This was supposed to be a book review, but I was distracted by something that is, to me, completely incomprehensible. I’m hoping someone will be able to make sense of it for me. I went to Amazon to get the book cover for the review I was writing and while searching for the paperback release date, I came across this little curiosity:
If you click the image, it will take you to the search results page this image came from.
This search result (March 16, 2010) tells me two things:
- There is a new Dexter book coming out in September. (I’ll give Jeff Lindsay a chance to redeem himself but the ice he is skating on is thin.)
- Someone is selling book reviews on Amazon for $10 each. (And no, it’s not me)
Now, the incomprehensible item is the second one. This person has 59 book reviews for sale via digital download on Amazon. As much as I would love to get paid for reviewing books, I’m not seeing a viable business model in this particular approach. Consumers don’t buy book reviews, publishers do (by publishers I mean magazines, newspapers, web sites, blogs, etc. rather than book publishers).
Since Amazon doesn’t provide a mechanism for selling the rights to republish content like Constant Content does, the goal here must be to sell to consumers. The problem is that consumers don’t pay for book reviews. Particularly consumers who are browsing an online bookseller that displays free reviews right on the same page as the book. Especially for books that are on the bestseller list and get plenty of reviews on their own.
Am I missing the brilliant business plan here or is selling book reviews to book buyers on Amazon as pointless as it appears? The one customer review on these book reviews (and no, it’s not me) sums up my thoughts when I stumbled across these reviews for sale:
What the hell are you people smoking, and can I have some?
At $10 per review, I should be charging you $10-$40 dollars/month to view this blog. When you’ve finished laughing at that notion, feel free to leave a comment. 
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That is very bizarre – I went on amazon and looked at it and the review is 389 words long – those are some expensive words.
It comes out to about $0.025/word which is incredibly high when you are selling direct to the consumer, but very low when you’re selling articles to publishers (which this person isn’t since it’s not possible to do that on Amazon).
At that price per word, a 60 000 word novel would be $1500/copy. Yikes!
She has a review of the Dexter book on Amazon (the regular, free type of review) that is 349 words. I wonder if it’s the same one being sold. It’s the same review that appears on the Midwest Book Review: Reviewer’s Bookwatch site.
I struggle to believe that any customers would buy a review for $10, even $1 is pushing it. I could believe that a publisher/magazine etc would pay $10 for a review, but I imagine they’d like to know the quality will be good before parting with their money. I haven’t seen this practice before – the world gets weirder every day!
Jackie (Farm Lane Books)´s last blog ..My Driver – Maggie Gee