Amazon Vine

[I. J. Parker]

For those who don't know: this is a program run by Amazon that provides reader reviews of new books by a group of people who have established a certain track record as reviewers. They receive ARCs of new books and respond with their take on the novel.

I discovered the Amazon Vine project recently and thought it an excellent way to jump-start preorders on Amazon. My publisher provided the Arcs, and in the month before release, these good folks read and commented.

For me the experiment has been interesting. I didn't do badly out of it in terms of stars, but perhaps not all my expectations were fullfilled. There were only 13 reviews (not sure if that's because of a limited number of ARCs or a lack of readers).

Almost all the reviewers instantly identified themselves as Amazon Vine reviewers. Fine, but there was also a sense that they had to prove somehow that getting a free book did not buy their enthusiastic support. This sort of thing doesn't happen with bona fide customers who have nothing to prove. On the positive side, the reviews were mostly much longer and more detailed than the snippets shy readers produce. But they were not always based on careful reading or got the names of major characters wrong.

None of this is really very important. What is important is that not all Amazon Vine reviewers are very experienced readers or reviewers of books, more specifically of mysteries. A quick check of their other reviews revealed that of the 13, 4 did not review mysteries customarily, and a further three usually reviewed other products instead of books.

So, all in all, I had a mixed reaction. Some reviewers did a great job, others got a few things wrong (one, who generously gave me 5 stars, thought my book a "fun cozy"), and some should have stuck to reviewing music videos and electronic gadgets.