[MikeCraig]

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I don't agree with Points A, B, or C.

A is simply wrong.

B shows a limited understanding of how publishing actually works. For instance huge money is spent by publishers purchasing placement or other promotions inside the major book chains. Book tours where you may go to a city and sit in some store and sign a few books have virtually no value in terms of book sales. Thus publishers aren't being cheap, they just spend their promotion money on what works and not on what doesn't work.

As for C, while I agree that a PR firm would be very unlikely to do that, it's certainly easy enough for someone to get their own reviews on Amazon and the reviews of their friends. To see this, just go to a poker book that has a fair number of reviews and start reading. You'll see affiliate ads and "Plucked Like a Chicken." I'm not saying that Duke did this, but it can certainly be done very easily.

MM

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Mason:

A. (Amazon.com rankings mean relatively little, especially outside the top 100.) I'm just repeating what my editor at Warner told me. The editor who told me made it clear that this wasn't just his opinion. He also said that Amazon is vague, secretive, etc. about its data, so it is difficult even to gauge how much Amazon "matters." I don't know anywhere near what you know about publishing and am not trying to represent otherwise. I repeated what a high credibility source told me was the general opinion in the industry. (Maybe I could claim YOU don't know what you're talking about: so many 2+2 books have kick-ass rankings that you might not have sufficient experience in Amazon purgatory to know!)

And remember, I was supporting a point that conspiracy theorists are going too far if they think there's a concerted effort to boost the Amazon.com rankings in this fashion.

B. I don't think we disagree on B (whether publishers would spend for PR to plant fake reviews). We both agree publishers don't want to spend on book tours. (By the way, I think I can top McManus's bad-book-signing experience.) And I agree that they spend big bucks on book store placement; how could I disagree? It's a fact.

Hiring a PR firm to write phony reviews on Amazon.com is, in my opinion, more like paying for a book tour than buying good placement in book stores. It's just my opinion and I'd be surprised if you disagree with me.

C. I got the idea from reading this forum that Annie Duke didn't have enough friends to be responsible for those reviews. I'm sure someone will respond by telling me how awful she is (which proves my point, though it was a rhetorical point). I'm not interested in debating that. I wanted people to understand that it's not reasonable to PRESUME that positive reviews on a book are phony.

Michael Craig