I am a prolific reader and reviewer of business books on Amazon.co.uk and I get really irritated when the reviews get overwhelmed with fake stuff.
How can you tell?
Well there is the nature of the review for one but, it is even more reliable to go and have a look at what else the reviewer has reviewed.
You can find plenty of occasions where the reviewer has reviewed six books, all been given five stars and a rave review and they are all by the same author.
Unfortunately it takes time to click on everyone.
An easier way is to use Fakespot.com which will do the analysis for you.
I’m not against the authors reaching out to get some reviews. It makes such a big difference to their sales if there are plenty of high reviews. It always seems a shame if someone has poured their time and energy into writing a book and it’s totally ignored.
There are a few authors that I’ve noticed have a very high “dodgy review” factor from my own experience so I went to Fakespot to see what it thinks, and the website agreed.
As a general principle, the books to be wary of have a high number of five star reviews, so if you’re concerned, give it a try before spending your money.
When a book has a high proportion of five star books and a similar high proportion of one and two star reviews, you can be suspicious. Either the contents is contentious, perhaps on political grounds or some review spam is happening.
For example, Bradley Sugars, the founder of ActionCoach, the business coaching franchise has authored some poor books but some of the franchisees jumped in to give the ratings a boost. Real reviewers have now come in and called out the other reviewers and the books have settled with reasonable ratings.
Fakespot doesn’t just work on Amazon. It also looks at sites like TripAdvisor too.
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