The Amazon Review Project gets serious

KTLIT LogoSo, here’s the problem…

Somebody goes to check out a piece of Korean literature on Amazon and they’re not sure what they want to do. They need a bit of convincing (or unconvincing!) so they look around the page to try to figure the book out. They look for a couple of things:  a good book description from the publisher (which books published in Korea seldom have), editorial reviews, too look inside the book, and reviews.

The one thing that “fans” can affect is the “review” option. Reviews provide security for browsers in a couple of ways: first, they suggest that someone else has actually read the book, second; they give the browser some idea of what is in the book and why they might like reading it (this is particularly important in the older publications, which don’t have good book descriptions), third; they just plain help keep the browser on the page, increasing the time the browser has to pull the trigger. So, all good.

Which means it is bad to see this:

 

 

 

Instead, it is better to see this:

A reviewed and liked book on Amazon

Can you see the two differences?^^

 

 

 

 

 

LOL – See what I did there?

Of course more than one customer review would be nice (and never, NEVER, NEVER fluff in your reviews – be honest or your reviews will be denigrated and you will end up having a negative affect on the book you are trying to help). So Amazon savvy readers of this blog should go out and support the Korean works they like by posting short reviews of them.

The second useful thing would be to have some “likes” on these pages.  You do this by being an Amazon user and clicking on the “like” button (it’s in the picture above).

Also, readers of this blog can support the books they like by supporting the reviews that they think best explain their favorite books. You do this by clicking on the “Yes” button, as shown below:

Like a Review Button

 

 

Gaming this is a bad idea. Companies as efficient as Amazon have ways of sorting those kinds of efforts out.

However, if you have read any of these books and liked them, here are the books that are now reviewed and need “like” votes:

Photo Shop Murder by Kim Young-ha

Hong Gildong by Seo Hajin

Our Twisted Hero by Yi Mun-yol

I’ve actually put 10 reviews up, with more to come, but these are the recent ones on books I can really recommend.