is cutting space for customer book reviews by 50 percent on its site? WTF? Unlike newspapers, book reviews are Amazon's most popular feature, and cost them nothing to display!
The change does away with Amazon's familiar one-column display of six reviews. Now just three reviews will be displayed in their entirety, followed by a link to other reviews. The new display, to be rolled out to Amazon's entire customer base in July, looks like this (click to enlarge):
Another unpopular change: The new design is dominated by the three reviews voted "most helpful" by other shoppers. Traditionally, the most recent reviews were displayed first, along with a pair of "Spotlight" reviews. But with the new design, only snippets of some recent reviews will appear in a sidebar on the right.Many of Amazon's most active book reviewers are outraged, complaining that most shoppers won't click through to read the newer reviews, reducing their chance of attracting votes.
"This new design is a terrible disincentive to all reviewers, especially newer ones," said frequent reviewer Daniel Jolley. "It's just a fact that most users simply do not go beyond the first page of whatever they are pulling up online. You're effectively banning most reviewers from ever being on the main item page, even temporarily."
Jim Robinson, an Amazon employee who is guiding the update, defended the new design and said it was unlikely to discourage readership of recent reviews. "While designing the new review display, we gave this possible drawback a significant amount of consideration," Robinson said on this Amazon-sponsored reviewer discussion board. "Many aspects of the design, some visible, others less-so, are meant to keep this from happening. We will watch closely to make sure it does not become a problem."
It's clear that Amazon is trying to reduce clutter on its book detail pages. Shoppers must wade through dozens of features competing for their attention, such as author blogs, related books and advertisements. It seems another feature or two is piled on every year. Amazon recently reduced the amount of space devoted to its wiki and "customer discussion" features, which appear near the bottom of detail pages and are seldom used.
Amazon is also adding a chart at the top of book reviews indicating the number of reviews awarded at each star rating of one to five.
Let's hope that Amazon remembers that its customer reviews are one of the most popular features on its site, if not the entire Web. Those reviews help sell a ton of books every day of the year. If Amazon reduces their visibility to the average shopper, it seems obvious that sales would suffer.
Steve Weber is author of Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors
Labels: book reviews
posted by Steve Weber at 5/30/2007
7 comments
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7 Comments:
This new move by amazon.com to limit the reviews on the product page is more of a disservice for readers than for me as a writer.
I’ll go further for my information, which is to ascertain if the book is in my particular genre, the publisher’s name (to market to), and the professional reviewer’s comments. And finally, if it’s my type of read and if I want to buy it.
I would hope that everyone gets the message about Amazon’s new procedures and digs deeper for posted comments. It’s another reason why authors should market the hell out of their work-—no one is going to do it for them.
Minnie E Miller
Author of The Seduction of Mr. Bradley
www.millerscribs.com
This is indeed a stupid move. A couple weeks ago, I spent several hours book shopping on Amazon, as there were three different topics I was interested in. It was primarily Amazon's book links (to other similar/related books) that helped me narrow down a POSSIBLE book to buy, but it was definitely the book reviews that pushed me to make the decision about WHICH book to reject and which to buy.
In my case, seeing the most recent reviews was very necessary, as two of my topics are subject to evolving changes in their field, and only the most recent reviews were noteworthy, especially when a reviewer discussed something obsolete in the book, or new science/studies since then, etc. Amazon has definitely not thought this through at all!
I click to the second page all the time because sometimes the ones displayed are by people that review a lot--and I'm looking for the less traveled opinion.
In any event, it isn't as though the reviews are gone and for some books there aren't more than 3 reviews anyway...
This seems to be a self-perpetuating prophecy in the making. Once the top three reviews are in place, they will naturally garner more and more votes (possibly helpful), as others simply won't be read (or voted on) nearly as much. Surely they thought of this?
This will create a real shakeup in the amazon reviewer ranks as new stars rise based on their enduring reviews continually being the only ones that are seen (and voted upon).
No?
Slashing space for book reviewers and their reviews amounts to slashing quality of true service and care for the Amazon customer. I know many people who truly depend on reviews to make decisions regarding which product to buy. One of my friends won't buy a toy for his daughter without reading the product reviews first. Hey, Amazon, wanna "diss" the reviewers and the customers at the same time? The answer is easy--just keep this rotten excuse for a service. --Matt Sherwin
I don't know if it would really affect me or not. I click through most of the reviews on a book I'm interested in... to get a balanced consensus of the overall feeling towards the book.
Um, Amazon is all about the books, not the reviews. It seems perfectly reasonable to display fewer reviews of higher (putative) quality by default. (You can still click on the link for more opinions, which I normally do.)
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