Deconstructing my Amazon listing

A couple months back I read a New York Times story (posted below) that reported on a “glitch” in the Amazon.com website. Apparently, this glitch inadvertently revealed the identities of the “anonymous” reviewers in the book ratings section – revealing that some authors had been anonymously writing themselves five-star reviews. Other authors had received five-star reviews from their high-profile friends – including Tom Bissell (who I interviewed on RolfPotts.com last month), whose Uzbekistan travelogue Chasing the Sea had received a positive Amazon.com review from his friend (and author of The Corrections) Jonathan Franzen after several anonymous negative reviews were posted.

In the case of Bissell’s book, I don’t blame people like Franzen coming to his defense, since Chasing the Sea's one-star reviews (which in places sounded like conspiracy theories more than book reviews) tended on the ridiculous. As one astute counter-reviewer noted, “some of you may be wondering how a literary travel book about Uzbekistan could possibly provoke the wide range of reactions to be found on this page -- everything from accusing the author of plagiarism to leveling ludicrous accusations of his being a trust-fund baby.” Indeed, having read the intriguing and largely innocuous Chasing the Sea myself, I wondered the same.

Of course, all the fuss about the online reviews glitch naturally made me curious about the Amazon.com entry for my own book, Vagabonding. I welcome positive reviews at Amazon (of course) – but I’ve never solicited them from friends. At the same rate, I can’t imagine my book would attract enemies -- but you never know, so I checked it out.

As it turns out, my Amazon page isn’t too scandalous or exciting. Of the 15 positive reviews on the page, only one comes from someone I’ve met in person. And, while the lone one-star review is kind of obtuse and perplexing (the reviewer seems upset that the book isn’t a narrative – something that could have been fairly easy to deduce from reading the cover copy), it doesn’t seem particularly vicious or personal. In fact, the only obvious sign of manipulation on my books page comes in the “Customer’s Advice” section, and seems to fall in line with the New York Times’ conclusion that “many authors have been known to list their own books as alternate recommendations for any given book.” The chief culprit would appear to be whoever wrote Steep Passages -- a book that I’ve seen listed as an alternative recommendation on literally dozens of travel and spirituality book listings (including mine), yet I’ve never read nor heard about in travel-lit circles. There’s a slim chance, of course, that some rabid Steep Passages fan is desperately trying to spread the word, but my money says that the author simply has too much time on his hands.

Whatever the case, the Times article should ensure that I’ll never look at an Amazon listing the same way again.