Being Hated Can Be Good For Business On Amazon

from the don't-mind-the-ones dept

While many authors I know say that you shouldn't pay much attention to the various reader reviews and rankings on Amazon as they're usually "inflated" greatly by friends and family, one researcher has decided to study the ratings to see what he could turn up. Not surprisingly, the distribution of ratings is not evenly rated. Five stars (the top rating) gets chosen quite often. However, the finding that seemed most interesting (though, not surprising) was that the most controversial books had a horseshoe curve in the ratings. That is they had lots of ones and lots of fives. However, they also had lots of sales. So, even if the average rating wasn't high, the sales remained high. In other words, the overall rankings may not be an indication of sales -- though the distribution could be. However, it appears that in cases where the horseshoe curve triumphs, it's really a case where the controversy generated by the book is clearly outweighing the user reviews in the minds of buyers.

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