Book reviews: too nice and maybe also too fake?
For all the fuss about too-racy books, too-obscene YA books, and banned books, book reviews, it seems, sometimes stir more controversy than the books themselves.
Writers have long argued that the book review was a silly exercise at best. Edgar Allan Poe called reviews a mere 鈥渢issue of flatteries,鈥� as the recently reminded us. Virginia Woolf once said 鈥渢he clash of completely contradictory opinions cancel each other out.鈥� Perhaps most damning was , who, in 1959, had this to say about book reviews: 鈥渟weet, bland commendations fall everywhere upon the scene; a universal, if somewhat lobotomized, accommodation reigns鈥�. For sheer information, a somewhat expanded publisher鈥檚 list would do just as well as a good many of the reviews that appear weekly.鈥�
Today's literati remain equally at odds over the value of the book review. Jacob Silverman stirred up a tempest in the literary teapot earlier this month when that the online book culture has spawned an epidemic of "niceness" and turned book reviews聽 too tame. Salon's Laura Miller responded with , while Dwight Garner of The New York Times
But all of the above is, at least, honest controversy about professional reviews. What to make of business-for-hire review writing, the less-than-ethical practice that had one entrepreneur advertising on Craigslist for folks to churn out positive reviews of books for $15 a pop?
According to an excellent expository piece in the , 鈥淭he Best Book Reviews Money Can Buy,鈥� Todd Jason Rutherford made a small fortune selling positive reviews of self-published Amazon titles. He started his website, GettingBookReviews.com, in the fall of 2010. 鈥淎t first, he advertised that he would review a book for $99,鈥� writes the Times鈥檚 David Streitfeld. 鈥淏ut some clients wanted a chorus proclaiming their excellence. So, for $499, Mr. Rutherford would do 20 online reviews. A few people needed a whole orchestra. For $999, he would do 50.鈥�
Orders started pouring in for good reviews and Rutherford quickly realized he couldn鈥檛 produce all the reviews himself. 鈥淗ow little, he wondered, could he pay freelance reviewers and still satisfy the authors? He figured on $15. He advertised on Craigslist and received 75 responses within 24 hours.鈥�
鈥淏efore he knew it,鈥� writes the Times, 鈥渉e was taking in $28,000 a month.鈥�
Rutherford鈥檚 business was eventually outed and forced to stop churning out paid reviews 鈥� but by then Rutherford has flooded Amazon with scores of phony reviews (4,531, to be exact) by folks looking to make a quick buck, the vast majority of whom had never even opened the book they were reviewing.聽
Amazon has said it took down some, though not all, of Rutherford鈥檚 paid reviews, according to the NYT piece. Still, Bing Lu, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, estimates that fully one-third of all online reviews are fake 鈥� and it鈥檚 nearly impossible to tell the fake from the real.
And though many users never put full stock in online reviews, literary or otherwise, this latest news has us wondering what to trust.
(For the record, Rutherford is now selling R.V.s in Oklahoma City and says 鈥渉e is now suspicious of all online reviews 鈥� of books or anything else. 鈥榃hen there are 20 positive reviews and one negative, I鈥檓 going to go with the negative,鈥� he said. 鈥業鈥檓 jaded.鈥欌��)
So what鈥檚 a reader to do?
Use smaller and more traditional outlets. For some quick feedback, turn to smaller, more specialized sites, like or , where you鈥檙e more likely to find genuine reviews by trustworthy readers.
And don鈥檛 forget the traditional book review (we won't be shy about mentioning the reviews provided right here at CSMonitor.com/Books), those literary appraisals maligned by writers like Woolf and Poe, and which may now be making a comeback thanks to Rutherford and company.
鈥淸I]t ... seems to me that the Amazon scandals reaffirm the importance of the much-maligned traditional book review,鈥� writes the . 鈥淩eviews in, say, newspaper book sections ... are vital in offering a properly critical (often negative) opinion of new books鈥es, there鈥檚 only one voice rather than the wisdom of the crowd, but these critics are convincing, independent, entertaining and trustworthy enough that, time and again, they are paid to offer their opinion.鈥�
鈥淎nd not in the way that Todd Rutherford was paid, by the authors of the books themselves.鈥�
Husna Haq is a Monitor correspondent.
