Amazon will supply free advance copies of books, movies to customer reviewers
Amazon.com will provide free advance copies of books, movies and music to customers who agree to post reviews of the new releases on the company's Web site.The program, Amazon Vine, will permit negative reviews as long as they meet Amazon's regular review guidelines, said manager Russell Dicker.
"As with all Amazon reviews, we want your honest opinion of the product," Dicker said. "Amazon will not edit or modify any reviews beyond small tweaks to fit within existing guidelines -- this is exactly how it works today."
Starting August 15, Amazon will ask customers to join the program in invitations e-mailed over the next few months. To be eligible, customers must allow receipt of commercial e-mail from Amazon. Customers can check and change their settings here:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/gss/ccp/
Asked if publishers would pay Vine placement fees, Dicker didn't elaborate. Many professionals in the book trade believe it's unethical to pay for reviews, although in this case Amazon would receive the payment, not the reviewer. It's also unclear whether small publishers or self-publishers will be allowed to participate.
In 2006 Amazon experimented with recruiting its Top Reviewers to critique advance copies of the fantasy novel The Stolen Child, and Amazon bought the book's film rights. The publisher, Doubleday, acknowledged the overwhelmingly positive online reviews propelled the book onto bestseller lists. However, some readers argued Amazon should have disclosed it was a paid placement by Doubleday.
Dicker emphasized publishers won't expect good reviews. "We have given the vendors absolutely no assurances about good publicity," he said. "They understand that the nature of their reviews will depend on the quality of their product."
Click here to see reader comments about this article.
---------------
If you like my articles, click the orange button to subscribe:
Steve Weber is author of Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors
Labels: Amazon.com, book marketing, book reviews
posted by Steve Weber at 8/02/2007
4 comments
links to this post
4 Comments:
Steve, I found your article at the Self-Publish group and appreciate it.
Yes, there may be some ethical issues involved. We'll see.
It's also possible that if Amazon is giving regular readers books if they will weigh in with reviews, sales for the publishers and authors might be affected. Wouldn't lots of readers suddenly become Amazon reviewers to get the book they'd like to read free? Just wondering. We'll see how Amazon handles it!
Anyway, thanks for the heads up.(-;
Best,
Carolyn Howard-Johnson
www.howtodoitfrugally.com
As a reviewer, I'm also wondering if publishers will be paying for this pre-release review service. Mostly I'm wondering because this may make it cost-prohibitive for small publishers to use the service. It would be nice if any publisher could ask Amazon to distribute ARCs to reviewers and be confident that their books would end up in the hands of suitable reviewers who are interested in the genre/subject matter. This would be a best-case scenario. On the other hand, I couldn't blame Amazon for charging, because they are offering a service that professional book reviews don't offer: pre-publication reviews.
As for whether charging for reviews creates a conflict of interest (or vaguely unethical situation), I don't think it does unless the reviewers themselves are being paid. But there have been some heated discussions on the Amazon Reviewer board about the practice of accepting books for review. Some people feel (assume) that a free book will buy a favorable review -or at least influence the review. I dismiss the issue, because free review copies are standard practice in the reviewing and publishing industries. Professional reviewers all receive free books (and have to pay taxes on them), and no one seems to think that they are shills on account of it.
But no doubt there will be some grumbling over the Amazon Vine program. The fact is that when you send out free books, you do get mostly positive reviews, for whatever reason (the reason could simply be "user bias", the same reason that customer reviews tend to be positive in general).
I don't know if Amazon was paid specifically to provide customer reviews of "The Stolen Child", but there was a simultaneous promotional campaign that was certainly paid for. It made me think that the reviews were part of the package.
-mirasreviews
(Amazon.com Customer Reviewer)
Thanks for blogging about Amazon Vine as when I got the email with the invitation from Amazon about Amazon Vine I ignored it (it was still sitting in my email inbox and I went back to retrieve it).
Amazon floods me with emails and I just can't keep up or sort their promotions from the more serious business stuff.
I just signed up for the program. It will be interesting to see if I ever am offered something to review.
I was forced to pick categories of things I consume, like saying what kind of music I listen to, by general category. I wonder if they will randomly pick reviewers based on the categories we said we currently read, listen to, etc.
One odd thing was they wanted to know my household income. I left that blank as I didn't see how that was relevant or their business (and they let me keep it as unanswered). They also wanted to know my birth year and how many kids were in the house. It looked almost like they were gathering marketing info on me in order to market or advertise to me. I wonder if the publishers are going to target certain reviewers. I mean, would a childrne's music company want only people with income levels of over $100K, for example, to be the reviewers? For example, knowing I already said I listen to kids music is one thing but why do they want to know how many kids I have? And why would they care what my household income level was? Or what level of education I have or if I was currently a student?
They also wanted my birth year, gender and some other demographic things that have nothing to do with my ability to write a review.
ChristineMM,
Amazon top 500 reviewer
It is my belief that they are asking the demographic information in order to have a balanced reviewer profile. You wouldn't necessarily want a large number of childless caucasians living in Alabama doing the majority of the reviews (I'm childless, caucasian and live in the SE, so I am not picking on any demographic here... LOL). If they find their reviewer base is made up mostly of one kind of reviewer profile, I am betting they will work to find reviewers that fill the niche in the other demographics they need.
As for free books generating more positive reviews, I don't think that is quite it. I review books for an independent, non-profit review site. We don't charge for reviews, we don't sell advertising, but we do receive complementary books from the authors and publishers who have requested reviews from us. Those requests go into the database of books available for review and await a reviewer who is interested to select it. Because we select the books we wish to review out of the database, the chances of us liking what we are reviewing is far greater, but there are still those books that just aren't quite up to muster and earn less favorable reviews. We pride ourself on honest reviews, and the authors we have reviewed books for seem to appreciate that. They say a good review from us means more than those sites that only publish positive reviews, and our criticism is always presented constructively in the reviews, defining exactly why the book earned a lower score while not attacking the book or the author in a personal way.
Amazon Vine posted the first items for review today, and there were only 7 to pick from, with several copies of each being available. They don't ask certain reviewers to take them, they simply post them and the first reviewers who select them receive them to review.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home