Fake Amazon Tech Book Reviews Are Hurting My Book
I wish Amazon had a "This looks fake" button above each review. I would click it multiple times per week.<p>Most fake reviews are easy to spot. The simple test:<p>Could this review have been written about any other book in this category without changing a word?<p>I see fake reviews all the time for Kindle books written by indie authors. A mark of quality in a book is when there appear to be no 5 star fake reviews, but several written by real people, even if there are only 3 or 4 reviews.<p>Some fake reviews are harder to spot, though. For example, I suspect this account, which has been around for many years, is more than one person (perhaps a PR firm) hand writing unique reviews for each one:<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A130YN8T37O833" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A130YN8T37O833</a><p>All reviews are either 1 star or 5 star. There is content specific information but all stuff you can get from tech specs or descriptions - no sense the person actually used the product except generic intro paragraphs.<p>I think there is also fake voting on really good reviews. The review that I felt was the best review I ever wrote was downvoted more than any other review I've written. I don't really know if the downvoting was fake - maybe it wasn't helpful because I delved into too much technical detail:<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/review/R14QK0B7HRE5L8" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/review/R14QK0B7HRE5L8</a><p>However, most of the glowingly favorable reviews for this book have unanimous thumbs up, and the first 3 are written by "A Customer" which I'm guessing means the account of the reviewer has been terminated.