Kindle users revolt!

8 comments on “Kindle users revolt!”

1. DN says:
   January 18th, 2010 at 2:19 pm

   No different from their magazine reviews…stars are based more on the subscription service than the actual content.

2. elora says:
   January 18th, 2010 at 3:05 pm

   This sort of thing frustrates me. It seems fundamentally kind of snotty and childish. Honestly, if they want to read it so badly, they can buy the book or take it out from a library.

   Then again, I’m fairly anti-e-book to begin with, and if they released a book ONLY as an e-book I’d probably revolt too.

3. Paul says:
   January 18th, 2010 at 3:55 pm

   To paraphrase Louis C.K., how quickly the world owes them something that didn’t exist ten months ago. Give it some time, people!

4. Pete says:
   January 18th, 2010 at 4:26 pm

   Amazon reader reviews were legitimate before? I had no idea.

5. Dave says:
   January 19th, 2010 at 12:30 am

   Hmm. I wonder how many of the one star reviews are from actual kindle users as opposed to a) Amazon employees dumping reviews on the site to make the kindle appear to be as popular as Jeff Bezos claims or b) the result of a flash (Amazon) mob.

6. Zoe Winters says:
   January 23rd, 2010 at 7:27 pm

   Wow, that’s just… wow. That proves once again that you can’t look at the star rating. You have to look at the actual content of a review. It’s like how some authors rush to get all their friends to write 5-star reviews. Though I’m surprised that the author of Game Change hasn’t reported this. Any reviews that have nothing to do with the book itself and is just intended as some kind of “social punishment” like this is, is against Amazon TOC.

7. Edward G. Talbot says:
   January 23rd, 2010 at 7:38 pm

   I suppose one could describe this as childish, but this is what happens in a commercial environment. Publishers have – quite correctly – been saying for a while now how everyone needs to understand that the decisions they make are business decisions, designed to make sure they can still make money. It can’t be any surprise that those who disagree with their decisions find ways to make such decisions uncomfortable. I can imagine their reasoning as “we’re going to make a business decision we know some of you will disagree with, but we don’t expect you to be able to do enough to make us with we’d made a different decision.”

   Either this will have an impact (perception,bottom line, or both) and publishers will rethink their decision, or it won’t. Personally I don’t think this will do it, unless people reading the reviews have not heard of the e-book “controversy” and decide they agree with the reviewers. Either way, for us to sit in judgment of people who are offended by the decision and using a relatively direct method to communicate their displeasure is not any less childish than the method they have chosen.

8. Zoe Winters says:
   January 23rd, 2010 at 8:37 pm

   Edward,

   One wonders how else readers would be able to get a message to the publishers. Still it’s an Amazon TOC violation.

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