There’s a very interesting discussion going on in the Kindle forum and almost everyone seems to be against people who give books priced over $9.99 a 1 star review.
Here’s most of the original post complaining about 1 star reviews by the $9.99 boycotters -
This is directed to those One Star Reviewing books that are over 9.99…
Please Stop. Really.
I understand that you believe this will in some way aid the boycott cause and force the publishers to lower the prices of ebooks. Low reviewed books won’t be bought and they lose money, right?
Possibly. But at what cost?
1. You hurt the author. The author has possibly written an excellent book, deserving of praise. You give it a low review for something not in their control. It doesn’t make sense. By all means, don’t buy it…but don’t lie about it being a bad book.
2. Hurts the cause. I don’t know about you, but when I see that a book I like doesn’t have 4-5 star rating, I go and check out what people didn’t like. When I see that the low rating is because the person wanted to make a statement about prices…it makes me wonder why I support the boycott. It comes across as mean-spirited.
3. It hurts you. You now come across as rabid extremist. If that’s how you wish to be viewed, keep it up. I certainly don’t wish to be associated with you.
So please…remove the unwarranted reviews and stop the negative actions. Victory at any cost isn’t worth it if you lose your integrity.
It’s beautifully written. It almost makes me want to not write against it.
The $9.99 boycotters are my heroes
Here are some of the things the $9.99 boycotters are helping enable -
- Keeping some books at $9.99.
- Keeping other books at $12.99. If it weren’t for the $9.99 boycotters we would have had $15 and $20 prices a long time ago. If not for their current efforts the new Agency Model benchmark wouldn’t be a mix of $9.99 and $12.99 – It would be a mix of $14.99 and $19.99.
- They are keeping ebooks alive. No matter what people might think $20 ebooks would not have survived.
- They are keeping eReaders alive. Without $9.99 books there wouldn’t be people buying the Kindle or Nook.
- They are hurting the worst offenders. Publishers and Published Authors (yes, those pure authors who have no choice but to listen to their Publishers – those naive innocent authors who’re trying to get 50% royalties) who promote $14.99 deserve to be hurt financially.
By voting with their dollars and by raising their voices the $9.99 boycotters ensured that people now have the luxury of both reading ebooks on their eReaders and complaining about the $9.99 boycotters i.e.
It comes across as mean-spirited
You now come across as rabid extremist.
This is the reward people get for fighting the good fight.
All of us, whether or not we support handing out 1 star reviews or the $9.99 boycott are going to get a taste of this soon. When the people who laugh at us for spending $399 or $379 or $189 or $109 on a dedicated eReader get the benefit of cheap ebooks, lots of selection, and sub $100 eReaders (soon).
No good deed goes unpunished.
The fallacy that Authors are the good guys and 1 star reviewers are rabid extremists
Not sure what part of -
- Publishers want to take advantage of readers and get as much money as possible.
- Published Authors are with Publishers because they get paid by them.
- Neither party has shown any affinity towards readers.
The author of the forum post is missing.
It’s human nature that we want to be both the good guys and get what we want. It’s some sort of cosmic joke that people don’t just want to win and get things their way – they also want to get applauded and be prom queen.
It’s not always possible. In fact, it’s not possible a lot of the time.
Publishers are using this part of our nature – our desire to be good guys – to fight their pricing war. They talk about doing things the right way, about saving books, about making sure authors get paid. Never mind that they’re trying to take advantage of authors too.
Publishers are treating us like Sheep
This is what Publishers and published authors are trying to do – Kill off eReaders and eBooks. Failing that, keep ebook prices close to paper book prices and increase their profits.
This is what they are trying to sell us on – $15 and $20 ebooks that can’t be re-sold and can’t be shared. However, they aren’t saying that – they’re gradually creeping up using $12.99 prices and by appealing to our desire to be the good guys.
We are sheep. Born to be shorn. Born to be talked into how shipping and storage and paper and ink cost nothing. Authors hide behind Publishers and Publishers hide behind excuses and we buy it.
Prices are already waffling between $9.99 and $12.99. 2 years of effort might be undone. All because we are sheep happy to believe that Publishers and Published Authors have our best interests at heart.
Voting with our Dollars and 1 star reviews are BOTH needed
Voting with our dollars helps. It reduces sales and it ensures $12.99 and $14.99 books don’t get as much publicity.
However, there are a few problems -
- New books will still rise a lot. There are pre-orders that all get counted on release day and more people buy new releases. So even books that are boycotted still show up in the top lists. It makes the $9.99 boycott seem much less powerful than it is.
- Publishers can use incremental pricing and fry us like frogs in hot water. They are playing around with $10.99 and $11.99 and $12.99 and if that works the next stop will be $14.99 and then $19.99. If people keep silent sooner or later they will be in a position where they wish they hadn’t been silent.
- There’s no way to hear from other readers and there’s no way to reach other readers.
Voting with our dollars is an invisible vote. It’s also one whose impact isn’t as visible because of the pre-orders effect.
It’s a classic communication and information gap. It seems as if the $9.99 boycott is failing when it’s actually doing wonderfully well. Despite the Agency Model lots of Publishers are pricing books at $9.99.
Why 1 star reviews are a necessary evil
There are probably lots of other people who are holding off on buying $12.99 and $14.99 books.
By leaving a 1 star or 2 star review we/they get to talk to each other and strengthen their resolve. Publishers get to hold secret meetings and leverage Apple’s iPad to fight the $9.99 boycott – The least we should be entitled to are the forums and the reviews.
Pricing is a part of the review. It indicates value for money. It indicates whether Publishers think we are sheep or paying customers. It indicates what the value of books is perceived to be.
We tend to forget we are in the middle of the Book Wars
This is war – companies are going bankrupt. This isn’t a civilized tea party where you have to courtesy and show how well brought up you are.
There’s a lot at stake -
- What share of the pie middle-men get. Currently authors get just 8-15% of books. As a reader you should be a bit concerned that 85% or more of the money you pay is going to other people.
- Who has the control. Do we really want to have Publishers decide what books we get to choose from?
- A fair shot for authors. How many authors never get a chance to send out their books because they don’t meet some Publisher criteria?
- Reasonable prices. With ebooks we don’t have re-selling and we don’t have sharing and yet Publishers want $14.99 while hardcovers sell for just a little more. $9.99 is an extremely reasonable price.
- A win for customers over manipulators. Detach yourself from your emotions and beliefs and look at what Publishers have been doing – They’ve been playing around with prices and feeding us different sob-stories and trying to see how they can maximize the fleecing.
The democratization of Publishing is at stake. There may be a way to be super polite and also win the book wars – However, it certainly isn’t apparent. In fact, it currently seems like by being super polite we are losing out – eBooks have climbed from $9.99 to $12.99 and Publishers are delighted at how gullible we are.
For the first time we have seen huge advancements - eReaders that let a lot more people participate in reading, eBooks that are cheaper and more convenient, anybody being able to publish, authors getting 70%.
All of this is at stake. Yet we have people who want to be the good guys - people who would rather be polite and civil than see a revolution in books.
If we or a group of Kindle owners give 1 star reviews it is because it is our only weapon to preserve all the things worth fighting for in books – anyone being able to publish, authors getting 70%, more people being able to read, more growth in books.
Gandhi had said that the bigger sin is to silently let someone take advantage of you. By protesting higher prices we aren’t losing our integrity – we are demonstrating it.
Perhaps we should be happy we have people who care enough to be rabid extremists – If it weren’t for them and all the other $9.99 boycotters we wouldn’t really have eReaders or eBooks. Perhaps then people could be happy buying $20 paper books, being exploited by Publishers, and cherishing the feeling of being non-rabid and run of the mill.
Filed under: thoughts Tagged: | $9.99 boycott, fight for $9.99
Reviews are given for price reasons, for political reasons, for religious reasons, so much and so often, that reader reviews have become worthless on Amazon.
I no longer read them. I read the book description, use search inside the book and read reviews by other authors when they are available and that’s how I decide to purchase or not.
Amazon might as well remove their user reviews because they are so corrupted by forces that have nothing to do with the content of the book.
Ah…forgot to say that I do have a Kindle2 and I’ve had it longer than the Nook.
Price is a legitimate subject for reviews for everything else that Amazon sells. Why wouldn’t it be a legitimate subject for Kindle books?
A Honda Civic is a 4 or 5 star automobile. But if Amazon tried to sell one for $100K, the rating would drop significantly.
A very good point – when you put it that way it seems pretty reasonable.
Only if the people rating it actually bought and used it for $100,000 – that is the problem in my opinion – writing reviews for products not used/read bothers me.
That makes me wonder. Don’t really have an answer to that – it’s a very sound argument.
The only product I have given up reading reviews for and look only at the star rating is books.
Why?
Because too many times reviews put spoilers in their reviews. I tried just scanning the headlines and first sentence but those were filled with spoilers too.
So I have stopped reading reviews because of spoilers and if a book is given a 1 star review because of price I don’t read the review to find that out and take that into account; the only part I take into account from the user reviews is the star rating.
That said, I’m not upset with the people leaving one star reviews because of price.
I’ve seen people say it is their right too buy books over $9.99. Well, I think it is the right of reviews to give out star ratings however they see fit.
Personally, I have not written any reviews on Amazon. I would like to be more vocal about $9.99 and under decisions. I would write publishers to let them know they lost a sale if I had access to their a-mails. I have sent some e-mails to address I found on the net and had them bounce back or never got a reply so I don’t think they are getting to the publishers who need to see them.
If a list for publisher contact information was compiled, I would take the time to write them more often since I had the confidence it would actually get to them.
Frankly, I think that if you haven’t read the book, you shouldn’t do a review. The review should be about the book, not about the price. I can make my own decisions on price all by myself.
My pricing/buying philosophy is to boycott any ebook that is the retail price of the physical book, i.e. paperbacks at $7.99, ebook the same, or any ebook over $9.99. I generally don’t buy them at that price either.
I’m not rich. Why would I buy one book at $9.99 when I can get 2 or more at a more reasonable price? There are tons of good indie books out there, one of the joys of my Kindle is getting to read hundreds of books I would have never come across at B&N.
I think the price protests should be made by contacting the publishers and authors, not through reviews on Amazon, unless you actually read the book at the library or something and make the price issue just an extra comment.
When I read reviews, I want to know if people liked the story, I don’t want to hear that they think the price is too high or, for physical books, that they didn’t get their shipment on time.
I don’t do a lot of these but I did one just today on “Everything Matters!”, a Penguin book priced at $18.99!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A1R6QQHG1ST7ZC
I don’t think I look like a rabid extremist. Look at my other reviews. I hope people will continue to make their voices heard.
Really good post, switch11
How could we let Amazon / the publisher know that we are not buying a book because of it’s pricing (besides ratings)? Just like you can click to request they contact a publisher / author and let them know you would like to read their book on the Kindle; maybe something similiar would work to let the publisher know they missed a sale. I guess there would be those who would go and click on every single ebook over 9.99; invalidating the counts. Personally I would love to let them know either way — that I appreciated them staying at 9.99 or less; or that they were over that amount. I recently read a free Kindle book and followed up with purchasing two books from the same author each for 9.99. As I had an email address to contact the author, I thanked her for the free book (because I would not have normally chosen her book) and for staying at 9.99 for the other two books!
Amazon is the place to go to for reviews. For practically every other product they sell, it makes no sense to include the price in the review, since the product could be purchased elsewhere for a different price. Therefore, I respectfully disagree with Fred’s assertion that an unusually high-priced Honda Civic sold at Amazon should have its rating reduced. If anything, the reviewer might want to include a disclaimer indicating he bought it elsewhere and that it’s a good idea to search around. Also, if I recall, Amazon will tag reviews by reviewers who purchased the item through Amazon. That tells me that they encourage (or at least acknowledge) reviews by non-Amazon customers as well.
Now, for Kindle books, I can see how it might be a little different. On these, Amazon’s got the market cornered, so price is a bigger deal. However, there’s one thing everyone needs to realize: the price is already on the screen. You’re not helping anybody by talking about it in the review.
Suppose that a book is clearly labeled as a member of the Fantasy genre in its description. There is now no need to bring up that fact in the review. There is even less need to lower your rating because you dislike Fantasy, and you want the publisher to stop putting out so many Fantasy books and start publishing Nonfiction instead.
Back specifically to price, I’ve learned that whether something is outside my budget or not has no bearing at all on the next customer. I’ve read the same sentiment in many responses to reviews as well.
Example: Many people (myself included) don’t appreciate 1-star reviews on the Kindle DX that include only comments such as “I can’t understand how anyone could pay more than $300 for this thing! It should be $99 with free books.” While I respect the “reviewer’s” opinion, that “review” does no one any good, and in fact falsely deflates the product’s ratings. He’d be better off sending his complaints to Amazon.
Likewise, if you’re upset that a publisher has set its price too high for your liking, contact the publisher directly. Incidentally, it wouldn’t hurt to contact Amazon as well. I remember in the early days of the Kindle that Amazon would sometimes take a hit on price by selling some best sellers for $9.99 even when the publisher had agreed to a price in the teens.
I mostly agree with Kindlemac above.
I think that leaving a review for a book not read is not cool. If one really wants to use the argument is that the price is part of the review, fine – but i think YOU HAVE TO HAVE READ THE BOOK FIRST – and then state that the book was not worth it. I know I have written in reviews that people should wait for the paperback to save money because the book was good, but not HC worthy.But you know what? I read the book before posting that.
A review basically is for customers to express their point of view about a product that they have experience with. What good is a review on a product not used (or read)? It may not be mean spirited (or whatever) but it sure is annoying for folks who like to use the reviews to learn about the actual book. If a customer had indeed read the book, and feels the price is too expensive, then are well within their rights to leave a one star review with that as the reason. Hopefully they leave some information about the actual story as well. If they feel any book isn’t worth over $9.99, that’s NOT a review. Its an overall opinion and a misuse of the review function.
To boycotters: Just boycott the books by not buying them. That is a perfectly reasonable way to express yourself that is also courteous to others in the reading community.
[...] at iReader Review. I’ve got some thoughts on this, but no time to write. For now, just read the article and prepare to discuss. var flattr_wp_ver = '0.9.11'; var flattr_uid = 'marionjensen'; var [...]
The purpose of a review is to inform about the product’s inherent qualities, good, bad or otherwise. Price is not an inherent quality and changes all the time even from a single seller.