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RIP: Prolific Amazon Customer Reviewer Harriet Klausner (1952-2015) (teleread.com)
Robotech_Master writes: Prolific Amazon customer reviewer Harriet Klausner passed away last week at the age of 67. Klausner was a controversial figure: She never gave anything a negative review, her review blurbs cast doubt on how closely she actually read what she reviewed, and received dozens of free books per week (which ended up resold on Half.com via her son's account). Nonetheless, for a time she was one of the most recognizable names to any frequent Amazon.com customer; it was rare to come across any popular title that didn't have a Klausner review.
Not many reviewers have ever inspired snarky sites tracking their contributions.
I am confused, doesn't 2015-1952=63 and not 67? Am I missing something here?
I don't read reviews thinking about the reviewers by name specifically. I guess if you are interested in reviews of the content of a book, things may be different, in order to know if the reviewer shares your interests you may have to follow them and get to know them. Book reviews are not a review of the book, they are a review of the content of the book. Broke in 3 days, did not fit, it was the wrong color etc do not apply.
She stated in an interview that she did it for lesser known authors who lacked a publicity machine behind them; so that machine she became. Quite a noble thing to do in your spare time, which she, apparently, had quite a bit of.
Might have something to do with that story voting thingy.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Man, I didn't think they'd go that far!
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Back in the day, she was a hugely controversial figure among book nerds. As the Slashdot poster added to my submission, Not very many people can inspire snarky sites tracking their contributions, analyzing their statistics, and outright accusing them of fraud simply from the act of posting consumer reviews to an e-commerce site.
The fact that such a thing is even possible could be taken as a metric of just how broadly the Internet has affected our lives.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
She averaged, what?, three book reviews a day, for years. Mostly new books too, it isn't like she was sitting in front of her computer writing reviews for books she had read decades before.
Unless you're suggesting she actually read all of those books the fraud accusation is just, and unless you knew her personally to have read all of those books the suspicion of fraud is reasonable
I would write a comment, but it would be a review of a review of a reviewer. If this confuses you, perhaps you should review.
She pretty much exemplifies today's online reviewer culture.
RESTAURANT: communicate negative experience, get free meal.
AMAZON: give positive reviews on line, get free stuff.
Sometimes they fight back. This guy was essentially a walking Internet ad agency posing as an independent reviewer when it suited him. The online world is full of people who tap into existing social traditions (eg, independent restaurant reviews) and try to give them a 'new modern edge' with no clue that there are established rules of conduct, such as paying for your meal (or) acknowledging in the review that it was comp'd... and they're all butt-hurt when someone exposes their inconsistent behavior. It's perceived as an attack by people who think we should all just get along, that harsh words are baaad, and do not recognize that trust-based systems and traditions are fragile, deserving of protection.
How anyone in the 21st century can say the word 'blogger' without grimacing is beyond me. What a horrid word. Sounds and looks like 'booger' or 'bugger'
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
How is it not? She financially benefited from writing fake reviews while claiming they were real. She violated multiple Amazon terms of service to receive compensation.
It's not that the reviews were "fake," it's that they were done for compensation (in the form of free books that she could then resell) without overtly saying so, which the FTC considers deceptive.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Well designed and highest quality. Would read again.
You don't necessary have to give positive reviews. I've been among the top 1000 reviewers for a decade or so. Just due to my ranking, companies started offering me stuff, but they didn't seem to care (or even notice) that my few thousand reviews ranged liberally from one to five stars, and that if something was crap I wasn't afraid to call it crap. Indeed, even after I accepted free products in exchange for an honest review, I have found the bulk of these to be Chinese crap, at best merely satisfactory for their purpose, and usually horrible, and I've said so in my review. And yet, those same companies continue to offer me the next product they are trying to develop hype for.
I am aware that a lot of reviewers who accept free stuff give invariably positive reviews to keep the goods flowing, but I really don't think that is necessary if your reviewer ranking is squarely in the top 1000. You'll continue to receive free stuff even if you are brutally honest.
Don't Hate the Playa. Hate the Game.
That's because it's really not necessarily the quality but the NUMBER of reviews that are important at Amazon. The more reviews something gets, positive OR negative, the more it tends to get featured near the top of its category. So by giving something a one-star review, you do it nearly as much good as by giving it five.
So says Chuck Wendig, noting that all the one-star protest reviews of his new Star Wars book helped it become a bestseller.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Those people who believe that the "Free Market" will solve all problems and that government intervention (in this case in the form of health inspectors) is not required need to study this case.
It is well known that for free markets to function, they require good information, but what this shows is that it is very easy for the information to become corrupted. How then do "free markets" function in the face of corrupt information? They don't.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
In other news, the related stories shown for this article are
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Nice algorithms you have here...
Nice Scotsman you have there, but he's not a "True Scotsman".
Or, to put it another way, real free markets are about as common as unicorns.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!