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Book Nook provides readers with insights into the world of books. Vick Mickunas takes you into the center of the publishing world with the latest book buzz, book reviews, and exclusive chats with authors..Home > Blogs > Book Nook > Archives > 2007 > June > 09 > Entry
Klausnerphobic Harping
It was a red letter day over at Amazon.com, the mysterious Harriet Klausner, their #1 customer reviewer just posted book review number 14,000 on Saturday. (Actually, she is already up to 14,105 reviews as of Sunday evening-that’s 107 more reviews in just one day-absurd!)
Ms. Klausner even has a fan club, the Harriet Klausner Appreciation Society. The site examines all things Klausner. Talk about Klausner Mania!
Let’s try to put her feat into some sort of perspective. 14 thousand book reviews-I’ve crunched the numbers. Call an average book about 250 pages long-Harriet describes herself as a “speed reader” in her Amazon profile.
Let’s guess that she can read 5 pages a minute? That’s fast. She can read an average book of 250 pages in about an hour. So, let’s say that it took her 14,000 hours to read 14,000 books. How much time is 14,000 hours?
That comes out to 583 24-hour days. Let’s assume that Harriet actually has a life outside of reading. So, she spends 8 hours a day reading. That’s 1749 days. How many years is that? That is almost 5 years of reading 8 books a day-7 days a week.
That doesn’t include the time spent writing reviews. Have you ever read Harriet’s reviews? You should. One might think that the author of 14,000 reviews would have it down. Here’s the amazing part….
Harriet likes every book that she reads. Out of 14,000 books that she has reviewed she has liked almost every one of them.Gee whiz! Every book she reads is wonderful-every book gets 5 stars! Every review seems somehow, absurd.
Amazon allows customers to post reviews. They also allow customers to post comments about the reviews. They are also able to vote as to whether the review was useful to them.
There appears to be an anti-Harriet backlash. I looked back at Harriet’s last 50 reviews (through Saturday) posted over the course of 12 days. She had over 500 reader votes. 75% of them were negative.
How can we put the customer feedback in perspective? Let’s look at another Amazon top ten reviewer—Grady Harp is #8. Over the past 3 days he has posted 10 reviews. Those reviews have gotten almost 600 reader votes in 3 days. 90% of those votes were positive.
Odd? Harriet Klausner, the top reviewer on Amazon got only 500 customer votes on 50 reviews over the course of 12 days. Grady Harp got almost 600 votes on 10 reviews in just 3 days. Why the disparity?
Good question. If you look at Grady Harp’s reviews he consistently garners 50 to 60 positive votes for almost every review within just a few days. Some of his reviews are for books. He also covers music and films. No matter how obscure the title being reviewed, the Harp voting machine consistently cranks out the positive votes.
On June 8, Harp reviewed a novel, “THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST” by Mohsin Hamid. That review already has 57 helpful votes out of 66 cast. The customer review of the same book that preceded Harp’s three days previous has only 4 out of 6 helpful votes. The review after Harp’s, posted on June 9, has 0 out of 11 helpful votes.
Normally, Amazon’s customers will scroll through the reviews and vote for them one by one. So, Harp has 50 more votes than either review that appears on the page beside him.
There seems to be a voting block of at least 50 positive votes being cast for almost every review by Grady Harp. This pattern is as regular and predictable as can be. Some critics have been tracking the Harp voting in the comments section at Amazon. Those tallies mysteriously vanished the other day. Very odd.
I am forced to admire Harriet Klausner for one thing. She obviously could care less about all the negative votes for her reviews and she isn’t tampering with the voting process.
I cannot imagine that she actually reads all those books and writes all those reviews but to her credit, she doesn’t tamper with the customer feedback.
I find it all somewhat amusing. What do you think?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: in the Amazone
Comments
By MK
June 12, 2007 2:06 PM | Link to this
Virtually every sane person on Amazon agrees that: 1) Harriet does not read what she reviews and that 2) Grady Harp’s voting record is impossible without mass manipulation of accounts, allies, or aliases. Most disagreement stems from what should be done about it, or IF anything can be done about it. Harriet is mostly an inside Amazon joke, but voting-cabals have the power to unjustly boot peoples’ comments or even people themselves, right off of Amazon. This is due to the logistics of the “report abuse” function: once a minimum number of people/aliases have clicked “report abuse,” a comment/review is automatically deleted via Amazon’s intrinsic software. This has happened several times before, when the comments and/or reviewers of the booted person in question had met every Amazon posting guideline. Amazon, in their clueless utilization of this “auto-delete” software, is essentially supporting the unjust alienation of paying customers. I doubt ostracizing people with money is in the best interests of this company, especially when you consider the overall decline in sales of the written word in recent years. This “auto-deletion” function must be removed, and sooner rather than later.By jjjs
June 10, 2007 6:59 PM | Link to this
“Amazon seemingly has no problem with it.” — To my mind, that’s the crux of the matter.By Barbara Delaney
June 10, 2007 1:12 AM | Link to this
I would agree with you that it’s to Harriet Klausner’s credit that she does not tamper with the votes. Mr.Harp’s vote gathering apparatus would be the envy of any crooked politician. I’m not sure that the undead are casting votes for him like some say happened in Chicago’s past but his cadre of faithful voters are well trained and march dutifully to each of his newly posted reviews. Amazon seemingly has no problem with it and people at Amazon’s discussion boards are saying that the new format will favor reviewers like Grady Harp.