Amazon.ca is wearing a bit of egg on it's bookish face these days. None other than the New York Times has revealed, that the Amazon.ca book review system is a little flawed. An apparent software glitch, took away the anonymity of the book review process, replacing the fancy pseudonyms with the actual reviewers name and hometown.
Now you would think so what, no big deal. And normally you would be right, but a nasty little secret has been revealed by the faux pas. It seems some of the authors of books being reviewed, took it upon themselves to review their own works in glowing terms. Hard to believe I know, but some authors are self promoters, no way!
It turns out there's a whole dark culture out there in the wired world, using the Amazon site to drum up interest in their works, or rebut critical offerings from others. One author stated that he jumps on, when he notices reviews getting particularly nasty and out of balance. He then goes and puts together a review with the complete opposite opinion, so as to bring things to an even keel. Kind of a guerilla critical force.
Amazon says they have fixed the "unfortunate error" and will review procedures and make sure that the problem doesn't resurface. There are over 10 millions reviews posted on the Amazon site now, and growing every day. Perhaps we should be taking their veracity, with a grain of salt.
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