> I don't know how that author identified the most prolific reviewer at the time but I found one reviewer with 20.8k reviews since 2011. That's just under 3,000 reviews per year, which comes out to around 8 per day. This man has written an average of 8 reviews on Amazon per day, all of the ones I see about books, every day for seven years. I thought it might be some bot account writing fake reviews in exchange for money, but if it is then it's a really good bot because Grady Harp is a real person whose job matches that account's description. And my skimming of some reviews looked like they were all relevant to the book, and he has the "verified purchase" tag on all of them, which also means he's probably actually reading them.
sounds a lot more like the guy has hired a staff of reviewers that he pays to post under his name (and he obviously could be receiving money from publishers or hired publicity companies to do so) , rather than he is an insane person reading 3000 books a year. Not so much "insane" as "has yet another shady internet business".
Slightly off topic, but is it shady? There highly respected magazines dedicated to reviewing books. This is just shifting it into a different medium. I suppose pretending they are all a person is on the shady side, but if that's the only option Amazon gives, I can understand why it's like that. If the reviews are adding value (and according to the OP they seem to be), is it much shadier than the Paris Review or the New York Review of Books?
it's shady because they are pretending to be a specific person writing something, which they are not. I would not be surprised if the picture shown has nothing to do with who actually writes those reviews.
> If the reviews are adding value (and according to the OP they seem to be), is it much shadier than the Paris Review or the New York Review of Books?
yes because the source producing the review is bogus in this case. Reading book reviews from your (assumed to be a non-famous literary critic!) brother in law vs. a famous book reviewer are two different kinds of value add.
Now straying far off the topic, how about when this goes the other way around? When authors attach their names to books they do not write (e.g. James Patterson with <name in much smaller type>) or who might not even be alive (V.C. Andrews or Robert Ludlum)?
This actually reminds me of "Richard Bachman" which was Steven King using a pen name and fake picture which I think was striving for the opposite effect.
> When authors attach their names to books they do not write (e.g. James Patterson with <name in much smaller type>) or who might not even be alive (V.C. Andrews or Robert Ludlum)?
I would say that is lame, but the actual writer's name is still there. it's not untraceable like a random profile on the internet. When we see these celebrity books that are written by someone else, I dont think there's any confusion among those who actually care to know, that "book X was written by a ghost writer". if celebrity X is claiming, "I wrote that book myself!" when they didn't, they are lying, and yes that is bad.
Haha, I've read reviews from a similar account/person. I was always amazed at how prolific (s)he was, you would find their review for books spanning many different technical topics.
sounds a lot more like the guy has hired a staff of reviewers that he pays to post under his name (and he obviously could be receiving money from publishers or hired publicity companies to do so) , rather than he is an insane person reading 3000 books a year. Not so much "insane" as "has yet another shady internet business".