Amazon topics
Prolog
Read this stuff once then don't worry about it again.
| What is Amazon? |
| Disclaimers |
Help and advice supplied by Amazon America
Just finding some of this stuff on Amazon is not always easy. Please note that the pages (and sometimes the rules) for Amazon's other sites are different. Please also note that this is by no means a comprehensive list. If I tried to provide that, the result would be just as complicated as Amazon's own help pages. The special site features include some other features that you might want to investigate. I think that customer review search should also be linked (see Exterminate Amazon's software bugs) but I've included it here separately.
So you'd like to ... guides
I set up a series of guides to explain various Amazon features. These guides do not duplicate anything on Amazon's own help pages although there is some overlap. Of course, if Amazon ever make any of these guides redundant by expanding their help pages to explain these features properly, I'll be happy to delete my guides.
For this blog, I created blog entries equivalent to some of my Amazon guides. Of those listed here, there's one (Decipher those CD titles) that I haven't created a blog version for (but I might do one day), so I've proved a link below to my Amazon guide. Two of my Amazon guides are combined in one blog entry (Understand Amazon's Friends and Interesting people system incorporates "Discover other Amazon customers who like you") but apart from that, the text is generally very similar. Nevertheless, there are differences between these blog versions and their Amazon equivalents. On the blog, I'm able to provide direct links to any web page I like, whether that be another blog entry or a page on another blog or website and I've taken advantage of the opportunity. Also, I don't have to worry about linking to products for the sake of it (to ensure that more people see the Amazon guide), so those bits of the Amazon guides are omitted. Only relevant links are included.
The customer reviews discussion board and the new top reviewers forum are useful for getting the latest news on Amazon's software, but they both have their limitations. Once problems have been reported and discussed (leaving aside the issue of whether those discussions are helpful or not; my experience of the customer reviews discussion board is that once you get beyond the first few posts, they rarely are), the threads get buried by later discussions. Eventually, the problem is raised again, usually but not always by somebody who hasn't seen earlier thread(s) on the same topic. My guides cannot be as quick to report what's new but I hope that having a fixed point of reference will make it easier to remember long-term errors. In the same way, I also provide a focus for ideas regarding future software development, some suggested many years ago, by having them all in one place. Cynics wonder what purpose is served by listing these suggestions, thinking that Amazon never take any notice. I'll just say that I periodically have to update these suggestions to remove those that Amazon have acted upon, though of course I have no way of knowing why they did so. Maybe it's because they thought of the idea independently, or maybe they received suggestions from other people. It doesn't matter why, only that the changes sometimes happen. And if they don't, at least the ideas won't be forgotten completely.
Apart from the above guides that equate to my Amazon guides, I've also put a lot of information into this blog that either isn't suitable for inclusion on Amazon (such as statistical data) or which I simply don't want to put there.
Reviewer rankings and related issues
This is a controversial subject but I've tried to present opposing views as fairly as possible. Nevertheless, there is always room for improvement. Let me know if you think I've missed or misrepresented anything. The new ranking system is not covered here; I'll set up a new blog to replace this one eventually.
Other topics
| Writing Amazon reviews (other people's opinions) |
| Fun on the pop music forum | Fun on the discussion board |
My Amazon pages
Although I've posted lists and reviews in five of Amazon's websites, I've only given my full commitment to Britain and America. For those who want to browse, here is a page of links to my Amazon pages.
Other Amazon contributors' websites
These websites and blogs cover a diverse range of topics, not necessarily related to anything that I'm interested in personally.
1 comment:
I wanted to share that I'm not a sad person either.
I started writing Amazon reviews back in 1999 when the Amazon site had very skimpy product info and we didn't even know anything about the book other than the title and publication information. I wanted more info about niche books and often my only help was other customer reviews (when available). I did reviews on the ones I read in niche topics. My rank was up to 199 at one point.
I think I've gone as long as a year without doing a review. Life gets busy you know.
I have also avoided it sometimes on purpose due to negativity from people after the comments opened up. I even found I was being discussed on a blog! The blogger and commenters of that blog were speculating about me as a person based on my reviews!!
If there are a lot of 5 star praise reviews on something I love I often don't review it. If a book has 50-300 reviews (or more) no one needs my input. Why bother.
However with nonfiction books and children's books "with issues" that parents want to know about I will do negative reviews. I feel someone might want to hear my reasons and often what I say is useful to others. Just wanted to share why I sometimes post reviews that are less than 5 star ratings.
I had never heard of the "fan votes" thing. Craziness!