PayPerPost (used to) allow the merchants to select what type of review they'd accept (i.e. only glowing recommendations); Amazon has no such policy–a reviewer is allowed to post whatever she wants about the product without backlash. So if something is cr*p, she can say so.

Viners are people too. Some of those Viners, like people in general, are good and others are not good. Some take the program seriously, others are only in it for the swag. So, rather than think it's a big conspiracy to sway the public opinion, consider the Vine review to be just another review written by Joe Somebody and take it with the same grain of salt you'd give a non-Vine review. Read through the reviewer's profile and look at some of their other reviews…maybe you'll see that those people who gave the book all those 4 & 5 star ratings actually *liked* the book.

That said, there are likely some reviewers that are weirdly serious about getting up the “top reviewers” ladder. These reviewers might be more likely to post good reviews, because most of the bad ones I post get unhelpful votes very quickly. I suspect this is because authors/companies submit items to vine hoping to garner good reviews and so they are watching the page and ding you if you give a bad one. I've certainly disagreed with Vine reviewers, but generally find them to be honest, thoughtful reviews, although with some caveats.

Just my two cents.

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http://www.amazon.com/review/R2OEMG1W9D7KWP/ref...

I recently ordered a book that I thought I'd love based on the others in the nonfiction series. However this book is mature content yet “for boys” is in the title and the others in the series were marketed to ages 9-12 juvenile nonfiction market. The publisher now says this is ages 18+. I felt I should warn potential parent and grandparent customers if they loved the first book(s) this one needs some forewarning. Well I'm being slammed for it with not helpful votes and also one of the co-authors has commented.

currently all reviewers say:
5 stars: 9
4 stars: 15
3 stars: 9
2 stars 0
1 star: 2

read my review here

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1AUPKHB1D8PUW/ref...

In the past when giving an opinion I have been accused of lying and making up content. Now I cite the examples and page numbers to justify my opinion. However then some people complain of “long reviews”.

I recently received a video surveillance system that was broken in two ways that I was able to supplement with my own equipment to test. I have the product reivew in draft. I plan to rate it 1 star = I hate it as what good is a home security system if the AC adaptor inside the unit is non-functional, if the memory card doesn't work so it can't record, and if when pointed outdoors (this is an outdoor unit too), when it rains it records non-stop as rain triggers the motion detector? My hesitation with the review publishing is I've not taken the time to call their customer service to see how that goes and if they fix the situation. I fear if I publish it as is I'll get crticized for not testing out their customer service.

These 3 items I thought I'd love so I offered to review them, but I don't like or hate them. I review them honestly. Then I get slammed.

This is proof that not all Vine reviewers give 4 or 5 stars to everything and proof that us getting something for free is not always even something we wind up wanting to use or can keep using after our review is written and published.

Perhaps I'm burning out of Vine….especially when being contacted by authors…who needs it?

(BTW I went to the Book Blogger Convention in NYC in 5/10 and the consensus for blog book reviews was LONG WINDED is common and loved by blog readers. Go figure. I have been bugged for writing long reviews by other reviewers but others have complimented me for my long reviews. I'd like for everyone to ponder that there are different strokes for different folks and not always one right answer…)

In addition, critical reviews get voted “not helpful”, I believe, by other people who read the book and liked it. Some of these people may feel threatened when their own tastes are not kindly validated by other readers.

I've experienced another phenomenon with a non-Vine review, where a cadre of bitter souls were out to discredit an author and went around voting all positive reviews “not helpful” in an effort to push their own 1-star reviews to the top. The clear objective was to harm the author financially and discredit him in his field. Mean as hell, but it happens.

To be straight: I have an interest, purely self-promotional, in climbing the ranks of Amazon reviewers, but my unwillingness to write gushing reviews seems to be holding my climb back.

The perverse situation is that reviewers who write relatively detailed and long-winded reviews awarding 5-stars to everything are most likely to scale the ranks due to the need readers and consumers have for validation of their own tastes.

When I wrote a self-help book was written like the author was an admirer of Dan Brown's torpid prose, my review was voted non-helpful so many times I just deleted it. The book was all about being nice to other people, so I guess other readers closed ranks to vote-out “the meanie” who thought it was written at a sub-literate level.

1) It's well known that Amazon reviews are inflated. (Technically, I think they cluster around 4-5 stars and 1, with the mean well above 3). Basically, most people tend to buy stuff they think they will like, and then they're more motivated to finish and review something that they like (or really hate), so the non-Vine reviewers aren't a random sample. On top of that, the “helpfulness” system tends to punish reviews that criticize something that other people like, so if you sort your reviews by helpfulness, you get a third non-randomizing factor.

2) With Vine, you get a list of as many as hundreds of books. Most people tend to select things they will like, so the reviews tend to skew positive for that reason, but as I've said, that's true of the non-Vine reviews as well. Vine does have one small corrective, which is that once you accept something, you have to review the majority of what you accept to get more stuff, so I'm less likely to just quit reading a book halfway through if it's Vine.

3) I suppose there is a hypothetical pressure to give good reviews, so that retailers keep giving stuff to the Vine program, but IMHO, that's generally outweighed by a desire to write good reviews. Most of the Viners seem to have been selected for having a good collection of helpful reviews, so they seem to be the kind of people who like writing good reviews and/or collecting “helpful” votes. The NYT did a non-systematic analysis back in the day and guestimated that Vine reviews didn't skew any more positive than general reviews; it would be interesting for someone to digest the whole Amazon review collection and run some more systematic numbers

3) On top of that, the Vine reviews are marked, so I tend not to see the harm.

(Note: no non-public info here — this is all from the Wikipedia entry, plus a general discussion of possible reviewer motives.)

I get free books – up to four a month from Amazon's choices – and I have dozens of books I bought from all over the place lying around the house.

>> You think there isn’t a difference here in how people evaluate things when it has been given to them for free?

Really? I review 'em how I find them. I evaluate each one and have given from five to one stars. Amazon doesn't ask me for good reviews, but when I discover a book I really like maybe I give more stars that it's worth – but then, if you buy a book you often do so because you like the author, so there's no “thrill of discovery” that there is when someone lends you a book.

I have reviewed books and given them one star. I have put reviews with one star or two and then discovered that almost all the other reviews are five-star, and either appear to be submitted by the author's friends, or from people who want to mention that they just happen to have published a book (and have conveniently put in a link to it).

Incidentally, most reviewed things in any media are given to the reviewer. I have been reviewing for 23 years and apart from books I've bought or borrowed, they were all free.

I've had grief from people who think that my reviews are wrong. One called me a snob (for expressing my opinion?). That review has (as of around now) zero helpful reviews out of four. I could have offered praise and got my helpful reviews up, but the book is sh*t. And yet, I had the highest helpful scores one another book that I gave a bad review.

So don't get your knickers in a twist about what you think is wrong. And check my reviews on Amazon – Vine ones and others.