Online Reviews Raising Questions in Cyberspace

SAN FRANCISCO — Lynn Manning Ross, author of a book about Internet business planning, got a shock when she checked reader reviews of her work posted on Amazon.com, the hugely successful Internet bookstore.

None other than Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s world-renowned chief executive, had posted a vicious pan of her book under the heading “Stupid Book . . . Don’t Waste Your Time!”

Or so it seemed. As Ross soon discovered, the pan had actually come from an anonymous individual who had, unbeknownst to Amazon.com officials, appropriated their boss’ real e-mail address as a form of cybernetic camouflage.

That was the most embarrassing example of what authors, publishers and other industry insiders say is a growing problem on Amazon--and in some cases, on other commercial Web sites that invite the general public to comment on products, artistic works or other items of value.

Privacy and free speech may be cornerstones of Internet communications, but the very anonymity of the process, they say, is an invitation to mischief-makers or even professional rivals to besmirch the reputations of authors and their work without fear of being caught.

Many commercial sites view public reviews as sure-fire audience builders or as a way to create the illusion of an online “community.” On Beyond.com, one finds user reviews of software; Gamespot.com offers reviews of video and computer games; Buy.com offers reviews of books, music, games and videos. There are also countless sites in which investors can comment on public companies, with online remarks by anonymous touts sometimes engendering huge changes in the shares’ prices.

Earlier this month, the telecommunications company Carnegie International sued three Web users for posting inflammatory messages about the company on a public Web site. And in October, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged 44 individuals and companies with touting stocks on the Web, often anonymously and generally without disclosing that they had relationships with the companies they were promoting.

But the issue has caught the eye of the publishing industry in particular because of Amazon’s tremendous visibility. Its reader-supplied reviews, which carry ratings of one to five stars that are compiled for an “average” rating for each work, have become an easy touchstone of buyer reaction.

Moreover, some publishers say a few negative reviews can attract others.

“It’s like a lot of things on the Internet: It can increase the lemming effect,” boosting or killing a book much faster than in the past, said Tim O’Reilly, chief executive of computer book publisher O’Reilly & Associates.

Amazon’s reviews and ratings are far from foolproof predictors of success in the marketplace; some in the industry believe that the reader reviews, in particular, are less integral to a book’s success than the snippets of professional reviews that are posted even more prominently on many works in Amazon pages.

But the site is “increasingly significant as a measure of what’s important out there,” O’Reilly said. Publishers, he said, value the site’s reviews because they offer instant consumer feedback.

Jim Price, vice president of Macmillan Computer Publishing, said his staff uses Amazon extensively to make publishing decisions and to evaluate potential authors.

Some authors have become Amazon-obsessed, using software applications to track Amazon sales rankings minute by minute.

“We have over 2 1/2 million customer reviews at Amazon.com,” said Paul Capelli, a company spokesman. “We’re all about empowering the customer, providing information so that they can make a smart decision.”

But critics wonder whether the empowerment of readers has become less than edifying for book buyers.

On Amazon, the problem may be unusually severe because of the site’s resolute policy not to pre-screen anonymous reviews and its disinclination to remove negative ones, even at an author’s request.

In the case of the “Bezos” review of Ross’ book, no one at Amazon apparently noticed that the anonymous reviewer had baldly signed the review as “jeff@amazon.com,” Bezos’ actual e-mail address. Amazon does not have a system of verifying the e-mail return addresses given by reviewers. Ross complained for a week before Amazon.com finally removed the bogus review.

“Once we’re notified and verify that a comment is not within our guidelines, we do our best to take it down as quickly as we can,” Capelli said.

“You can make a comment saying anything and it gets posted,” Ross said. “In this instance, it’s absolutely gone too far.”

Author Suspects a Coordinated Effort

Computer book authors are particularly concerned about the lack of pre-screening--perhaps because they are more tuned in to the Internet than authors of general interest books. But malicious reviews have become common in many categories.

When Amazon’s open discourse “gets people thinking, reading and talking, then it’s a good thing,” said Laureen Rowland, a senior editor at HarperBusiness. But, she added, “I’m concerned about anonymous critical comments when someone’s also recommending a specific competing title.”

Novelist Katherine Neville also suspected that a coordinated effort may have been behind castigating critiques of her book, “The Magic Circle,” a thriller that takes place over 2,000 years and features Jesus and Adolf Hitler as key characters.

“There’s something for everybody to take offense at, depending on their peculiarities,” she said of the novel.

But Neville began to grow suspicious when fans informed her that dozens of caustic reviews took a similar tone and shared the same misspellings or grammatical errors. Ultimately, nearly 100 such pans were posted. Neville’s publisher complained to Amazon, which did not respond for six weeks and ultimately took no action.

“I support freedom of expression, but I think this is against freedom of speech if one person can tip the scales that far,” Neville said.

Bil Keane, a cartoonist who draws the widely syndicated “Family Circus” comic strip, has been aggressively attacked on Amazon.com. One recent anonymous posting recommended one of Keane’s cartoon collections “only as an alternative to capital punishment.” Other comments, since removed from the site, were laced with obscenities, he said.

Keane, who has weathered obscene alterations of his homespun humor in print, takes the critics in stride.

“It rolls off because I don’t take it as a personal criticism,” he said. “People who do that on the Internet are a different crowd than the people who read Family Circus in the newspaper.”

His career has hardly been harmed by such attacks--Family Circus books have sold about 14 million copies--but lesser-known authors may be more vulnerable.

“Some of the negative reader reviews that are out sometimes appear even before the book is published. You see a real movement of people who are actively trying to sabotage competitive books,” said David L. Rogelberg of the Studio B Literary Agency in Fishers, Ind., which maintains an Internet discussion group for computer book authors. “My ethics wouldn’t allow me to do this, but if I hired 12 people to create e-mail aliases and hire them to submit positive reviews for all of my authors, it could have a tremendous impact on sales.”

Authors also complain about apparent literary vandals when they see similarly scathing reviews of a single title posted in rapid succession by a variety of anonymous readers.

One computer book author was even contacted recently by a reader who threatened to post a negative review if the author did not provide free technical support.

Going Undercover to Fight Back

Lev Grossman was aghast at the bilious comments about one of his novels and decided to fight back--going undercover to post highly favorable bogus reviews of his own, according to a piece he wrote earlier this year in the online magazine Salon.com. Though few authors are open about the practice, industry insiders consider it typical and perhaps a greater corrupting influence than apparently malicious detractors.

Such episodes appear to stem partly from Amazon.com’s policy against pre-screening submissions before they go online. Amazon.com publishes loose guidelines for reviewers--basically amounting to a prohibition against profanity and blatant marketing. And a small handful of reviews have been taken off the site after a reader or Amazon.com employee discovered a clear guideline violation, Capelli said.

Other authors and publishers view reader tirades as akin to junk e-mail, or “spam”--irritating and at times embarrassing but not a genuine threat to their business. Occasionally harsh reviews even give new life to old books.

Edward Humes, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of true-crime books, discovered a recent flurry of reviews of his book “Mississippi Mud” posted on Amazon--years after the book was published. The book describes a murder case that polarized a Southern community.

“Even one of the main characters in the book posted something,” he said. “It’s a great forum where people can actually debate the factual aspects of a nonfiction book. I like that because it’s not something that the press does very well at all.”

Amazon.com’s rival, Barnesandnoble.com, reads all reviews before posting to ensure that they meet the company’s guidelines, which are similar to Amazon’s.

But the huge volume of reviews Amazon.com receives would make pre-screening a formidable challenge.

Some critics say the company should verify that senders have used a valid e-mail address, a process that could be automated. Others suggest a service that links to a reviewer’s history of postings akin to the auction site EBay’s practice of compiling users’ ratings of their experiences with individual buyers and sellers.

That might be a way to determine whether the reviewer is a serious reader or merely a crank with too much free time.

Capelli said Amazon would respond to such ideas if enough customers demanded them, but added that the company is happy with the system as it is.

“Our customers are bright people” who take anonymous reviews with a grain of salt, said Capelli. “People are going to make their own informed decisions,” he added, noting that polarization in opinions about books is typical.

But Ken Cassar, an e-commerce analyst with Jupiter Communications in New York, said Amazon seems to overlook a larger question about the integrity of a sales model that relies on content supplied by an anonymous community of users.

“As the walls between commerce and content sites will continue to dissolve, there are inherent challenges associated with editorial integrity,” Cassar said. “Anonymity completely removes accountability from the process. When you pull the accountability out, freedom of expression really loses some of its value.”

Still, few authors look back with nostalgia on the old days, when only a few prominent reviewers held nearly all the power to boost them to the bestseller lists or send them into mid-list obscurity.

Said O’Reilly: “Being ignored is the unkindest cut.”