I think I got reviewed by a bot...

[David Adams]

I logged on today and found another review for my main novel. Three stars -- not too shabby. I sat down to read it, and... well, yeah. I think I got reviewed by a bot.

It's basically a copy/paste of the very first sentence of an earlier (four star) review. The section that was copied didn't even make sense as it was about how he found my book, and not anything about the book itself. I checked his other reviews and they're all in very similar style; copied from other reviews or extremely short, and repeating stock phrases.

The original (topmost review): http://www.amazon.com/Lacuna-Demons-Void-ebook/product-reviews/B006RZNR3Y/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_4?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addFourStar
The copy/paste: http://www.amazon.com/Lacuna-Demons-Void-ebook/product-reviews/B006RZNR3Y/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_3?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addThreeStar

It looks like the work of a bot, or someone who just loves the term "whiz bang awesome". I'm ambivalent about it -- it's a three star review, which is okay, but it kinda looks fraudulent and I don't want to be seen as though I'm padding reviews. Thoughts?

[nomesque]

Report it. It looks to me as though you're right, and it's certainly not doing your book any good having dodgy-provenance reviews attached to it. Plus, Amazon really doesn't appreciate those spam-reviewers, so you'd be helping them out too.

[MrPLD]

In the words of other bots around the universe.... "EXTERMINATE" (it)

[ETS PRESS]

That is weird. His line was exact, and all of his other reviews are pretty much one liners. My son bought a film book for his class. He read a review on Amazon from a guy who basically said that going into the film industry was stupid and a waste of time. Then he clicked on his name. The guy had dozens of reviews on books in every profession imaginable, and basically said the same thing. What' up with that?

[David Adams]

That is weird. His line was exact, and all of his other reviews are pretty much one liners. My son bought a film book for his class. He read a review on Amazon from a guy who basically said that going into the film industry was stupid and a waste of time. Then he clicked on his name. The guy had dozens of reviews on books in every profession imaginable, and basically said the same thing. What' up with that?

My suspicion remains that the "account" was part of a false-rating scam, and that (for money) he gave five star reviews to certain works, then to cover his tracks and to make it less obvious that he was doing so he randomly clicked around, bought any book that was on free that day (as mine was) and randomly wrote "reviews" which were not five star, so that it would be non-obvious what it was doing. Note that he has 20 pages of exactly the same stuff which makes this more likely, and the review he copy/pasted would have been immediately obvious as jibberish to a native speaker, so it's probably some Chinese digital sweatshop worker being paid 20c a day to do the same extremely repetitive task, who probably doesn't speak a word of English, obviously didn't read the books and is just trying to boost rankings for pay.

[D a l y a]

My suspicion remains that the "account" was part of a false-rating scam, and that (for money) he gave five star reviews to certain works, then to cover his tracks and to make it less obvious that he was doing so he randomly clicked around, bought any book that was on free that day (as mine was) and randomly wrote "reviews" which were not five star, so that it would be non-obvious what it was doing...

I think that is exactly what has happened.  Unfortunately, nobody but the author would do the footwork to figure something like that out.

Then again, sometimes people make mistakes.  I had a reviewer name a character who was not in my book, in the review.  

In your case, though, if it looks like a duck ...

P.S. Stop reading your reviews first thing in the morning.  It's not good for the creative process.  :-)

[David Adams]

I'm Australian. The review was read late at night my time, ironically AFTER I'd done all my writing for the day.

[Darin_Calhoun]

I flag it as well. Spam bot reviews is a new low. 

[Gretchen Galway]

Given that Amazon seems to always be a step ahead, I wonder what their plan is for this sort of thing. They walk a fine line between encouraging reviews (which brings people to the site for all kinds of products) and enforcing legitimacy. If they let the spambots take over, nobody will trust the reviews, which (I believe) would hurt sales. It's also embarrassing for the Amazon brand when newspaper articles make fun of the astroturfing. On the other hand, I doubt they'll go so far as to require a purchase to leave a review. They know better than we do how many or how few people are commenting on products they actually purchased on Amazon. It could be a remarkably small percentage.

[amiblackwelder]

I logged on today and found another review for my main novel. Three stars -- not too shabby. I sat down to read it, and... well, yeah. I think I got reviewed by a bot.

It's basically a copy/paste of the very first sentence of an earlier (four star) review. The section that was copied didn't even make sense as it was about how he found my book, and not anything about the book itself. I checked his other reviews and they're all in very similar style; copied from other reviews or extremely short, and repeating stock phrases.

The original (topmost review): http://www.amazon.com/Lacuna-Demons-Void-ebook/product-reviews/B006RZNR3Y/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_4?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addFourStar
The copy/paste: http://www.amazon.com/Lacuna-Demons-Void-ebook/product-reviews/B006RZNR3Y/ref=cm_cr_pr_hist_3?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addThreeStar

It looks like the work of a bot, or someone who just loves the term "whiz bang awesome". I'm ambivalent about it -- it's a three star review, which is okay, but it kinda looks fraudulent and I don't want to be seen as though I'm padding reviews. Thoughts?

The person who left me the negative review on all my shifters books must be a bot as well;)

[telracs]

what's really funny is that when looking at his "reviews" an number are for books that are "currently unavailable."

[David Adams]

Aye. I reported the post and I'm glad to see people are downranking it. Oh well. Made my day a little more weird.

I'm tempted to put a snarky comment there. "Mindless spam robots give Lacuna three stars! You wouldn't want to upset your uncaring cybernetic overlords by not buying this book, would you?"

Of course, I want to also make it clear that this guy is a bot and I don't endorse his review even though it was favourable.

[Consuelo Saah Baehr]

David, I just got hit by the same bot.  I reported it to Amazon.  I, too, went to his review site and noticed that he had copied the first line of another review and had a lot of "whiz bang" phrases.

Let's get that guy or girl.